Dislocation Policies in Western Europe: Past, Present, and Future

Within the past two decades, the “brutal American management methods,†which caused a national upheaval against Firestone in the 1970s, have become common practice in Swiss and other European corporations. These practices include global sourcing, dislocation of work to Third World countries, and workforce reductions by rationalization. In the middle of this general trend, Volkswagen in Germany set a countermodel: by introducing the four-day workweek, it redistributed work in the existing workforce, increased the sense of solidarity, and avoided layoffs. Volkswagen's actions added new fire to the heated European debate on how to deal with unemployment: by further deregulation or by work-time reduction and redistribution of work? In Europe, quite in contrast to the United States, an ongoing tension exists between modernization and the traditional culture, a tension manifest in a deep schism within the population.