Occupying and Organising ‘Spaces of Exception’

Mobile Transport Workers in the European Union

While all European workers are suscetible to ‘social dumping’, mobile transport workers are especially at risk (e.g. flight and cabin crew in the civil aviation industry and officers and ratings in the maritime industry). Mobile elements of capital, such as airlines and shipping companies, can operate in areas of less(er) regulation, spaces of exception, by removing specific work spaces, contexts or categories of people from the protection they would normally expect to enjoy within sovereign States. Thus, while the practice of registering ships with another State has been commonplace for many years (i.e. registering with a ‘flag of convenience’ in order to enjoy tax and other benefits, most notably the possibility to employ a ‘crew of convenience’ from a third/developing country), this trend has accelerated within Europe in recent years as a recent mapping of ferry services in the Mediterranean has clearly demonstrated (Thomas and Turnbull, 2013). In civil aviation, the creation of a single European market has enabled Ryanair, the dominant low fares airline (LFA), to employ workers of different European nationalities on Irish contracts in any one of its fifty plus bases located across the EU, thereby minimising social costs and creating an extremely precarious workforce (the majority of staff are employed by agencies rather than directly by Ryanair) (Harvey and Turnbull, 2012). Although the closest statement to a law in industrial relations is that the collective bargaining system follows the market, trade unions have found it extremely difficult to organise workers who occupy these spaces of exception, especially in the context of rulings by the European Court of Justice (most notably the Viking case). This presentation will consider the creation of areas of lesser regulation, the working lives of those who occupy these spaces, and attempts by national and international trade unions to organise these spaces, places and people.

Organised by the Work, Society and Governance research cluster as part of the Whitaker Institute Seminar Series for 2013.

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