Transformations from Below: Shipyards and Labour Relations in the Uljanik (Croatia) and Gdynia (Poland) Shipyards since the 1980s

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The research project aims at exploring the changes of labour relations and labour practices in the two shipyards Stocznia Gdynia (Poland) and Uljanik in Pula (Croatia) from around 1980 to European Integration of Croatia (2014). The major objective is to historicize transformation from socialism to market economies and to explain it from a perspective "from below". For that purpose we suggest that transformation began already a decade before the "Wende". The project focuses on three levels of analysis: 1) workers and other groups in the company, and their inter-relations; 2) social milieus shaped by the workplace but also by structures outside the factory gates; 3) the shipbuilding companies as social sites of transformation in practice, where diverse actors with their specific agendas interacted. The three levels of analysis will not be considered isolated but in their mutually constitutive nature. We intend to study the many paradoxes and ambiguities of transformation from a historical-anthropological and social history perspective. The emphasis is on processes of (self-) transformations of individuals, groups and social relations. By focussing on workers and their interaction with managers, we will highlight the importance of everyday practices on the shop-floor for the outcomes of transformation. Workers' strategies of accommodation, appropriation, and subversion are important elements in this social drama. Another aim is to evaluate (dis-) continuities between socialism and post-socialism in or-der to understand specific temporalities of different developments. Furthermore, the specific approach of the project allows exploring the concrete changes in the patterns of state intervention in the economy on the example of an industry that is often close to the state. Transformation did not necessarily imply a marginalization of the state, but it meant a fundamental change in the functions and self-perceptions of the state. This change can be explained only by looking into the interaction between social agents and state institutions. We contend that industrial enterprises like the two shipyards - both of which possessed important symbolical, economic and social significance for their countries - are perfect social sites for the exploration of these questions, possessing paradigmatic as well as idiosyncratic properties. They are also perfectly suitable for investigating the concrete connections between globalization in the transformation period.