Collective Exit Strategies: New Ideas in Transnational Labour Law

Abstract: The metaphor ‘exit strategy’ is often used in current European discussions, in connection with the impact of the economic and financial crisis. This chapter adapts the same metaphor to the role of collective actors. An accentuated mobility of companies and labour generates new transnational collective interests and challenges traditional ideas in labour law. Hierarchies of sources are frequently dismantled and denationalization takes place in regimes of standard setting. Transnational juridification of new social spheres occurs in a very open and unstructured way. Solidarity addresses issues of differentiation, rather than integration, following the needs of the most vulnerable ones, badly hit by the crisis. In this scenario, labour law is searching new answers to questions of legitimacy and power. Thus, theories of democratic representation need to be reset, facing the spreading of new transnational collective actors.