Labor regimes under communism in East-Central Europe were complex, shifting, and ambiguous. This collection of sixteen essays offers new conceptual and empirical ways to understand their history from the end of World War II to 1989, and to think about how their experiences relate to debates about labor history, both European and global. The authors reconsider the history of state socialism by re-examining the policies and problems of communist regimes and recovering the voices of the workers who built them. The contributors look at work and workers in Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia. They explore the often contentious relationship between politics and labor policy, dealing with diverse topics including workers’ safety and risks; labor rights and protests; working women’s politics and professions; migrant workers and social welfare; attempts to control workers’ behavior and stem unemployment; and cases of incomplete, compromised, or even abandoned processes of proletarianization. Workers are presented as active agents in resisting and supporting changes in labor policies, in choosing allegiances, and in defining the very nature of work.

This book offers a refreshing new analysis of the role of workers both in Tito’s Yugoslavia and in the subsequent Serbian revolution against Miloševic in October 2000. The authors argue that Tito and the Communist leadership of Yugoslavia saw self-management as a modernising project to compete with the West, and as a disciplining tool for workers in the enterprise. The socialist ideals of self-management were subsequently corrupted by Yugoslavia’s turn to the market. The authors then move on to examining the central role of ordinary workers in overthrowing the nationalist regime of Miloševic and present an account which runs contrary to many descriptions of 'labour weakness' in post-Communist states. Organised labour should be studied as a movement in and of itself rather than as a passive object of external forces. Two labour movement waves have emerged under post-Communism, the first an expression of desire for democracy, the second as a collaboration and clientelism. A third wave, against the ravages of neoliberalism, is only just emerging.

Reviews Servbia's labour market trends and the challenges to labour market policy.

This timely and well-written collection explores the impact of economic reforms in developing and transitional economies across the world. In a first of its kind, this book examines such issues as:* in-depth, cross-regional analysis of the pressures for global integration* labour costs and their determinants: crucial factors in the success of econo

This volume focuses on Central and Southeast Europe and explores the dynamic and complex area of distributive trade on markets which have recently undergone a huge transformation. Papers in the volume employ both quantitative and qualitative research methods, and focus on retailing, international trade, relationships between retailers and supplier.

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