About the project
The shipbuilding industry is often portrayed as the archetype of economic globalization. Faced with fierce global competition, especially from Asian producers, shipbuilding in Europe was believed to be a ‘sunset industry’. However, the 2004-2007 EU enlargements altered the choices set for shipyard employers, allowing them to both outsource parts of their production and increasingly use (external) posted and agency labour in their 'in house' production.
More recently, rapid technological innovation and stricter emission requirements open up – once again – for new production and staffing strategies that might spur demand for more skilled labour. Yet, so far, we know little about the determinants and interactions between increases in cross-border production and staffing strategies in an enlarged European Single Market.
Knowledge on the interaction between these processes is important because changes in staffing strategies not only change the terms under which workers are employed – be it via temporary agencies, subcontractors or via posted worker contracts – they also inherently destabilise nationally based industrial relations’ systems.
ShipGlobal anchors the examination of production and staffing strategies in yard companies in Norway, Germany, Italy, Poland and Romania, by examining:
- how the change in regional economic integration (eastern enlargements) impacts production and staffing strategies
- how these changes are negotiated by the local actors
- how technological changes affect employer strategies
Objectives
- ShipGlobal examines production and staffing strategies in yard companies in Norway, Germany, Italy, Poland and Romania - all central shipbuilding nations.
- Map the shifting international division of labour between European and Asian shipbuilders.
- Analyse how management and labour have interacted in reshaping the production and staffing strategies of the selected yards since 2000, in view of the structural adjustments undertaken by the headquarters in the groups’ overall strategies, production chains, and staffing policies.
- Examine how innovative technologies influence employer and labour strategies.
- Investigate how national sectoral industrial relations systems influence and are influenced by such changes in transnational production and staffing strategies.
- Trace how recent changes in EU regulations and policies pertaining in particular to the conditions for posted and agency workers (such as the Posting of Workers Directive, the Directive on Temporary Agency Work, the just approved European Labour Authority) impact the relationship between production and staffing strategies in different corners of the Single Market.
- Compare how these changes are negotiated by the social partners in different parts of the European production chains.
- Develop a conceptual understanding of how transnational shifts in production and staffing strategies are negotiated by differently situated actors within the EU/EEA Single Market.
