After decades as the official 'ruling class' of ostensible 'workers' states, ' labor in Eastern Europe has fallen dramatically. Although the painful consequences of market transformation have hit workers hardest of all, protests have been surprisingly few and ineffective. More than ten years after the start of the transition, trade unions are among the weakest institutions of postcommunist society, unable to influence policymaking or secure material rewards for workers. Why, given unprecedented political freedoms coupled with such adverse economic change, has labor been so quiescent since the fall of communism in Eastern Europe? And what are the political consequences of that weakness for societies trying to build lasting democracies? This book, through the use of comparative case studies, explores the causes, extent, significance, and implications of this weakness. The ten cases-Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, and Ukraine-focus on the status of trade unions and the relationship between labor and politics in each country. Comprising a full array of postcommunist societies, these countries represent a wide variation in labor institutions, political experiences, and economic outcomes. In their introduction and conclusion the editors consider structural, sociological, and ideational explanations for labor decline in the postcommunist era and assess the impact of that weakness on the consolidation of democracy in the region.

The profound changes in the labour market during the 1980s are examined in this book in relation to the ideas of flexible specialization and the "flexible firm" and Marxist regulation theory, supplemented by fresh empirical evidence concerning changes in the labour process. Three related concepts have emerged around which there has been a dramatic crystallization: Fordism, post-Fordism and, supposedly linking the two, various manifestations of economic flexibility. There has been, it is suggested, a profound change in the labour process towards the "flexible worker" and in the labour market towards a "flexible workforce". Three approaches to explain these changes are especially important and provide the major focus for this book: Marxist regulation theory; the notion of flexible specialization associated with the "new" institutional economics; and the model of the flexible firm derived from the managerialist literature. In the book, the diverse claims made by these three approaches are subject to empirical and theoretical investigation and their wider implications are examined in relation to emerging patterns of work in advanced societies.

Is ?success? in transformation an unproblematic concept? In this book, Anna Pollert questions the values often hidden in the burgeoning literature on ?transformation? and addresses the main concerns arising from these. In exploring the key issues of post-communist transformation, the author discusses important theoretical issues about the nature of change and continuity, such as the historical, socio-economic and political effects of transformation, the broad problems of how workers and their organizations respond to change from command to capitalist economies, and case studies of how managers, workers and trade unionists experience these changes within their organizations. Transformation at Work encompass multidisciplinary approaches of history, political economy, industrial relations and sociology. It will be extremely useful to students and teachers of comparative industrial relations and business studies. The book will also be directly relevant to managers and trade unionists concerned with Eastern Europe and/or post-communism.