Greek and Irish trade unions responses to youth unemployment

This paper sets to investigate the responses of the Greek and Irish social actors (trade unions, employers’ organizations, public agencies) to the youth unemployment which has severely risen in both countries after the outbreak of the economic crisis (OECD, 2009). The rationale behind the comparative perspective stems from our intention to investigate how the institutional structures and the industrial relations systems of two different European countries affect the formation of their social partners’ responses to the economic crisis and to youth unemployment (Gallie and Paugam, 2000) (Katrougalos, 1996). So far the academic literature has been engaged with the interaction between the structures of interest representation and the political economy characteristics of Greece and Ireland in relation to the communication of specific discourses. But, the gap in this literature concerns the absence of an ideological analysis of the discourses of the social actors in order to grasp not only the typical institutionalized relations between them but also the convergence and divergence of their ideological stances. In that respect this paper examines whether and if so how the different national institutional structures differentiate the responses of the social partners and the ideological underpinnings of those discourses.