Trade unions and the amendment of the labour code in Romania
Abstract Employment relations, as well as issues of social and labour-market reforms or the social dialogue, have been extensively treated by various researches interested in the East and Central European region. In this context, much attention has been paid to the changing roles of trade unions, the problem of re-making ancient structures perverted by their more or less collaboration with the Communist parties from the region and the emergence of new structures in search for legitimisation, the difficulties of trade unionism in articulating and representing interests, an aspect that is directly related to their organisational problems, the relations with the governmental authorities and with the employers' organisations in the tripartite framework, as well as the nature of the tripartism in reuniting social partners and state. This article focuses on national organised labour in Romania in relation to the 2005 Labour Code amendment. This specific level of national interest representation is privileged in order to highlight the peculiarities of recognised representative labour organisations in the post-Communist period. The main assumption is that trade unions are facing a particular policy interest with a shift from fragmentation and unstable co-operation to a ‘common position’. Thus this contribution assesses the determinants defining labour's collaboration while shedding light on state – trade union relations.
International actors and trade unions during postsocialism and after: the case of Romania
Purpose 
 
 
 
 
The purpose of this paper is to explain why, in spite having a relatively powerful labour movement at the start of the economic transformation, Romania ended up with a highly deregulated system of industrial relations in the aftermath of the global economic crisis of 2009 and with trade unions which seem incapable to defend their interests. 
 
 
 
 
Design/methodology/approach 
 
 
 
 
The authors trace the changing role that Romanian trade unions had in national policy making and show that the beginning of 2000s represents a critical point for the power loss sustained by organised labour. 
 
 
 
 
Findings 
 
 
 
 
The authors argue that a key element for explaining labour’s decline is the growing pressure exercised by various international organisations for the adoption of deregulatory labour market reforms. While during the 1990s this pressure was circumvented by successive governments which peddled back and forth between union wage pressure and fiscal austerity measures, beginning with 2000s, EU accession conditionalities coupled with IMF and World Bank policy recommendations enabled the international deregulation agenda to be implemented without much opposition. 
 
 
 
 
Originality/value 
 
 
 
 
The paper brings new evidence on the impact of international actors on the Romanian collective bargaining and labour market institutions.
Did the metamorphosis from Export Processing Zones to Special Economic Zones improve the efficiency of trade enclaves in India?
In this paper, the efficiency of seven conventional Special Economic Zones in India is analyzed, by adopting a stochastic production frontier technique, for the period between 1986–1987 and 2007–2008.Results indicate that although the efficiency scores of these enclaves have improved over the years, specifically with the introduction of the SEZ policy (2000–2001), it is far below the threshold level as identified in the literature. Besides, one can also observe a discrepancy emerging between better export earning zones and efficient zones. On the determinants side, policy intervention and large geographical area, accompanied by clustering of units, are found to have impacted the efficiency scores of these enclaves positively.