This paper reviews the changes that have occurred to industrial relations laws and policies in Greece and Ireland as a result of the economic and social crisis since 2008, including those required by the Troika (EU, ECB, IMF) and EU-sponsored financial rescue packages, and considers the responses of trade unions to these changes.
The paper traces how traditionally state-sponsored industrial relations machinery in both countries has been undermined and recast in recent years.
Strategic opportunities that have been presented to unions are considered, including via the formation of alliances with ‘civil-society’ actors through Social Movement Unionism, and through renewed transnational forms of solidarity.
Unions ‘reaching-out’ to unorganised (often young) workers, the emergence of new informal forms of collective action, unions’ potential ‘pivot towards Europe’ through the development of stronger links between European-level actors and Greek and Irish unions, and the overall implications for the European Social Model is also explored.
