The
election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party so shortly after the
defeat in the general elections of May 2015 came for many as a surprise. The
electoral campaign had not been too far to the left, as Blairites tried to
claim immediately after the elections. Party members' and supporters' verdict was
that it had not been left and anti-austerity enough. In this post, I will
reflect on the chances of Jeremy Corbyn and his Shadow Chancellor John
McDonnell of bringing about significant change in Britain.
The social failures of the eastward enlargement of the European Union
can hardly be ignored anymore. Instead of becoming part of welfare capitalism, Central
and Eastern European workers’ hopes in a better life were betrayed and social rights
have been undermined. In turn, workers, left without industrial and political channels
to voice their social concerns, have reacted by leaving their countries en masse (Meardi 2012). Nevertheless,
several industrial relations scholars predicted that the balance of class power
would soon shift again in workers’ favour, due to the labour shortages in
sending countries caused by “workers voting with their feet” (ibid.). Some
scholars even saw in the massif exit of CEE workers an opportunity for CEE
unions to win higher wages (Kaminska and Kahancová,
2011). By focusing on the distributional aspect of wage policies adopted by
two competing Romanian trade unions in the healthcare sector, a recent study by
Sabina Stan and Roland Erne
published by the European
Journal of Industrial Relations challenges the assumption of a virtuous
link between migration, labour shortages and collective wage increases.
