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Within the Italian industrial relations system, the relationship between inflation and collective bargaining has historically been a crucial one. The capacity of collectively agreed wages to protect workers' purchasing power has been the object of negotiations, fights, and divisions not only between governments, employer associations and trade unions, but also within each of the parts involved. The return to high inflation rates since 2022 has highlighted the inadequacy of Italian collective bargaining institutions in defending real wages.

L'articolo ricostruisce criticamente la traiettoria del dibattito sulla Labour Process Theory (LPT) da Braverman in poi. Analizza i classici della seconda ondata e i principali fondamenti della cosiddetta 'core theory' del LPT. Descrive il dibattito suscitato dalla formalizzazione della core theory rispetto al cambiamento delle strutture produttive. Individua alcuni filoni di proficuo dibattito interno, cruciali per l'analisi delle attuali tendenze e trasformazioni del lavoro: il soggetto mancante, il 'connectivity gap' e il ruolo della tecnologia. Il modo in cui il dibattito interno alla LPT ha affrontato queste questioni è promettente e riafferma la rilevanza della LPT come quadro analitico che rimane cruciale nell'attuale sociologia del lavoro.

Between June 2018 and September 2019, Italy was ruled by a coalition government comprising the far-right League and the anti-establishment Five Star Movement. The government, which was widely referred to as the first populist executive in a major EU member state, alarmed Italian and European elites. In fact, the coalition built its rhetoric on questioning EU legislation, particularly that concerning immigration and, of interest here, fiscal constraints and austerity policies. The executive's first programmatic document on economic policy, the budgetary plan for 2019, triggered two months of heated negotiations with the European Commission before being approved.
Although critical political economists have investigated how the 'populist' government furthered neoliberalism in Italy, an analysis of its organic ties with Italian capital is still missing. Our article addresses this gap by investigating, within a critical Global Political Economy perspective, the competing business interests behind the budgetary plan and how they shaped the formulation of the populist government's economic policies. The analysis of the executive's economic policies, together with its organic ties with capital, allows us to explain the rise of the populist government and describe its nature as well as its contradictions which explain its limited transformative potential and its inner fragility.
The findings highlight the relevance of a critical Global Political Economy perspective for investigating economic and fiscal policy in the era of authoritarian neoliberalism, in particular in assessing the EU structural constraints on economic and fiscal policy but also the agency of domestic capital shaping it.

In response to the last recession, the European Union (EU) adopted a new economic governance regime (NEG). An influential stream of EU social policy literature argues that there has been more emphasis on social objectives in the NEG regime in more recent years. This article shows that this is not the case. It does so through an in-depth analysis of NEG prescriptions in wage, employment protection and collective bargaining policy in Germany, Italy, Ireland and Romania between 2009 and 2019. Our main conclusion is that the EU's interventions in these three industrial relations policy areas continue to be dominated by a liberalisation agenda that is commodifying labour, albeit to a different degree across the uneven but nonetheless integrated European political economy. This finding is important, as countervailing transnational trade union is the more likely, the more there is a common threat. Even so, our contextualised analysis also enables us to detect contradictions that could provide European labour movements opportunities to pursue countervailing action. ; European Commission Horizon 2020 ; European Research Council ; Irish Research Council ; University College Dublin ; EC - Education Audiovisual & Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) ; 2021-10-14 JG: Replaced PDF at author's request

In response to the last recession, the European Union (EU) adopted a new economic governance (NEG) regime. An influential stream of EU social policy literature argues that there has been more emphasis on social objectives in the NEG regime in more recent years. This article shows that this is not the case. It does so through an in‐depth analysis of NEG prescriptions on wage, employment protection and collective bargaining policy in Germany, Italy, Ireland and Romania between 2009 and 2019. Our main conclusion is that the EU's interventions in these three industrial relations policy areas continue to be dominated by a liberalization agenda that is commodifying labour, albeit to a different degree across the uneven but nonetheless integrated European political economy. This finding is important, as countervailing transnational trade union action is the more likely, the more there is a common threat. Even so, our contextualized analysis also enables us to detect contradictions that could provide European labour movements opportunities to pursue countervailing action.

This article investigates employment and occupational transitions that are behind structural changes in European labour markets before, during and after the Great Recession. The study introduces a new methodological approach for studying labour market flows considering the quality of the jobs from and into which the flows are taking place by differentiating them into wage quintiles. The analysis compares six European countries that are usually associated with different institutional clusters – France, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the UK. It tracks the transitions of their working age populations into and out of inactivity, unemployment and employment (in five wage categories). The findings show the extent to which employment and occupational mobility patterns differ across European countries, resulting in very different outcomes in terms of employment opportunities and life chances. Results also suggest that the countries studied fall into three distinct categories based on the degree of occupational mobility characterising their economies.

This study investigates employment and occupational mobility in Europe before and after the 2008 financial crisis, with the aim of linking individual-level employment transitions to the broad labour market developments during the crisis, such as the surge in unemployment and the phenomenon of job polarisation. The analysis compares six European countries that represent different institutional clusters – France, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the UK. It tracks the transitions of their working age populations into and out of inactivity, unemployment and employment (in five wage categories). The study seeks to better understand what happened to workers who lost their jobs during the recession, beyond the headline unemployment statistics. Did they find other work and, if so, was it better or worse paid? Were opportunities for upward occupational mobility affected by the crisis? The findings show that the countries studied fall into three distinct categories based on the degree of occupational mobility characterising their economies ; Este estudio investiga el empleo y la movilidad ocupacional en Europa antes y después de la crisis financiera de 2008, con el objetivo de vincular las transiciones del empleo a nivel individual con la evolución general del mercado laboral durante la crisis, como el aumento del desempleo y el fenómeno de la polarización del empleo. El análisis compara seis países europeos que representan diferentes grupos institucionales: Francia, Italia, Polonia, España, Suecia y el Reino Unido. Hace un seguimiento de las transiciones de sus poblaciones en edad de trabajar hacia y desde la inactividad, el desempleo y el empleo (en cinco categorías salariales). El estudio pretende comprender mejor qué les sucedió a los trabajadores que perdieron sus empleos durante la recesión, más allá de las estadísticas de desempleo principales. ¿Encontraron otro trabajo y, de ser así, se les paga mejor o peor? ¿Se vieron afectadas por la crisis las oportunidades de movilidad profesional ascendente? Los resultados muestran que los países estudiados se dividen en tres categorías distintas en función del grado de movilidad profesional que caracteriza a sus economías