ShipGlobal Shipping Off Labour: Changing Staffing Strategies in Globalised Workplaces

• Thorbjørnsen, Sondre & Dølvik, Jon Erik (2026). Industrial relations and sectoral interests: Comparing extension of collective agreements in construction and shipyards in Norway. Economic and Industrial Democracy: an international journal. ISSN 0143-831X. doi: 10.1177/0143831x261421728. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  This article expands knowledge on the (inter)sectoral dimension of industrial relations, specifically how sectoral differences in product market competition, scope and mobility have shaped organized actors’ regulative responses to the rising cross-border labour and services mobility in the post-2004 EU/EEA Single Market. We compare how organized employers and labour in the (non-tradeable) construction sector and the (tradeable) shipbuilding sector approached the extension of collective agreements and navigated EU posting rules in wake of the 2004 enlargement. Showing how organized employer interests in tradeable and non-tradeable sectors are oppositely affected by enhanced cross-border mobility, competition and national re-regulation of migrant workers’ rights, we explain why shipbuilding employers acted as antagonists while organized construction employers in alliance with their union counterparts served as protagonists in the strife over extension.

• Wagner, Ines Alisa; Dølvik, Jon Erik; Trif, Aurora & Meardi, Guglielmo (2026). The Limits of Convergence in the Enlarged Europe: Change in Labour Conditions in a Shipbuilder's Sites in Norway and Romania. British Journal of Industrial Relations. ISSN 0007-1080. 64(2). doi: https:/onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjir.70075. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  In the 2000s, questions were open on whether the EU eastern enlargement would contribute to upwards or downwards convergence in labour standards, or even to divergence. Over two decades later, it is possible not only to attempt an answer, but also to identify the industrial relations processes that mediate economic integration between widely different countries. This paper does so by tracing how the East–West free movement of capital, labour, services and goods after enlargement has influenced labour standards within a shipbuilding company operating in Norway and Romania—two countries situated at the opposite poles of the extended European Single Market regarding labour costs and industrial relations systems. It compares how these mobility flows have impacted staffing practices, industrial relations, wages and working conditions in the respective yard subsidiaries, and identifies changes at three levels: market-driven reallocation of capital and labour, institutional changes and industrial relations responses. As a result, two outcomes are observed. First, a process of convergence, whereby the two-way mobility of production factors has contributed to levelling up of pay, facilitated by re-regulation of wage setting institutions to counteract their erosion. Second, a process of fragmentation, driven by the outsourcing of work and by international labour and services mobility, which has deepened within-country inequalities and shifted insecurity and risk onto the growing shares of subcontracted cross-border workers. In the case of European shipbuilding, the single market has thus brought upward convergence of wages between countries and increased divergence of industrial relations, working conditions and economic risks within them.

• Thorbjørnsen, Sondre (2025). Exploring labour regime circulation: the dynamic circulation of capital and labour in Norwegian shipyards. Journal of Economic Geography. ISSN 1468-2702. doi: 10.1093/jeg/lbaf056. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Abstract This article contributes to the theoretical integration of labour regimes and global production networks (GPN) by introducing a conceptual distinction between the circulation of labour and capital. Using the Norwegian shipbuilding industry as a case, the article explores how the shipyards have strategically (re)combined these forms of circulation in response to changing national and EU regulations since the 1980s. The analysis shows how multi-scalar institutional changes in labour and capital mobility shape new configurations of circulation and trigger temporal shifts in production strategies and labour regimes, emphasizing the central role circulation plays in GPNs.

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• Thorbjørnsen, Sondre; Czarzasty, Jan & Dębowski, Horacy (2026). Core–periphery dynamics in the European shipbuilding and changing patterns of labour mobility. The tale of Norway and Poland. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  In the paper we wish to explore the changing core-periphery dynamics between Western and Eastern Europe, through a case study comparison of shipbuilding networks in Norway and Poland. We approach the countries' respective status in these networks as indicators of their relative core–periphery roles/positions within the European production system. While investigating the developments in production and staffing strategies, we describe how the shipbuilding sectors in the two countries in focus have come to interact over time, and analyze how their relative positionality has developed since 1990s, also taking into account the role of mobile labour and the impact of labour mobility on industrial relations and social dialogue systems in each country.

• Wagner, Ines (2021). (Un)making European labour markets: the case of shipbuilding. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Wagner, Ines (2021). : Retrenchment, Disruption and Re-organisation: The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on an Internationalised Sector. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Wagner, Ines (2021). SHipping Off Labour and the Covid 19 pndemic. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Wagner, Ines (2021). Retrenchment, Disruption and Re-organisation: double mobility in the EU Shipbuilding industry. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Wagner, Ines (2021). : Retrenchment, Disruption and Re-organisation: The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on an Internationalised Sector. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Wagner, Ines (2021). Shipping Off Labour: EU Shipbuilding as Globalized Workplaces. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv

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