Introduction to Work and Employment Relations in Southern Europe

This chapter serves as an introduction to the book and outlines the background, context and nature of industrial relations and forms of de-regulation related to recent economic developments. The chapter outlines key aspects of the debates related to the nature of Southern European industrial relations in general but focusing on Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain as the case studies. The chapter concentrates on the way that the states and public policy in such contexts have developed around competing political agendas and imperatives. The argument outlines how de-regulation has occurred, as well as how there have been responses to it, and alternative forms of politics and policies have been developed. It points to the way that broader politics and a set of initiatives regarding worker rights and collective processes have re-emerged, although it reiterates the existence of the problem with how marketization and neoliberalism continue to frame the overall politics and language of re-regulation.