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French multinational companies, new state regulations and changes in the employment relationship during the crisis

On the basis of a survey conducted in three French multinational corporations in the automobile industry that have set up production facilities in central and eastern Europe, this article examines some of the major changes in the employment relationship that have taken place in the rather specific economic context of the second half of the decade after 2000. Two main propositions are put forward and discussed: the first relates to the rise of a ‘management-led social dialogue’ as the outcome of an increasingly close meshing of corporate industrial strategies, human resource policies and the management of industrial relations at the local level; the second relates to the emergence of a ‘Porterian state’ playing a role of, on the one hand, mediator in the effort to build some ‘labour-management compromises’ for coping with the crisis and, on the other hand, promoter of new forms of socio-economic regulation requiring new institutional complementarities. The analysis, developed on the basis of a comparative approach – i.e. France versus the central and eastern European countries – is rounded off by an examination of the place and role of the European Union in these changes.