The Europeanization of Wage Policy and Its Consequences for Labor Politics: The Case of Ireland
基于爱尔兰最低工资改革的过程追踪，研究欧盟干预如何改变雇主和工会的国内权力与策略，揭示跨国机会结构对劳工政治的影响。
This article investigates the transnational labor politics associated with the Europeanization of wage policy, based on process tracing of Irish minimum wage regulation reforms over the past two decades. The policy struggle in Ireland started as an employer-led domestic challenge to market-embedding regulation and was then affected by two EU interventions on wage policy: one with a de-regulatory orientation (during EU-IMF conditionality) and one with a re-regulatory one (with the approval of the EU minimum wage directive). Findings show that differences in collective action undertaken by employers and trade unions to influence wage policy at the national level can be explained by the intersection of each actor’s preferences toward market-constraining or liberalizing labor regulation and their access to supranational (EU-level) institutions and support. This analysis contributes to debates on how transnational opportunity structures can alter labor’s and employers’ local power resources and strategies.