‘Recasting Greek Industrial Relations: Internal Devaluation in Light of the Economic Crisis and European Integration’.
The International Journal of Comparative Labour Law and
Industrial Relations 28, no. 2 (2012): 199–222.
Abstract
In the current financial and debt crisis, the joint
EC-ECB-IMF Programmes for Greece directly impact on national industrial relations. They
are an in vivo feasibility test for a process of internal devaluation in the Eurozone. They
test attitudes towards the EU response to the crisis through European Union (EU)/
International Monetary Fund (IMF)-sanctioned deregulation of employment and collective bargaining
rights at national level. This paper analyses how the joint EC-ECB-IMF Programmes for
Greece recast the system towards highly decentralized collective bargaining, in what
may initially appear to be ‘a unique and exceptional’ case. The paper examines how the radical
changes introduced by the joint EC-ECB-IMF Programmes for Greece since 2010, that find
their legal basis in the Excessive Deficit Procedures of the Treaty, denote
future directions of European integration for national systems of industrial
relations under the Euro Plus Pact (EPP). An assessment is made of the impact of European integration on national
industrial relations, considering whether the long and painful process of internal
devaluation in Greece will reshape societal attitudes towards the EU and the Eurozone, resulting
in profound Euroscepticism.
Keywords: collective bargaining, decentralization,
internal devaluation, wages in EU integration.
