Economic-union Books

Perhaps the title is written to attract future historians? The text covers various key aspects of the European economy circa 2000-1. One is how transparent should the national banks be, when giving forecasts of economic performance, or when explaining their actions. Another is the different employment strategies used by different countries. How effective are these? Especially now that some subsidies are forbidden, as these might amount to a subsidising of companies that then compete against other countries' companies who lack such subsidies.

The text shows that Europe still has a long ways to go on regional integration. Even leaving aside the new members of the EU, which the book really does not discuss.

Climate Change Policy is timely with it becoming much more a part of the popular culture lexicon these days in the mainstream media and the international discussion on the impending crisis. I purchased the essay collection to gain more insight and to use the collection for peer-review research article footnotes. Nonetheless, I recommend the purchase for any person seeking to gain understanding on the need for national and international action on climate change policy.

Phil Harris has assembled a team of academics and professionals in the areas of international and European management, with a focus on marketing issues. The book starts with a short presentation of the EU : on the institutional side (the history of its integration, its political actors, etc) and on the management side (doing business in Europe, issues in European marketing and management). Then the core of the book is its great collection of case studies in European management, covering more than just European marketing. The case studies are very varied in themes, in sectors and as far as the firm's view point is concerned (foreign firm breaking into Europe, European firm entering a foreign European market). Each case is about 10 page long and comes with questions at the end. There is also a short instructor's manual which is very useful giving answers to the questions and presenting a table listing the case studies by themes covered. The only minus of this book is that it is getting old (1994). At some stage, Phil Harris was planning to publish a new edition. What happened to this great idea ?

This is a very good basic guide on EU employment issues. it lists rules for a range of 24 countries throughout europe current EU members through to ex eastern bloc countires.

The info is basic, holidays time off etc and also lists key points of interest.

The book is some what dated - written in the early 1990's - and does miss out some info but it is quicker than searching the internet and covers most of the common issues. If you have people based in other countries then this is a good handy guide to start with.

Verdun aims to discover why, given that EMU greatly reduced national sovereignty, there was so little public discussion of its costs and benefits. As she noted of EMU, "This transfer of national sovereignty can arguably be considered to be one of the most far-reaching formal transfers of sovereignty to the European level that the European Community (EC) members have witnessed to date." She studied the ways that central bankers, Ministries of Finance, employers' organisations and trade union leaderships in Britain, France and Germany all perceived EMU. The bankers, Ministries and employers' organisations agreed that EMU would strengthen the market mechanism in Europe. They also agreed that it would assist their efforts to create a single European state. As Verdun observed, "EMU will eventually necessitate more integration of economic, fiscal, social and labour policies." Some quarters of the TUC hoped that associating themselves with the EU's decision-making process would increase their power. But the more the TUC claimed to set the EU agenda on social and employment issues, the more it linked itself to the EU's disastrous impact on Britain's industry and welfare. Some trade union leaders thought that the EU would restore the influence over economic policy-making that they had lost at national level. But cosying up to the employer, whether European or British, weakens our unions, not strengthens us. Some thought that possible gains from the Social Charter would justify the certain losses from labour market flexibility. But who talks about the Social Charter today? Did it save any of the 96,000 manufacturing jobs destroyed in Britain last year? So why was there so little public discussion of EMU's costs and benefits? Verdun does not finally explain, but one suspects that it was because its benefits would accrue only to the ruling classes of Britain, France and Germany, while the public, the vast majority of us who have to work for a living, would suffer all the costs.

i am reading this book for a class on the european union and integration of europe. each of us students has a member state and this book helped greatly introducing me to the states and their stances on enlargement, economics and foreing relations. i highly recomind this book to any student studying the european union.

Steve McGiffen's book gives a clear yet critical introduction to the origins, development and current direction of the EU. He is a long-time critic of the EU who works for the United Left Group in the European Parliament.
His brief, well-organised chapters cover the EU's treaties, institutions, enlargement, Common Foreign and Security Policy, Justice and Home Affairs, the euro, the internal market, external economic relations, employment, social policy, the environment, the Common Agricultural and Fisheries Policies, transport, and regional and industrial policy. He includes an extremely useful and up-to-date survey of information available in books, articles and websites.
McGiffen shows that the EU is capitalist through and through, created by employers for employers, designed to leach power away from workers. The EU is not about democratic nations cooperating for peace, but about employers railroading Europe's nations into a single undemocratic `superpower' (Blair's word).
Most importantly, he shows how the euro gives vast unaccountable powers to the European Central Bank, ending all democratic control over economic policy, and implementing an extreme monetarism. He shows how the euro strengthens capital's power to destroy European nations' welfare states, achieved by workers' struggles over the centuries. He cites the economist Melvyn Krauss: "Behind the euro's falling exchange rate is a life-and-death struggle between it and Europe's welfare state. Either the euro subverts the welfare state, or Europe's welfare state subverts the euro."
So the welfare state is at stake in the fight against the euro, but not only the welfare state. EU monetarism installs deflation as a permanent policy, cutting down jobs and industries across Europe: the EU mortally threatens manufacturing industry, so vital for our working class's very existence as a creative, world-making force. Without industry, there can be no independent, sovereign Britain.
So how do we stop the EU and the euro from destroying Britain? Not by rallying the forces of `the left'. The idea of workers' nationalism alone has the huge potential of uniting all our class in the fight to save Britain. Renouncing the nation only weakens the class. As Ho Chi Minh always said, real internationalism begins at home.

This extremely useful book concisely surveys the role that Euro-scepticism has played in recent British politics, focusing on the debates and decisions within the Conservative and Labour parties.

His Chapter 1 defines and explains Euroscepticism. Chapter 2 looks at the opposition to the idea of European union that developed between 1945 and 1969. Chapter 3 studies the years of Britain's entry into the EEC, 1970 to 1974. Chapter 4 investigates the 1975 referendum on Britain's continued membership of the European Community. Chapter 5 views how attitudes to the European Community changed between 1979 and 1990. Chapter 6 describes the struggle against Political Union from 1990 to 1993. Chapter 7 brings us up to date with the struggle against Monetary Union since 1992, and Chapter 8 outlines the patterns and trends in Euroscepticism. Each chapter presents the situation, analyses the opponents, explores the arguments, describes the arena in which the politics were played out, and sums up the period.

Forster looks at the recent arguments about Economic and Monetary Union, both political and economic, and he judges that ceding control to a monetarist, deflationary European Central Bank would indeed both end our sovereignty and damage our economy. He shows that the ECB has no mandate to take jobs or growth into account, unlike the USA's central bank, the Fed, but that it focuses solely on inflation, just as Thatcher did. He notes that there is no flexibility in the Maastricht Treaty that set up the ECB, and that there is no possibility of rewriting it. He points to the growing democratisation of the debate's arena, particularly since 1975, which saw the first-ever ratification referendum, to 1997's hard-won promises of our first-ever decision-making referendum.

He concludes that in the euro "national governments' capacity to launch independent policies of wealth creation, employment generation and welfare improvement would be removed." He judiciously sums up, "much as Britain in Europe sought to portray its opponents as such, the alliance against the euro was not extremist."

Bruce puts the struggles in common terms. So many of this type are academic in nature.

Keep looking for the "alternatives", Mr. Nissen, as many of these classic labor situations (factories etc.) are gone for good. What can people do to survive, hopefully more healthfully, in America's post-industrial society? New models that take the ecology totally into account are equally important. Keep up the good work........

My mother worked in the garment industry in PA her entire life and this book tells me the story of how that happened. My mom was a staunch supporter of the ILGWU and now I know why. I highly recommend this book to anyone who had family that worked in the early days of unionization. It's a wonderful depiction of some very courageous women and men.