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Global Production Networks and Labour: Trade Unions in the Automotive Industry of Czechia and Slovakia
Martišková, Monika ; Pavlínek, Petr (advisor) ; Galgoczi, Béla (referee) ; Myant, Martin (referee)
This doctoral thesis focuses on the role of labour in global production networks using the example of the automotive industry in Czechia and Slovakia. Drawing on the agent-based approach, I combine the conceptual framework of global production networks with the trade unions' power resources concept to understand the mechanisms which allow labour to improve working conditions within the integrated periphery of global automotive industry production networks. I base my evidence on qualitative interviews with trade unions' representatives operating at final assembly firms and suppliers, and I complement them with other respondents, such as company managers, sector level and regional level labour union representatives. I conclude that trade unions in the integrated periphery are structurally weak, which poses challenges for future industry development in terms of employment impacts related to decarbonization strategies and the ongoing digitalization of production. The doctoral thesis is composed of four publications where I study trade union strategies and responses related to upcoming changes in the automotive industry. KEY WORDS Automotive industry, trade unions, labour, global production networks, Czechia, Slovakia
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The Conflicts over the Czechoslovak Ownership Transformation in the 1990's
Rameš, Václav ; Kopeček, Michal (advisor) ; Suk, Jiří (referee) ; Myant, Martin (referee)
The presented dissertation focuses on the large-scale privatization in Czechoslovakia in the early 1990's, on how it was pushed through and why. It analyses the political conflicts over its eventual form and means of realization, and reconstructs the contemporary expectations concerning the future development. It also pays attention to the roots of the 1990's conflicts in the relevant economic disputes of the previous decades. The dissertation identifies an establishment of a new type of liberal political language as a key moment for the implementation of a large-scale privatization. For the new political language, which can be labelled as "market without adjectives" (or "attributes"), the privatization was a flagship policy and it encompassed its key ideas. The language of market without adjectives was defined in a strong opposition to the principles of the so-called "economic democracy", which had been popular among the members of the Czechoslovak dissent, the numerous supporters of workers' self- governing bodies and some economic experts. The attempts to implement the principles of market without adjectives occurred during several political conflicts the dissertation tries to analyse. The delimitation of space for democratic decision making was one of them, with the liberal economists arguing...
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