Meat-up Ffire. Fairness, freedom and industrial relations across Europe: up and down the meat value chain

Released under the Creative Commons License Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) in the peer reviewed series Diritto del lavoro nei sistemi giuridici nazionali, integrati e transnazionali

This volume gathers the results of the research carried out as part of Meat-up Ffire, a project financed by the European Commission (G.A. 2018/0014) with the aim of investigating the contribution of industrial relations structures, including social dialogue, in an important sector of the EU economy, such as the meat industry. The sector is undergoing significant changes, mainly due to the increasing level of global competition, the effects of automation, the emergence of new consumption patterns, and a renewed commitment to environmental sustainability and animal welfare. Besides, there is a widespread concern for the poor working conditions and wages, especially throughout the subcontracting chain. This is particularly evident in the pork business, that the project puts under analysis. The first part of the book takes a European approach and is dedicated to the pork value chain in Europe. The second part analyses the chain’s structural characteristics and its industrial relations in the project’s partner countries: Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Italy and Poland. The third part returns to a European dimension in order to investigate industrial relations in the pork value chain across Europe and provide some final recommendations for improving the governance of this chain by trade unions.