Weathering intermediated temporary labour mobility: social partners in Central and Eastern Europe after EU enlargement

Abstract

This article highlights the growing significance of intermediated temporary labour mobility, and how it has put further pressure on industrial relations institutions in Central and Eastern Europe since EU enlargement. The social partners’ modest regulatory role has been further challenged and reconfigured by the spread of labour market intermediaries. In their struggle to maintain a degree of regulatory influence in the face of unilateral government regulation and the dominance of intermediaries, social partners have shifted their positions between entrenched consent and antagonism and/or protagonism. Our two case studies of Hungarian temporary agency work in metal manufacturing and posted workers in Slovenian construction show similar labour market pressures on sectoral industrial relations in the two countries, but different responses by social partners, indicating different prospects for national industrial relations. The state has retained the decisive regulatory role in both cases, but the Slovenian social partners, in contrast to their Hungarian counterparts, still have some regulatory influence.