Political economist Andreas Bieler wrote a column on the dynamics underlying the crisis. He signals that public sectors across the EU have been cut back and working class gains from the post-war period have been seriously undermined. Overcoming austerity will require a strengthening of labour vis-à-vis capital. Considering that austerity is a European-wide phenomenon, pushed by Brussels and individual national governments, it will remain important that trade unions combine resistance to neo-liberal restructuring at the European level with resistance at the national level. To declare solidarity with Greek workers is a good initiative by German and British unions, for example. Nevertheless, the more concrete support is resisting restructuring at home. Any defeat of austerity in one of the EU member states will assist similar struggles elsewhere.
English: http://column.global-labour-university.org/2013/07/austerity-and-resistance-politics ...
For more information, please contact the editor Jan Cremers, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) cbn-aias@uva.nl or the communications officer at the ETUI, Mariya Nikolova mnikolova@etui.org. For previous issues of the Collective bargaining newsletter please visit http://www.etui.org/E-Newsletters/Collective-bargaining-newsletter. You may find further information on the ETUI at www.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net.