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E uropean Integration and the Disembedding of Labour Market Regulation: Transnational Labour Relations at the E uropean C entral B ank Construction Site
Author(s) -
Wagner Ines,
Lillie Nathan
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
jcms: journal of common market studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.54
H-Index - 90
eISSN - 1468-5965
pISSN - 0021-9886
DOI - 10.1111/jcms.12096
Subject(s) - competition (biology) , wage , work (physics) , business , sovereignty , labor relations , industrial organization , market economy , economics , labour economics , political science , engineering , law , mechanical engineering , ecology , politics , biology
E uropean integration through mutual recognition has facilitated the growth of a pan‐ E uropean labour supply system in which transnational subcontractors ‘post’ workers from low‐wage areas to higher wage areas. This allows employers to create spaces of exception in which the national industrial relations system of the country where work occurs does not fully apply. Drawing on interviews with managers, workers, unionists and works councillors at the E uropean C entral B ank construction site in F rankfurt, G ermany, this article shows how transnational subcontracting allows employers to access, and create competition between, sovereign regulatory regimes. It concludes that high‐cost, high‐collective good national systems such as the G erman one, which depend on territorial boundedness for their integrity, are likely to be destabilized by this aspect of E uropean integration.