Alongside others, academics have acutely felt the isolation generated by the pandemic lockdowns. For many of us, one of the most cherished aspects of the scholarly pursuit is the exchange of ideas with colleagues. These personal interactions allow ideas that have been gestating in our minds to reach the outside world and then become honed through debate and discussion. To recreate such a space, members of the Moving Labour Collective decided to host an online discussion about the implications of COVID-19 for labour – its embodied practices, their regulation, and the theoretical and activist engagements with both. The Moving Labour Collective is a community of academics interested in critical labour research, open to both trade unionists and activists. We live and work in a number of different countries—Canada, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Italy, and the United Kingdom—and this diversity added a measure of perspective, and we hope, richness to our discussion. Below is an edited transcript of this dialogue. By publishing its contents, we hope to engage others in the conversation.

The Swedish model of labour market regulation is known worldwide for its social partnership. Its functioning is ensured by the cooperation between labour market parties, which have jointly contributed in establishing a highly centralised system of collective bargaining ensuring a wide coverage of collective agreements. The model is further characterised by high degrees of trade union density and low level of conflictuality. Specifically, the Swedish model is marked by a ‘trade-off’ operated between the labour market parties: the trade unions have accepted to resort to collective action only as the ultimate means to solve industrial disputes, and in exchange the employer’s party has accepted to recognise a series of workplace representation rights to the trade unions.This pact is sealed by the signature of a collective agreement, which makes social peace obligations and employees’ rights of information, consultation and co-determination enter into force. By renouncing to the weapon of conflict, the union signing the collective agreement is rewarded with a series of work place representation rights that establish its positions before other unions and limit the managerial prerogative of the employer. This system promotes a strict single-channel system of workers representation that oscillates between guaranteeing universal workers’ rights and excluding those who do not permanently belong to such a system. This contribution aims at critically discussing the characteristics of the Swedish model of industrial citizenship through the prism of the challenges that it faces in relation with the dynamics of Europeanisation of the economy and industrial relations. In particular, the paper reviews the responses of the Swedish system to: a) the dynamics of decentralisation, and b) the dynamics of cross-border service provision including the posting of workers. In this context, the paper also presents and discusses the amendments to Lex Laval (the Act adopted to comply with the Laval case law of the Court of Justice of the EU) entered into force in June 2017.

‘Collective Autonomy in the European Union’ explores the question of collective autonomy by investigating the relationship between collective bargaining and legal regulation and its current evolution in the national contexts and in the EU internal market. The thesis aims at achieving a comprehensive understanding of the notion, function and exercise of collective autonomy and collective bargaining, and it argues that collective autonomy and collective bargaining in contemporary Europe present challenges that alter their basic features. To this end, the thesis undertakes a multifaceted analysis integrating three perspectives: a theoretical perspective analysing and combining the conceptual elements of collective autonomy and collective bargaining as defined in industrial relations theories, labour law theories, and in the discourses on global labour rights; a comparative perspective analysing how collective autonomy and collective bargaining have found legal regulation in the Italian and Swedish labour law and industrial relations contexts; a cross-border perspective examining how the EU regulation of the internal market freedoms of establishment and to provide services impacts on the features of collective autonomy and collective bargaining.

By combining elements of international, European and comparative labour law, EU internal market law, and industrial relations, this thesis explores the unique features of collective autonomy and collective bargaining as socio-economic mechanisms having a normative power, whose functioning is however influenced by legal dynamics. Eventually, it examines the transformation that the foundations of collective autonomy and collective bargaining undergo in relation to the challenges deriving from both the processes of company-level decentralisation and the dynamics of the cross-border scenarios in the EU internal market. Ultimately, the thesis contributes to advancing the understanding of the foundations of collective autonomy and to exploring its operations beyond national borders.

The aim of this paper is to discuss and illustrate the challenges that the operations of ‘letter-box companies’ in the EU internal market place to labour and employment standards and to trade union activities. Based on a legal geographic analysis of the multi-faceted labour law regime of the EU internal market, the paper examines the conceptual aspects of the clash between the cross-border operations of ‘letter-box companies and the territorial application of labour rules, i.e. the labour law’s ‘principle of territoriality’, and it discusses the impact on trade union activities. 

Generally speaking, the term ‘letter-box company’ refers to a company not retaining any real (or only a loose) connection with the country of incorporation. From a labour law perspective, the definition refers to those companies that have the cross-border provision of workforce as their ‘core business’. In both cases, the term identifies a scenario in which a company only has a letterbox in the country of establishment and mainly operates by posting workforce for temporary service provision to countries other than the one of establishment. These operations are legitimately undertaken under the scope of EU internal market law and are based on a combined use of the economic freedoms of establishment and providing services. Their economic rationale lies in the exploitation of cross-border labour costs differentials, which characterise the socio-economic geography of the EU internal market. 

This scenario concerns socio-economic dynamics that affect the industrial relations contexts of both the country of establishment and the country of destination. On the one side, the cross-border provision of workforce operated by a ‘letter-box company’ to a company established in the country of destination, places this latter subject in a better comparative advantage with other companies recruiting local workforce. In its turn, the local workforce would be disadvantaged in relation with the workforce of the country in which the ‘letter-box company’ is established. This scenario entails social dumping as the primary factor of competition and envisions downwards collective bargaining as the ensuing consequence. On the other side, the improvement of working and employment conditions in the country of establishment of the ‘letter-box company’ would be affected by the competitiveness that the labour costs differential ensures for the national economy by attracting foreign investments. Ultimately, the declared objective of the EU to achieve a ‘social market economy’ (Art 3 TEU) would be undermined. 

Against this background, the trade union subject finds itself in the position of elaborating new strategies for transnational workers representation, collective bargaining and collective action that capture and respond to the complexity of the cross-border socio-economic dynamics generated by the ‘letter-box companies’ operations. In order not to abandon the role of leading socio-economic actor and bearer of workers’ collective interest in society, it is thus vital for the trade union subject to develop cross-border strategies responding to the cross-border socio-economic challenges that arise within the EU internal market. By combining elements of labour law, EU internal market law and industrial relations research, this paper discusses these challenges and explores new scenarios for transnational trade unionism in Europe.

The question of social dumping has again climbed the EU policy agenda. In this article, we call into question some established views of social dumping that conceptualize the relationship between EU internal market and Member States in binary terms. Based on an analysis of relevant case law, and drawing on the conceptual tools provided by critical legal geography, we show that the project of EU integration relies as much on the scalar differentiation of powers as it does on the ‘upward’ shift of powers from the national- to the supra-national level. We propose an understanding of EU internal market law as productive of a ‘labour law patchwork’, defined by the simultaneous fragmentation and overlap of labour law regulations across and within EU Member States. Here, we re-conceptualize cross-border social dumping as a ‘game of jurisdiction’ – a set of strategic moves by actors within a multi-scalar and multi-jurisdictional space.

This Article critically evaluates the recent trends in Italian industrial relations in order to highlight the clash between Italian constitutional principles and the autonomous development of self-regulation as for the relationship between representation, conflict and collective agreement. By conducting a comparative analysis with the Swedish model, the article argues that the constitutional principles of the Italian system of industrial relations conceive the collective agreement as a contingent element in the relationship between representation and conflict, whereas the Fiat case (2010) and the latest interconfederal agreements (2013 and 2014) place it at the centre of such a relationship. The Swedish model, instead, regards the collective agreement as a central mechanism through which the signatory trade union trades social peace with privileged rights of representation in the workplace. Through the prism of the Swedish model, the article suggests that Italian industrial relations are turning towards a restrictive system centred on the collective agreement, in which however the obligation of social peace is not exchanged with any strengthening of union representation in the workplace.