Labour-market and Regional Policy

Abstract

While in previous chapters we have dealt with the economic reform programme, the role of social dialogue, and the EU’s direct influence on steel restructuring through its demands in the realm of competition policy, in this chapter we will analyse the extent to which regional and labour-market policy influenced positively or negatively the restructuring of steel. A broader view on the development of Polish labour-market policy beyond restructuring would be beyond the scope of this chapter (for details on the flexibilisation and precarisation of the labour market, see Trappmann, 2012b). We therefore focus here only on the development of the two policy fields and the labour-market instruments that could have been supportive for steelworkers, mainly during 1999–2006, the period in which active restructuring of the steel sector took place. Both policies were absent during the planned economy, and had to be formed and institutionalised as transformation went on around them, and therefore had to adapt to the often unintended consequences of that transformation. Both policies suffered from a lack of proactive intervention. While in general the EU had a perceptible influence on regional policy, on labour-market policy, it was rather poor.