From the Cradle of ‘Solidarity’ to the Land of Cheap Labour and the Home of Precarious. Strategic Discourse on Labour Arrangements in Post‐socialist Poland

Abstract

AbstractThe labour market in Poland is characterized by low wages, long working hours, the largest share of fixed‐term contacts among EU countries, and a low share of unemployed entitled to very low benefits.In a country being the cradle of the Solidarność labour movement, union density is currently distinctively low and the position of labour unions weak, particularly in the private sector. The massive post‐accession migration can be partially explained by dissatisfaction with labour arrangements constructed throughout the socio‐economic transformation into capitalism.The article tracks the main features of strategic discourse surrounding labour market reforms in Poland after 1989. The analysis of documents published by subsequent Polish Governments allowed for reconstruction of the elements of discursive processes that paved the way for radical liberalization of the labour arrangements. The review of strategic documents was organized around three questions: the rationale and the construction of policy agenda, its normative and axiological fundaments and the discursive tools forcing consent around proposed measures.The consistency of beliefs in the proposed solutions disregarding changing internal (measurable outcomes of the policies) and external (growing criticism of neo‐liberalism in the aftermath of the global financial crisis) circumstances fit the criteria of ‘master’ discourse, as defined by Vivian A. Schmidt. We argue that these cognitive and normative aspects of Polish discourse mirrored, to a large extent, the processes occurring in the UK under Thatcher's rule as reconstructed by Schmidt.