Emerging Systems of Employment Relations in Central Eastern European Countries

With relatively young industrial relations structures and high dependence on foreign direct investment, Central Eastern Europe has emerged as a battlefield for change in European industrial relations, whether through multinational companies’ (MNCs) ‘coercive comparisons’ and ‘best practice’ dissemination, or through political reforms. It constitutes a unique test bed for the study of the development of industrial relations in industrialized economies that have ‘bypassed’ the crucial period in the development of Western European industrial relations (the 1940s–1970s) or US industrial relations (the 1930s).