Suchergebnisse

Celem artykułu jest analiza zbiorowych, pracowniczych sposobów radzenia sobie z kryzysem w miejscu pracy wywołanym przez pandemię Covid-19. Zostały one poddane konceptualizacji z wykorzystaniem pojęć uwrażliwiających (innowacji, kontroli, oporu i normalizacji w miejscu pracy), które wywiedziono z socjologii pracy i socjologii ekonomicznej. Pojęcia te oraz relacje pomiędzy nimi zostały ugruntowane empirycznie w badaniach nad doświadczeniami pracowników i pracownic, których praca okazała się niezbędna dla reprodukcji społecznej w warunkach pandemii w Polsce. Dane empiryczne obejmują zogniskowane wywiady grupowe i wywiady biograficzne z osobami pracującymi w edukacji, ochronie zdrowia, pomocy społecznej i logistyce. Badania prowadzą do wniosku, że wykorzystywanie "oddolnych" pomysłów na organizację pracy ("innowacja"), konflikty wokół kontroli nad procesem pracy i jakości pracy ("kontrola" i "opór"), a także instytucjonalizacja ukształtowanych w okresie kryzysu norm ("normalizacja") tworzą sekwencje zbiorowych reakcji pracowników i pracownic na pandemiczny kryzys w miejscu pracy. W artykule analizie poddane zostają dwie, najbardziej typowe w materiale empirycznym sekwencje (sekwencje kontestacyjne i sekwencje normalizacyjne) oraz ich wybrane uwarunkowania.

This article explores interpretive practices and life strategies related to the flexibilisation of employment in Poland. The socio-economic background for workers' biographical experiences and coping patterns can be defined in terms of a shift from the socialist type of Fordism to the capitalist, neoliberal, flexible labour regime. In 2015, Poland remained the leader in the EU in terms of the share of employees with temporary contracts in total employment. Yet, despite the expansion of precarious employment, the Polish workers were, until recently, not too prone to protest. This paper explains this apparent paradox by analysing the meanings given to the changing nature of employment by workers themselves in the context of their overall biographical experiences. The empirical basis are 24 biographical narrative interviews collected within a mini-research project on non-unionised young (18-29) workers in services in the city of Wrocław, in South-Western Poland (in 2013). The analysis documents some level of "normalisation" of unstable employment among young precarious employees for whom it became an important aspect of their "taken-for-granted" assumptions related to their occupational careers. Simultaneously, the research demonstrates the biographical and social limits of "normalisation of precariousness" and suggests that the "disenchantment" with flexibility can (in some cases) contribute to greater support for various collective counter-movements (Karl Polanyi). In the article, both the normalisation and disenchantment with market flexibility are discussed with the reference to selected biographical cases.

The concerns of the people, whose experiences are explored in this book, rarely make it through to the academic discourse and political praxis in Central and Eastern Europe. In the public discourse and in many sociological accounts, manual workers tend to be represented as disoriented victims of post-socialist transformation. But how can such an approach explain the diversity of the actual ways of coping with social change adopted by workers in the new capitalist reality? To address this question the author turns to workers themselves, to their life strategies and personal experiences. He reconstructs the processes of adapting to and resisting structural changes in working-class milieus in one of the industrial regions of Poland (Silesia). Through this in-depth analysis of 166 personal interviews with blue-collar workers, Mrozowicki reaches general conclusions

PurposeIn the context of debates on the role of social partners in shaping anti-crisis policies, the article explores the developments of social dialogue in Poland following the outbreak of the pandemic. The central research question is whether the crisis has helped to revitalise social dialogue or has it further revealed its weaknesses that were apparent before it.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is based on the combination of literature review and the analysis of primary data derived from 22 expert interviews with the representatives of trade unions, employers and ministries collected in 2020–2021 in four essential industries (education, health care, social care and logistics).FindingsThe analysis suggests that the pandemic led to reinforcement of "illusory corporatism" in Poland, deepened mistrust among social partners and triggered a shift to informal channels of influencing policymaking. The weakness of the social partners and the strong position of the right-wing populist government meant that fears of recession and a health crisis were insufficient to develop "crisis" corporatism. While business interests were represented better than labour in policymaking, limited labour-friendly outcomes have been achieved as a result of workers' mobilisation and unilateral decisions of the government rather than tripartite social dialogue.Originality/valueBased on original empirical research, the article contributes to the discussion on the impact of the crisis on social dialogue under patchwork capitalism. It points to the role of strong governments and informality in circumventing tripartite structures and the importance of essential workers' mobilisation in response to the lack of social dialogue.

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the interrelations between the evolution of industrial relations (IR) and IR research in Poland in the historical context. Two questions are put forward: How was the evolution of the IR system in Poland influenced by the re-constitution of a particular model of the capitalism and the strategies and struggle of IR actors? How were the ways of approaching and theorizing IR influenced by the aforementioned evolution?


Design/methodology/approach
The paper draws upon academic literature, secondary data on actors and processes of IR as well as four expert interviews with the representatives of the first generation of IR scholars in Poland.


Findings
The paper suggests that the development of the IR system and the related scholarship can be divided into three phases: the pre-1989 period characterised by the lack of autonomous interests representation and rather limited IR research; the early development of the post-1989 IR system marked by the debates on the integrative role of IR as peacekeeping mechanism in the period of deep economic and political changes (1989-2004); the post-EU accession consolidation of the IR system characterised by the weakness of the IR actors vis-à-vis the state and increasing neo-etatist tendencies.


Originality/value
This paper contributes to the ongoing debate on the relationships between the emergent models of Eastern European capitalism and the evolution of IR systems. It critically analyses the state of the discussion on the IR field Poland emphasising the relevance of political-economic factors as well as the ideology of "social peace" for both the evolution of the IR system in the country and the state of the IR debate.

This article discusses the role of grassroots women's activism for trade union revitalization in the new capitalist economies in Eastern Europe by examining the case of Poland. The analysis of 23 expert interviews with trade union leaders and 48 biographical interviews with company-level women unionists in private manufacturing and in the public sector suggests that women's efforts to reclaim control over their occupational lives create a grassroots potential to revitalize trade unions. However, these positive developments are constrained by cultural and organizational factors which limit women's full access to decision-making bodies in the largest Polish trade union confederations.

Artykuł prezentuje wyniki badań nad wzorami karier zawodowych podejmowanych przez robotników i ludzi biznesu w okresie głębokiej zmiany społecznej w Polsce po 1989 roku. Pojęcia kariery, zasobów i pracy biograficznej umożliwiły zbadanie interakcji "obiektywnych" i "subiektywnych" aspektów życia zawodowego. Zastosowanie metodologii teorii ugruntowanej do analizy ponad dwustu wywiadów narracyjnych ze współczesnymi polskimi robotnikami i ludźmi biznesu pozwoliło na wykroczenie poza analizę indywidualnych przypadków i rekonstrukcję typologii karier. Wyróżnione wzory "kotwicy", "patchworku" i "konstrukcji" idą w poprzek podziałów wyznaczonych przez dyskurs "wygranych" i "przegranych" transformacji, hierarchię organizacyjną oraz stratyfikację. Najbardziej nagradzany w nowej rzeczywistości wzór wielotorowej i długofalowo planowanej kariery-konstrukcji okazuje się jednak trudno dostępny dla większości robotników, drobnych przedsiębiorców i niższej kadry menedżerskiej. W efekcie, obiektywne nierówności na poziomie posiadanych zasobów przekładają się na procesy biograficzne prowadząc do "naturalizacji" chaotycznej kariery-patchwork oraz "pracy na pozycję" w obrębie kariery długofalowo zakotwiczonej w jednej firmie.

The method of biographical story-telling applied to newly emerging fields of research. Realist Biography and European Policy is the first concerted attempt to integrate the separate strands of (critical) realism as a developed philosophy for social science with biographical narrative methods as a concrete methodological approach. The main goal is to demonstrate that the combination of critical realism and biographical methods is not only possible, but it is exceptionally well suited for the exploration of newly emerging research fields within European policy studies. This volume offers new insig.

This article reassesses recent debates on labour weakness in Central and Eastern Europe after the end of `actually existing socialism', examining the relationship between workers' life strategies and the development of trade unionism in Poland. Biographical interviews with workers reveal three distinct patterns of coping with social change, structural conditions and their relationship to workers' activity in unions. It is suggested that recent signs of union renewal can only be sustained by re-linking the union agenda with the workers' diversified and pragmatized life strategies.