Globalizing Employment Relations and Crisis: Multinational Companies and Central and Eastern European Transitions and Transfers

Abstract

The 1990s witnessed the conjuncture of two major economic events: the financialization of global capitalism and the entry of this new, highly mobile capitalism into the Central and Eastern Europe command economies. Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) experienced an unprecedented rapid explosion of inward foreign direct investment (FDI), whose associated risks were lowered significantly by the 2004 and 2007 European Union (EU) accessions of first eight and then two more of the former communist states. Hundreds and then thousands of multinational corporations thus invested in the region either to take advantages of its highly skilled but low-cost labour supply or to position themselves to take advantage of opportunities (many created by massive privatizations) to access rapidly growing local markets.