EU Sources - Europe’s wage development and the Troika intervention - December 31, 2017

In a Global Labour Column, the impact of the Troika intervention is assessed. The author refers to the fact that all countries in the European Monetary Union (EMU) have been severely hit by the Great Recession in 2008 and 2009. However, the Troika did not push for a symmetric adjustment mechanism. It would have been functional to push current account surplus countries such as Germany towards substantially higher wage increases and fiscal expansion, and deficit countries like Greece, Spain or Portugal towards lower wage increases. Instead, deficit countries alone were pushed into enforcing nominal wage cuts to increase their price competitiveness. Wage cuts were combined with Washington Consensus-style policies, including flexibilization of labour markets, privatisation and deregulation of public utilities.

Read on: in English …

For more information, please contact the editor Jan Cremers or Nuria Ramos Martin, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) cbn-aias@uva.nl or the communications officer at the ETUI, Willy De Backer wdebacker@etui.org. For previous issues of the Collective bargaining newsletter please visit http://www.etui.org/E-Newsletters/Collective-bargaining-newsletter. Since June 2013 readers can consult our archive and search through all articles in our database at www.cbnarchive.euYou may find further information on the ETUI at www.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net.

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