The moral discourses of “post-crisis” neoliberal labour code reform: A case study from Lithuania Arunas Juska, East Carolina University, and Charles Woolfson, Linköping University

       

 

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Forum for Asian Studies workshop: Precarious work in Asia in comparative perspective Kungstenen, Aula Magna, Stockholm University, 27 November 2015, 10.00-15.00

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The  moral  discourses  of  “post-­‐crisis”  neoliberal  labor  code  reform:  

A  case  study  from  Lithuania    

Arunas  Juska  and  Charles  Woolfson    1. Introduction  

 On  10  September  2015,  over  a  thousand  trade  unionists  marched  in  orderly  procession  down  the  main  thoroughfare  in  the  center  of  Vilnius,  capital  of  Lithuania.  At  a  time  when  demonstrations  by  tens  of  thousands  of  trade  unions  are  an  almost  daily  sight  in  the  capitals  of  major  European  cities,  this  event  seemed  unremarkable  at  first  glance.  Yet  a  closer  look  reveals  a  number  of  noteworthy  aspects.  Demonstrations  by  trade  unionists  are  rare  events  in  this  small  East  European  country  of  close  to  three  million  inhabitants,  in  which  trade  union  density  amounts  to  less  than  ten  percent  of  the  workforce.  This  was  the  first  time  that  the  leading  trade  union  confederations  (of  which  there  are  three  in  Lithuania)  had  led  a  united  protest  on  the  streets,  since  an  anti-­‐austerity  demonstration  in  2009  had  ended  in  disorder  and  riot,  with  police  using  rubber  bullets  and  tear  gas  to  quell  the  demonstrators.  On  this  occasion  also,  riot  police  were  much  in  evidence,  some  with  gun  holsters  strapped  on  leg  Wild  West  style,  but  this  alone  could  not  suppress  the  enthusiastic  atmosphere  of  the  march.  To  a  naïve  observer  a  bewildering  array  of  “carnivalesque”  symbolism  was  on  display.  One  brief  image  captures  the  flavor  of  this  event.  A  white  eight-­‐door  ‘stretch-­‐limo’,  more  normally  used  to  ferry  newly-­‐wedded  couples  to  and  from  church,  or  to  whisk  the  play-­‐children  of  the  Vilnius  nouveau  riche  between  parties,  formed  the  center  piece  of  the  parade.  Its  windows  were  adorned  with  the  banner  “Employer  –  the  most  important  person”  while  hubcaps  on  its  wheels  sported  the  message  “New  Labor  Code”.  This  was,  if  nothing  else,  a  symbolic  representation  of  power,  class  and  subordination.      

2. Labor  and  the  political  economy  of  “post-­‐crisis”    

As  the  above  brief  cameo  suggests,  this  article  is  about  the  imposition  of  a  new  and  contested  labor  code  in  Lithuania.  While  a  seemingly  prosaic  legislative  reform  in  the  context  of  a  minor  peripheral  European  Union  member  state,  it  nevertheless  exemplifies  a  much  wider  process  of  the  global  neoliberal  restructuring  of  labor  rights  in  the  contemporary  era,  in  which  a  growing  “precariousness”  is  common  in  such  disparate  geographical  contexts  as  post-­‐communist  Eastern  Europe,  South  Africa,  or  South  Korea  (Schierup,  2016;  Shin,  2013).    Lithuania  is  of  particular  interest,  as  one  of  the  European  Union  member  state  countries  which  experienced  the  sharpest  falls,  globally  speaking,  in  living  standards  and  GDP  during  economic  and  financial  crisis  of  2008.  What  followed  was  a  period  of  severe  austerity  with  widespread  erosion  of  wages  and  working  conditions.    Consider  the  impact  that  the  crisis  had  on  employees.  A  representative  survey  conducted  in  2011  reported  that  in  2008-­‐2011  wages  for  59%  of  respondents  were  cut,  for  36%  of  employees  guarantees  of  retaining  employment  were  reduced,  20%  

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experienced  cuts  in  work  hours;  40%  of  respondents  worked  more  than  once  a  month  during  weekends,  and  37%  worked  unplanned  overtime  (Moteris.lt,  2012).  Therefore,  it  was  not  unusual  read  about  prevalence  of  “the  law  of  jungle”  (as  the  leader  of  Lithuania’s  Education  Workers  union  had  put  it  (Dranseinkaitė,  2015),  prevailing  in  labor  relationships  in  Lithuania.  This  also  explains  why  workers  in  Lithuania,  according  to  a  survey  conducted  by  a  leading  recruitment  service  provider  in  the  Baltics,  found  given  the  choice,  only  2.9%  of  workers  would  choose  a  Lithuanian  as  their  boss,  while  ten  times  more  would  choose  a  boss  foreigner  (from  core  EU  countries).  Westerners,  according  to  the  respondents,  are  more  respectful  of  their  employees  (20.8%),  and  jobs  at  Western  firms  are  more  stable,  and  style  of  management  is  more  measured  and  less  abusive  (Lzinios.lt,  2015).      The  prevalence  of  authoritarianism  in  labor  relations  goes  back  to  Soviet  times  when  party  bosses  ruled  industrial  enterprises.  Barely  reconfigured,  this  authoritarian  style  of  management  was  transferred  to  the  beginnings  of  Lithuanian  business  culture  forged  in  the  years  of  “the  wild  capitalism”  of  the  early  and  mid-­‐1990s,  when  private  enterprise  emerged  in  a  process  of  chaotic,  pervasively  criminalized  and  violent  privatization  of  state  property.  Inevitably,  violence  in  intra-­‐business  relationships  and  the  “survival  of  the  fittest”  ethos  also  shaped  labor  practices  producing  rigidly  authoritarian  labor  relations  characterized  by  humiliating  disempowerment  of  employees.  It  seems  that  almost  instinctually  these  worst  aspects  of  indigenous  Lithuanian  business  culture  once  again  became  prominent  under  the  existential  threat  of  survival  that  the  deep  economic  crisis  of  2008-­‐2009  presented.      The  crisis  also  saw  migratory  exit  of  the  labor  force  on  a  scale  hitherto  unseen,  amounting  to  some  10-­‐12%,  and  continuing  albeit  at  a  lesser  intensity  in  the  years  which  have  followed.  Economic  factors  have  been  a  major  factor  in  this  migration,  given  the  continuing  wage  disparity  between  newer  and  older  EU  member  states.  However,  overall  dissatisfaction  with  the  quality  of  work  relations,  and  the  perception  of  a  hostile  and  aggressive  employer  class  which  fails  to  treat  the  workforce  with  respect  and  dignity,  is  as  suggested  above,  a  salient  factor  here.  Viewed  in  the  context  of  previous  observations  about  the  quality  of  labor  relations  in  Lithuania,  migration  can  be  seen  as  a  form  of  individualized  ‘silent’  protest.  It  is  this  very  silent  “exit”  which  has  hitherto  failed  to  produce  sustained  contestation  of  a  more  concerted  and  organized  nature  against  oppressive  labor  conditions,  until  that  is  the  imposition  of  the  new  labor  code  was  proposed  in  the  current  period  beginning  to  generate  mass  unrest  among  the  remaining  workforce.  Given  that  labor  was  already  comprehensively  disempowered  in  all  practical  senses,  why  was  it  seen  as  necessary  by  the  forces  of  capital  and  their  political  representatives  to  dismantle  the  existing  legal  framework  of  industrial  relations  by  introducing  a  comprehensive  new  labor  code  in  2015  and  why  now,  given  that  it  is  almost  half  a  decade  since  the  economic  crisis?    During  the  crisis  and  under  austerity  policies  that  followed,  the  main  factors  in  increasing  competitiveness  of  the  Lithuanian  economy  were  securing  a  decrease  in  labor  costs,  increasing  the  effectiveness  of  management  in  manufacturing  and  service  provision,  and  ensuring  optimization  in  materials  provisions.  In  the  four  years  following  the  peak  of  the  financial  crisis,  the  effectiveness  of  these  measures  in  stimulating  the  economy  began  to  diminish,  while  wages  started  to  increase  rapidly  outpacing  the  growth  of  productivity,  in  a  longer-­‐term  an  unsustainable  trajectory.    Wages  began  to  

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increase  primarily  because  of  a  combination  of  (a)  labor  shortages  (structural  unemployment)  caused  by  large-­‐scale  emigration  and  (b)  increases  in  minimum  wage.  In  the  first  quarter  of  2013  wages  increased  by  4.4%  in  comparison  with  first  quarter  of  2012,  in  private  sector  by  5.4%,  in  public  by  3.2%.  Half  of  an  increase  was  accounted  by  an  increase  in  minimum  wage  up  to  1,000  Lt  (289  euros)  on  January  2013  (Tauraitė,  2013).  At  the  same  time,  2013  was  also  the  first  year  since  the  crisis  when  the  rate  of  growth  in  wages  began  to  outpace  the  rate  of  growth  in  productivity  (Mačiulis,  2015).  By  the  fourth  quarter  of  2013,  the  wage  growth  was  6.2%  in  private  and  2.8%  in  public  sectors.  The  real  increase  in  wages  (taking  account  of  inflation  was  4.2%).  In  comparison,  productivity  was  growing  at  a  rate  of  1.4%  in  the  same  period  of  time,  while  unemployment  remained  very  high  11.4%.  Forecasts  suggested  that  in  2014  wages  would  grow  by  5.5%,  while  in  2015  by  7.0%  (Nausėda,  2014),  while  economic  growth  rates  of  GDP  continued  to  be  revised  downward  from  3.5%  to  2.8%  and  to  1.8%  (in  September  2015),  to  the  level  that  was  “even  lower  than  was  forecasted  by  the  most  pessimistic  <experts>”  just  a  year  ago  (Nausėda,  2015).      Most  troubling  for  longer-­‐term  economic  growth,  was  lagging  of  investment  in  updating  and  innovation  in  production  technologies  that  by  2013  were  9.5%  lower  than  in  2012.  In  2012,  in  terms  of  proportion  between  GDP  and  “material  investments”  in  upgrading  production  technologies,  Lithuania  was  in  the  last  place  among  Central  and  East  European  countries.  Economists  had  termed  this  an  “investment  abstinence”  syndrome  indicating  an  extensive  and,  in  the  longer  run,  unsustainable  trajectory  of  growth  for  the  national  economy.  The  current  conjuncture  therefore,  presents  significant  new  challenges  which  mandated  further  assaults  on  labor.  The  new  “post  crisis”  phase  requires,  above  all,  a  further  significant  recalibration  of  the  existing  framework  of  labor-­‐capital  relations  in  favor  of  the  later  -­‐  a  rewriting  of  the  social  contract  -­‐  in  the  search  for  new  stratagems  of  profitability.  This  is  the  political  and  economic  context  within  which  proposals  for  a  new  labor  code  in  Lithuania  were  inaugurated,  generating  the  ensuing  debates  and  social  conflicts  which  are  analyzed  here.      For  purposes  of  this  study  “post-­‐crisis”  is  defined  as  a  new  period  characterized  by  rapidly  declining  economic  efficiency,  competitiveness,  and  profitability.  For  analytical  purposes,  it  is  suggested  that  year  2013  marks  the  beginning  of  “post-­‐crisis”  period.  This  was  the  first  year  since  imposition  of  austerity  policies  that  the  rate  of  growth  in  wages  began  to  outpace  the  rate  of  growth  in  productivity,  signifying  the  objective  limits  of  an  extensive  model  of  economic  recovery  and  future  development  based  on  manufacturing  and  export  of  low-­‐wage,  low  value-­‐added  commodities.  Politically,  the  beginning  of  “post-­‐crisis”  period  is  associated  with  the  start  of  preparations  of  deliberations  over  the  new  labor  code,  which  commenced  in  December  2014,  when  the  government  presented  its  outline  of  the  new  labor  legislation.  The  new  labor  code  proposals  were  inaugurated  therefore  as  a  response  to  the  declining  effectiveness  of  austerity-­‐based  economic  policies,  under  conditions  of  rapidly  increasing  wages,  and  declining  productivity  and  economic  growth.          

3. Some  theoretical  considerations    

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Before  beginning  detailed  analysis,  it  is  important  to  indicate  the  limitations  of  what  is  being  attempted  in  this  study.  The  article  is  not  a  comprehensive  review  of  Lithuanian  mass  media  coverage  of  debates  concerning  the  new  labor  code  per  se.  Nor  is  it  an  attempt  to  hypothesize  the  impacts  of  mass  media  on  wider  societal  consciousness.  It  has  a  more  limited  aim  to  map  and  describe  the  parameters  of  an  unfolding  dialogical  moral  politics  as  reflected  in  mediated  “strategic  discourses”,  and  to  weigh  the  shifting  balance  of  the  “moral”  arguments  that  were  mobilized  within  competing  discourses.  The  empirical  basis  for  the  analysis  is  described  in  the  following  section  in  terms  of  the  selection  and  coverage  of  these  discourses,  themes,  keywords  and  sources.  Each  strategic  discourse,  in  turn,  is  underpinned  by  a  sub-­‐text  of  “embedded  justifications”  that  attempt  to  legitimize  particular  claims,  which  are  described  in  more  detail  in  the  analytical  section  of  the  paper.      The  current  analysis  is  tentatively  located  on  the  terrain  of  what  is  referred  to  as  “critical  (political)  discourse  analysis”.  While  there  is  an  emerging  literature  on  the  analysis  of  the  global  financial  crisis  and  its  aftermath  of  austerity  employing  discourse  analysis  (Fairclough  &  Fairclough,  2012;  Fairclough  2015;  Kelsey,  Mueller,  Whittle,  &  Khosravinik,  2015),  the  exploration  of  any  subsequent  phase  of  neoliberal  reconfiguration  has  so  far  been  absent.  In  examining  “post-­‐crisis”,  an  attempt  is  made  here  to  go  beyond  the  “‘moral  tales’  of  austerity  that  have  occurred  in  political  rhetoric”  in  the  previous  phase  of  neoliberal  crisis  (Kelsey  et  al.,  2015,  p.  2)  in  order  to  explore  the  formation  of  new  moral  discourses  in  a  new  context  of  “post-­‐crisis”.        Theoretically  the  paper  is  positioned  as  an  applied,  albeit  embryonic  Marxist  socio-­‐linguistics  to  embrace  questions  of  power  in  society  and  the  formation  of  ideology,  as  well  as  the  question  of  absent  or  emergent  counter-­‐narratives  at  a  specific  historical  conjuncture.  As  such,  the  analysis  rejects  ahistorical,  post-­‐modern,  structuralist  and  individualist  approaches  to  discourse  analysis.  Instead,  the  understanding  of  the  evolution  discourses  is  positioned  by  highlighting  the  dialogical  tension  of  utterances,  each  as  representing  a  reply  to  other  utterances  in  a  specific  period  of  heightened  social  contestation,  during  which  language  is  invested  with  and  suffused  with  ideological  moment.  Thus,  strategic  discourses,  both  pro-­‐new  labor  code  and  against,  are  analyzed  to  uncover  the  unfolding  “dialogical  tension”  within  and  between  these  discourses.  An  attempt  is  made  to  assess  their  relative  discursive  efficacy,  in  which  condensed  keywords  are  embedded.  These  keywords,  in  turn,  provide  the  discursive  dynamics  of  “moral”  debates  as  sites  of  ideological  struggle.  Discursive  contest  leads  to  the  possibility  of  “openings”  in  the  hegemonic  discourse,  in  terms  of  injecting  counter-­‐arguments  and  shaping  dialogic  refusal  generated  by  real  social  actors  in  struggle.      This  paper  draws  on  Valentin  N.  Voloshinov’s  masterwork,  Marxism  and  the  Philosophy  of  Language  (1973),  first  published  in  Russian  in  the  early  post-­‐revolutionary  period.  It  extends  previous  attempts  to  apply  Voloshinov’s  method  to  specific  historical  conjunctures  (Foster  &  Woolfson,  2000;  Woolfson,  1976,  2009,  2010).    Voloshinov’s  Marxist  socio-­‐linguistics  forms  one  important,  largely  unacknowledged,  foundation  of  contemporary  critical  discourse  analysis  (But  see  Rodgers,  2004),  together  with  the  work  of  other  leading  Soviet  theorists,  including  L.  S.  Vygotsky  and  and  A.  N.  Leontiev  (Woolfson,  1977).  Voloshinov’s  work  has  since  been  productively  employed  by  Stuart  Hall,  who  described  Voloshinov  as  ‘that  very  great  Marxist  theoretician  of  language’  (Hall,  1981,  p.  235)  when  constructing  his  field-­‐defining  elaborations  of  ideology  and  

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popular  culture.  Likewise,  in  his  Marxism  and  Literature  (1977)  Raymond  Williams  acknowledged  the  seminal  importance  of  Voloshinov’s  work  which  he  noted:    

opened  the  way  to  a  new  kind  of  theory  which  had  been  necessary  for  more  than  a  century.  Much  of  his  effort  went  to  recovering  the  full  emphasis  on  language  as  activity,  as  practical  consciousness,  which  had  been  weakened  and  in  effect  denied  by  its  specialization  to  a  closed  ‘individual  consciousness’  or  ‘inner  psyche’  (Williams  1977:  35-­‐36).    

Again,  Fowler  in  an  early  work  in  the  field  of  discourse  studies  provides  a  distinctively  Voloshinovian  exposition  of  the  relation  between  language  and  ideology  arguing  that  the  ideological  role  of  language  is  central  to  constructions  of  reality:  “Anything  that  is  said  or  written  about  the  world  is  articulated  from  a  particular  ideological  position:  language  is  not  a  clear  window  but  a  refracting,  structuring  medium’  (Fowler,  1991,  p.  10)  cited  in  (Kelsey  et  al.,  2015,  p.  13).  Voloshinov  assigned  priority  to  words  as  the  product  of  lived  sociality,  embodied  in  the  linguistic  sign  and  realized  in  the  form  of  spoken  utterances  as  the  vehicle  of  ideological  social  consciousness.  As  Voloshinov  (1973:  15)  noted:    

Every  ideological  refraction  of  existence  in  the  process  of  generation,  no  matter  what  the  nature  of  its  significant  material,  is  accompanied  by  ideological  refraction  in  word  as  an  obligatory  concomitant  phenomenon.      

The  dialogic  realization  of  utterances  is  contingent  upon  the  underlying  processes  of  new  forms  of  emergent  social  forces  conditioned  by  class  relations.  However,  language  is  no  mere  mechanistic  reflection  of  the  struggle  of  base  with  superstructure.  Voloshinov  identified  not  simply  the  reflection  of  reality  in  signs  but  its  ideologized  refraction,  infusing  an  “inner  dialectical  quality”  in  word  meaning  (Voloshinov,  1973:  23).  This  dialectical  tension  creates  a  clash  of  “differently  oriented  social  interests  within  one  and  the  same  sign  community”  (Voloshinov,  1973:  41).  The  refraction  of  class  struggle  is  registered  in  what  Voloshinov  (1973:  23)  termed  the  “social  multiaccentuality”  of  the  ideological  sign,  in  which  theme  and  form  of  sign  are  inextricably  interconnected  and  ultimately  determined  by  sets  of  contested  forces:    

Indeed,  the  economic  conditions  that  inaugurate  a  new  element  of  reality  into  the  social  purview,  that  make  it  socially  meaningful  and  ‘interesting,’  are  exactly  the  same  conditions  that  create  the  forms  of  ideological  communication  (the  cognitive,  the  artistic,  the  religious  and  so  on),  which  in  turn  shape  the  forms  of  semiotic  expression  (1973:  22–3).  

 It  achieves  particular  clarity  in  dialogic  strategic  discourses  of  contestation.  Dialogic  discourse  allows  us  to  begin  to  analyse  changing  forms  of  social  consciousness,  or  in  Voloshinovian  terms,  the  substrate  and  dynamic  realm  of  “behavioural  ideology”,  emphasizing  the  connective  threads  between  the  lived  situated  experience  of  social  change  and  its  complex  signification  in  language.  As  Voloshinov  (1973:  23)  suggested:    

The  word  is  the  most  sensitive  index  of  social  changes,  and  what  is  more,  of  changes  still  in  the  process  of  growth,  still  without  definitive  shape  and  not  as  yet  accommodated  into  already  regularized  and  fully  defined  ideological  systems.  

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The  word  has  the  capacity  to  register  all  the  transitory,  delicate,  momentary  phases  of  social  change.    

But  the  indexical  potential  of  words,  in  providing  a  window  into  changing  social  consciousness,  is  also  conditioned  by  ideological  interventions  ostensibly  using  non-­‐class  terms  which  are  themselves  politically  and  socially  “motivated”  by  the  need  to  retain  and  preserve  the  current  hegemonic  order  from  contestation.  This  contestation  “from  above”  is  not  new.  Over  the  period  of  two  decades  since  the  collapse  of  the  Soviet  Union,  an  attempt  has  been  made  to  impose  non-­‐class  “shared”  assumptions  in  the  common  project  of  post-­‐communist  transition  and  nation-­‐building  on  an  ethno-­‐nationalist  basis.  This  has  been  an  acutely  “necessary”  form  of  the  state’s  ideological  intervention,  given  the  fraught  social  tensions  created  by  the  spiralling  inequalities  first  of  post-­‐communist  society,  and  more  recently  by  the  sacrifices  of  austerity  unequally  imposed  upon  the  population  (Sommers  &  Woolfson,  2014).      Faced  with  the  need  to  secure  at  least  a  minimum  of  social  cohesion,  ruling  elites  have  attempted  to  give  a  supra-­‐class  or  eternal  and  “immutable”  quality  to  word  meaning  in  language,  and  to  perceived  reality.  Above  all,  it  has  been  necessary  to  forestall  any  “backward-­‐looking”  or  yearning  for  the  securities  of  the  previous  Soviet  era,  or  the  articulation  of  rights-­‐based  social  justice  demands  and  collective  discourses  of  “fairness”  in  the  new  ardently  neoliberal  and  “hyper-­‐individualized”  society  and  economy  (Matonyte,  2006).  At  the  same  time,  while  the  new  order  has  explicitly  de-­‐legitimized  class  perspectives,  new  realities  generate  dialogical  ‘tension’  between  idealized  ‘non-­‐class’  representations  and  the  lived  experience  of  the  excluded  majority.  This  disjuncture  creates  what  Voloshinov  called  semiotic  ‘flux’  in  language.  This  continuing  potential  for  flux  poses  socially  disruptive  challenges  to  the  non-­‐class  assumptions  underlying  the  neoliberal  social  and  economic  order.      Here  we  attempt  to  apply  this  theoretical  framework  by  analysis  of  neoliberalism’s  “post  crisis”  project  of  the  new  labor  code  in  Lithuania.  What  is  new  here  is  that  this  understanding  of  labor  law  in-­‐the-­‐making  is  not  simply  positioned  as  part  of  a  legislative  process,  but  as  the  active  embodiment  of  the  clash  of  real  and  opposing  social  interests  in  a  post-­‐austerity  phase,  articulated  through  strategic  discourses  in  which  each  side  attempts  to  establish  its  legitimacy  on  specifically  “moral”  grounds.  Strategic  discourses  become  the  privileged  site  upon  which  a  more  or  less  fierce  and  ongoing  “socially  interested”  interrogation  of  contested  signs  between  labor  and  capital  takes  place.  A  dynamic  dialectical  flux  is  set  in  motion  in  which  themes  of  “social  justice”  and  “fairness”  in  society,  have  been  to  some  extent  re-­‐legitimized  in  collectivist  strategic  discourses.  Thus,  debates  on  the  new  labor  code  represent  a  turning  point  in  a  new  discursive  context  in  which  there  is  an  emergence  of  new  discourses  of  discontent,  still  relatively  enfeebled  and  perhaps  more  adequately  described  as  ‘murmurs  of  discontent’,  but  nevertheless  based  on  a  new  class  understanding,  for  perhaps  the  first  time  in  the  current  millennium.  The  next  section  describes  the  methodology  employed  in  detail.    

4. Methodology    A  comprehensive  list  of  news  reports  and  articles  was  compiled  on  the  labor  law  reform  published  from  December  10,  2014,  when  the  draft  outline  of  the  new  labor  code  was  

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introduced  until  November  2015  (the  time  of  writing).  For  this  purpose  the  most  visited  Lithuanian  national  news  portals  such  as  Delfi.lt,  15min.lt,  alfa.lt  and  bernardinai.lt  and  online  sites  of  the  major  daily  national  newspapers  such  as  Lietuvos  Rytas  at  lrytas.lt  (“Lithuanian  Morning”  in  Lith.)  and  Verslo  Žinios  at  vz.lt  (“Business  News”  in  Lith.)  and  the  weekly  Respublika  at  respublika.lt  were  searched.  Online  search  of  regional  and  local  newspapers  showed  that  the  new  labor  law  coverage  was  minimal  and  what  was  posted  were  re-­‐prints  either  from  national  newspapers  or  from  national  news  agencies.  Thus,  local  and  regional  news  media  are  not  included  in  this  study.        News  portals  are  the  dominant  medium  of  news  delivery  in  Lithuania.  According  to  the  data  provided  by  the  online  research  agency  “Gemius  Baltic,”  in  August  2015  the  top  three  news  portals  were  Delfi.lt  with  1.2  ml,  15min.lt  with  1.03  ml,  and  lrytas.lt  with  884  thousand  visitors  per  month.  Verslo  Žinios  portal  vz.lt  –  was  seventh  most  visited  with  548  thousand  users,  and  alfa.lt  the  ninth  most  visited  site  with  507  thousand  visitors  per  month  (see  http://www.audience.lt).  Among  printed  news  media,  in  February  through  to  April  2015,  “Lietuvos  Rytas”  was  the  most  popular  daily  newspaper  in  the  country  with  211.5  thousand  readers,  or  9.4%  of  the  average  daily  newspaper  readership  (TNS  LT,  2015).  The  readership  of  printed  version  of  Verslo  Žinios  was  the  7th  largest  accounting  about  1.4%  percent  of  readership  or  about  40  thousand  of  daily  newspaper  readers  (TNS,  2015,  p.  23).  

Articles  were  searched  for  two  terms  Darbo  kodeksas  (“Labor  Code”  in  Lith.)  and  Socialinis  modelis  (“Social  model”  in  Lith.).  Keywords  “social  model”  were  used  because  the  new  labor  laws  proposals  were  a  part  of  a  broader  package  of  more  than  40  laws  introduced  in  the  Lithuanian  parliament  (Seimas)  in  the  autumn  of  2015  with  the  goal  of  comprehensive  reform  of  the  whole  system  of  labor  relations  and  social  welfare  in  the  country.  Here  only  the  former  are  examined  since  within  this  package  of  laws,  the  labor  law  reforms  were  the  most  significant  piece  of  legislation.  “Tags”  or  identifiers  of  topics  associated  with  articles  created  by  the  online  sites  were  devised  in  order  to  index  and  group  materials  for  easier  search  and  retrieval.  Tags  were  identical  to  such  keywords  as  Darbo  kodeksas  and  Socialinis  modelis  used  in  this  study.      For  December  2014  through  to  November  2015,  357  articles  on  the  new  labor  code  were  identified.  As  Figure  1  demonstrates,  from  December  2014  through  to  February  2015,  only  12  articles  on  the  new  labor  law  were  published  in  the  Lithuanian  news  media.  Coverage  hits  the  headlines  only  in  March  2015,  when  the  Lithuanian  President  Dalia  Grybauskaitė  in  a  critical  speech  called  the  new  labor  law  an  “expensive  and  poorly  developed  hodge-­‐podge  of  items”  and  questioned  transparency  of  the  process  by  which  the  new  code  was  prepared  and  paid  for.  The  Prime  Minister  A.  Butkevičius,  for  his  part  turn,  responded  to  President’s  critique  by  a  vigorous  public  relations  campaign  lobbying  for  the  new  law.  Up  until  June  2015  labor  law  coverage  was  dominated  by  the  public  rhetorical  sparring  between  the  President  and  Prime  Minister  (and  their  surrogates),  squabbling  not  only  about  provisions  in  the  new  labor  law,  but  also  about  the  government’s  authoritarian,  strong-­‐arm  tactics  of  hastily  pushing  the  legislation  through  the  Seimas,  squashing  public  debate  and  scrutiny  of  the  new  law,  and  sidelining  participation  in  deliberations  of  key  stakeholders  such  as  trade  unions  and  the  broader  public.      

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 By  July  2015  the  political  debate  expanded  beyond  the  PM  and  the  President,  to  also  include  the  national  Tripartite  Council  representing  employers  and  unions,  Seimas,  and  representatives  of  political  parties  in  the  ruling  coalition  and  opposition.  Labor  unions  became  especially  vocal,  organizing  a  major  protest  rally  against  the  new  labor  law,  the  largest  in  post-­‐crisis  era.  Inclusion  and  involvement  of  new  actors  and  stakeholders  in  the  proposed  labor  law  debate  was  related  to  a  change  in  the  government  tactics  because  its  “bulldozer-­‐like”  (in  words  of  the  President)  approach  had  backfired,  galvanizing  criticism  and  opposition.  In  order  to  avoid  a  protracted  and  energy  and  time  draining  legislative  fight  with  an  uncertain  outcome,  the  government  negotiated  (through  the  Tripartite  Council)  a  number  of  proposals  on  modifications  and  amendments  which  reversed  or  modified  some  of  the  most  controversial  provisions,  such  as  on  reductions  in  maternity  leave  and  child  care  benefits,  and  on  cuts  in  employment  severance  compensation.  By  September  2015  the  Tripartite  Council  finished  its  deliberations  agreeing  on  80%  of  provisions  and  forwarding  the  draft  law  to  the  Seimas.  This  effectively  ended  debates  on  whether  or  not  the  new  labor  code  would  be  passed  into  law  becoming,  in  effect,  fait  accompli  (pending  some  unlikely  dramatic  events).  News  coverage  shifted  to  reporting  on  which  provisions  in  the  new  labor  code  would  be  approved,  rejected,  or  modified  by  Seimas.  Therefore,  by  November  2015  coverage  of  the  new  labor  law  declines  significantly  -­‐  to  21  publications.  Since  the  debates  now  focused  on  technical  details  and  intra-­‐  and  inter-­‐party  bickering  as  the  legislation  works  its  way  through  the  Seimas,  we  foresee  fewer  still  news  reports  of  this  issue  in  the  news  media  in  the  immediate  future.  This  allows  us  to  claim  that  357  news  reports  for  December  2014  through  to  November  2015  effectively  brackets  the  entire  episode  of  political  conflict  and  negotiation  over  the  new  labor  code  in  Lithuania.      

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Figure1.NewsMediaPublicaGonsonthenewLaborCode(LC)inLithuania(Dec2014-Nov2015;N=357)

ThepresidentcallsnewLCa“hodgepodge”ofmeasures;ques;onstransparencyoftheprocessbywhichthenewLCwasdevelopedcrea;ngpubliccontraversy

GovernmentapprovesnewLC

OnDecember10,2014LCismadepublicbyCommissionontheNewSocialModel

Thepresidentcri;cizes“bulldozer-like”pushfornewLCbythegovernment;callsforselec;vechangesinLC

LaborUnionsholdthelargestprotestrallyinpost-crisiseraagainstthenewLC

Tripar;teCommissionfinishesitsdelibera;onsagreeingon80%ofLCprovisions

Seimasbeginsdelibera;onsonthenewLC

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While  not  an  exhaustive  list  of  news  media  articles  on  the  new  labor  code  published  in  Lithuanian  news  media,  it  comes  close  to  saturation  coverage  of  the  topic.  Out  of  a  total  of  357  publications  analyzed,  137  were  published  in  Delfi.lt,  78  in  Lrytas.lt  or  “Lietuvos  Rytas,”  51  in  vz.lt,  21  in  15min.lt  and  20  in  alfa.lt.  We  counted  89  individuals  who  had  authored  or  co-­‐authored  articles  on  the  new  labor  legislation;  63  reports  were  produced  by  agencies  such  as  the  Baltic  News  Service  and  ELTA,  Lithuanian  News  agency.  The  remaining  reports  were  by  the  corporate  authors,  usually  by  news  portal  or  newspaper  editorial  staff.      Articles  retrieved  varied  from  a  paragraph  in  length,  e.g.,  a  report  on  what  proposals  the  parliament  was  considering  on  the  new  labor  legislation  or  a  report  on  a  meeting  held  by  political  parties  to  discuss  the  new  legislation,  to  extensive  articles  analyzing  labor  legislation  by  experts,  government  officials,  labor  union  representatives,  experts,  or  editorials  and  articles  by  columnists  (in  “Opinion”  sections).  Bibliographic  data  on  each  article  such  as  a  title,  author  (journalist  or  corporate  author  such  as  editorial  board,  newspaper  staff,  news  agency,  etc.),  source  (news  portal  or  newspaper)  and  date  of  publication  was  entered  into  the  EndNote  bibliographic  reference  management  program.      The  articles  were  read  in  full  and  then  coded  according  to  two  criteria.  First,  social  actor  or  actors  that  were  being  reported  on  in  each  article  were  identified  on  the  basis  that  two  and  more  actors  could  be  identified  in  a  single  article.  Government  views  were  reported  on  in  28%  of  all  articles  coded,  business  lobby  and  employers  in  19%,  labor  unions  and  employees  in  19%,  the  Commission  on  Labor  Law  Reform  in  7%,  the  Seimas  (parliament)  in  6%,  the  national  Tripartite  Council  in  6%,  opinion-­‐writers  opposing  the  new  labor  law  in  5%,  the  President  of  Lithuania  in  4%,  opinion-­‐writers  supporting  the  new  labor  law  in  4%,  and  others  in  2%.    Beginning  with  a  list  of  approximately  20  themes  or  sets  of  keywords  the  following  themes  were  identified:  liberalization  of  labor  relations;  competitiveness;  business  efficiency;  claims  of  new  jobs  created  via  reform;  lowering  unemployment;  reducing  poverty;  increasing  motivation  to  work;  political  negotiations;  modernization;  more  authority  to  employers;  lack  of  transparency;  flexicurity;  taking  rights  away  from  workers;  reducing  security/increasing  risks;  gender  (in)equality.  In  addition,  more  concrete  themes  were  identified  such  as  severance  pay  issues;  lay-­‐off  notification  periods;  temporary  employment  contracts;  reduction  of  wages.  Two  or  more  categories  could  be  used  to  identify  the  content  of  a  single  report,  in  other  words,  a  report  should  contain  at  least  two  of  the  above  for  inclusion.      Based  on  empirical  clustering  of  thematic  categories,  7  discourses  or  strategic  narratives  were  aggregated  (Figure  1).  Five  strategic  discourses  were  identified  as  clearly  supporting  liberalization  and  such  support  was  evidenced  in  44%  of  all  news  reports.  Categorized  as  supportive  were  those  discourses  arguing  for  increasing  authority  and  discretion  of  employers,  thereby  benefiting  businesses,  employees,  and  society  at  large.  Two  discourses  opposed  liberalization  of  labor  laws  were  evidenced  in  21%  of  all  news  reports.  These  latter  reports  were  focused  on  claims  that  the  proposed  legislation  reduced  employment  security,  protection,  and  benefits  for  employees  and  negatively  impact  the  well-­‐being  of  the  broader  society.  In  the  next  section  these  

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emergent  competing  discourses  and  the  discursive  resources  on  which  they  draw  are  examined  in  greater  detail.    

 5. Strategic  Discourses  of  Reform  

 Among  pro-­‐new  labor  code  discourses  certain  strategic  narratives  could  be  identified  which  were  underpinned  by  a  sub-­‐text  of  embedded  justifications  of  reform,  in  the  first  instance  as  ‘economically  rational’  and  thus  “above  class  interests”,  and/or  as  having  a  higher  “moral”  justification.  Thus,  (1)  liberalization  of  labor  relations  rested  on  a  rationalist  economic  discourse  of  the  new  labor  laws  as  increasing  intra-­‐firm  efficiency  (26%);  Complementing  the  previous  (2)  increasing  inter-­‐firm/country  efficiency  discourses  projected  this  economic    rationality  at  the  level  of  international  competitiveness  (6%).  The  seemingly  imperative  “logic”  of  these  discourses  precluded  any  simple  dialogical  contestation  or  refusal.  In  addition,  two  other  strategic  narratives  were  positioned  on  “moral”  terrain.  Accordingly,  (3)  modernization  discourses  rested  on  embedded  justifications  which  interpreted  contestation  over  the  new  labor  laws  as  a  generational  conflict  between  younger  and  older  generations.  This  discourse  depicted  supporters  of  the  new  legislation,  as  being  energetic,  creative,  mobile,  residing  in  social  networks  and  looking  for  self-­‐realization.  By  contrast,  opponents  of  the  new  legislation,  were  depicted  as  being  the  older  generation  of  employees  who  grew  up  under  the  protective  embrace  of  a  paternalistic  socialism  and  were  now  fighting  to  retain  employment  protections  in  a  “Soviet”  retrograde,  or  in  a  19th  century  style  “factory-­‐manufacturing  plant  system”  that  had  ceased  to  exist  (6%).      

Pro-newLC:Suppor/ngliberaliza/onoflaborrela/ons

(intra-firmlevel:ra/onaliza/on/effec/veness)

26%

Nego/a/ons/poli/cal"horserace"coverage

17%

AgainstnewLC:Takingrights/security/payawayfrom17%

Mixed:Providesflexicurity8%

PronewLC:Compe//veness(inter-firm/countrylevel)

6%

PronewLC:Moderniza/on6%

PronewLC:currentLCisignored;informalrulesgovernlaborrela/ons(defactoversus

dejure)6%

AgaintsthenewLC:itisaversionof"businesspromo/on

law"(socialconcernsarebracketedout)

4%

Other10%

Figure2.NewLaborCodeCoverageintheLithuanianNewsMedia(N=357;Dec2014-Nov2015)

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Complementing  the  above  discourse  was  that  of  (4)  flexicurity.  The  “flexicurity”  discourse    was  embedded  in  and  focused  on  guarantees  of  “social  fairness”  and  protection  from  the  adverse  consequences  of  labor  market  uncertainty  in  terms  of  unemployment  and  diminished  labor  rights.  According  to  this  narrative  the  new  workforce  itself  seeks  employment  forms  of  a  more  flexible,  contingent  and  temporary  form  that  will  enable  its  members  to  circulate  in  the  labor  market  according  to  specific  projects,  limited-­‐time  contracts,  as  well  as  providing  enhanced  personalized  choices  as  regards  to  overall  working  time  commitments.  In  this  new  world,  the  mobile  employee  would  be  supported  when  necessary  by  state  insurance  systems  for  periods  of  ‘temporary’  unemployment  and/or  retraining  between  jobs  in  the  more  diversified  modern  labor  market,  in  which  permanent  jobs  are  a  thing  of  the  past.  So-­‐called  “flexicurity”  or  “flexible  security”  was  present  in  8%  of  news  reports.      A  further  strategic  discourse  pro-­‐labor  code  reform  (5)  distinguishes  formal  labor  laws  (de  jure)  and  actual  labor  practices  (de  facto).  This  narrative  also  rested  on  an  embedded  justification,  identifying  deficiencies  in  the  application  of  current  labor  law,  in  terms  of  disjuncture  between  the  formal  protections  and  actual  (real  world  of  employment  conditions).  Thus,  it  was  argued,  given  current  widespread  ‘real-­‐world’  disregard  of  formal  labor  protections,  the  new  labor  law  would  actually  increase  security  and  other  social  provisions  for  labor  by  codifying  a  “realistic”  set  of  labor  protections  (6%).      A  significant  tail  of  an  additional  17%  of  news  reports  covered  the  negotiated  politics  of  the  new  labor  code  proposals  in  terms  of  (6)  a  ‘political  horse  race’  between  rival  teams.  A  declining  and  increasingly  a-­‐political  national  readership  receives  its  news  coverage  of  national  and  international  politics  in  news  portals  and  newspapers  that  tend  to  present  issues  at  stake  in  a  superficial  and  decontextualized  manner,  essentially  glossing  over  complex  arguments  and  unfolding  debates.  Thus,  in  this  category  are  articles  that  reviewed  the  debate  over  the  new  labor  code  proposals  in  terms  of  reporting  who  is  “wining”  and  who  is  “losing”,  while  neglecting  to  cover  substantive  issues;  depicting  squabbles  of  politicians  over  “ideological  purity”  as  to  who  is  conservative  or  social  democratic  (or  not  enough  “conservative”  or  “social-­‐democratic”);  focusing  on  quarrels  within  and  among  parties  and  party  coalitions  associated  with  the  new  labor  code  proposals,  by  dwelling  on  personality  conflicts  and  clashes  of  the  “he  said,  she  said”  variety.        The  anti-­‐new  labor  law  discourses  were  represented  in  17%  of  reports.  It  was  claimed  that  (7)  an  escalation  of  class  conflict  would  result  from  the  new  labor  laws  and  potentially  leading  to  social  disenfranchisement  of  employees  in  the  workplace.  This  discursive  position  was  underpinned  with  embedded  justifications  of  legitimate  worker  resistance  to  a  removal  of  existing  labor  rights  in  what  was  characterized  as  the  imposition  of  “social  serfdom”  or  “slavery”.  In  an  additional  4%  of  reports  it  was  asserted  that  the  new  labor  laws  represented  a  wider  “denial  of  social  justice”.  Not  only  did  the  proposed  labor  reforms  attempt  to  liberalize  employment,  but  also  harmed  society  as  a  whole,  by  bracketing  out  broader  social  concerns  in  favor  of  a  narrow  business-­‐led  agenda.  The  embedded  justifications  for  these  latter  narratives  pointed  to  and  forewarned  of  the  danger  of  social  conflict  associated  with  deregulated  markets,  socially  embodied  in  a  growing  division  between  “winners”  and  “losers”,  a  further  erosion  of  social  solidarity,  a  decline  in  social  dialog,  an  expansion  and  reproduction  of  various  

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forms  of  social  marginalization  and  exclusion,  and  last  but  by  no  means  least,  increasing  emigration  from  the  country.      At  this  point  in  the  article  we  attempt  to  unpack  these  strategic  discourses  in  greater  detail  to  reveal  their  internal  dynamics  and  their  (unequally)  competing  ideological  thrust,  since  no  discourse  exists  in  isolation,  but  all  are  in  and  of  themselves,  a  “reply”  to  other  unspoken  discourses.      Liberalization:  “Liberalization”  as  a  strategic  discourse  presents  a  technocratic  argument  framed  in  terms  of  seemingly  objective  neutral  criteria  such  as  increasing  the  “efficiency  of  the  firm”,  or  “reducing  costs  for  businesses”  (Valatka,  2015).  It  is  a  technocratic  discourse  because  it  strives  to  present  liberalization  as  an  attempt  to  make  labor  markets  more  rational  and  efficient  and  eschews  political,  social  or  ethical  dilemmas  involved  in  labor  restructuring  policies,  i.e.,  questions  of  who  will  pay  for  and  who  will  benefit  from  this  restructuring  and  how  gains  from  increasing  effectiveness  will  be  distributed  between  labor  and  capital.    When  the  term  “liberalization”  is  used  by  advocates  of  the  new  labor  code,  it  most  often  means  making  the  labor  market  “more  flexible”  (in  words  of  Prime  Minister  Butkevičius),  or  “improving  business  environment”,  especially  by  “shortening  time  for  posting  notices  concerning  laying  off  employees  and  reducing  severance  payment  compensation”  (Gudavičius,  2014);  including  “more  flexible  working  time  regulation,  <…>  temporary  labor  contracts,  more  flexible  employment  types”  (Alfa.lt,  2014).      In  other  words,  to  its  proponents,  labor  market  liberalization  would  allow  laying-­‐off  as  well  as  hiring  workers  in  a  simpler,  quicker  and  cheaper  way  than  possible  under  current  labor  law.  The  president  of  the  Lithuanian  Confederation  of  Industrialists  summed  up  this  view  as  follows:  “when  it  is  easier  to  hire  and  fire,  businesses  are  more  willing  to  risk  <expansion>”  (Kupetytė,  2015).  Or,  on  the  contrary,  without  capacity  to  rapidly  adjust  to  changes  in  market  demand  via  layoffs,  “employers  are  reluctant  to  hire  new  employees  because  in  case  of    onset  of  a  new  economic  crisis,  it  would  be  difficult  for  businesses  to  lay  off  workers,  thus  potentially  causing  their  bankruptcy”  (Alfa.lt,  2014).  The  Ministry  of  Social  Security  and  Labor  estimated  that  in  a  period  of  five  years,  the  new  labor  code  would  allow  the  creation  of  up  to  85  thousand  new  jobs  and  reduce  unemployment  to  7%  (BNS,  2015b).  For  their  part,  the  Lithuanian  Confederation  of  Industrialists  argued  that  the  number  of  new  jobs  created  would  be  even  higher,  up  to  90  thousand,  while  wages  would  grow  3-­‐5%  (Lietuvos  Rytas,  2015).      Claims  of  “reluctance  to  hire”  by  businesses,  and  projections  of  thousands  of  new  jobs  created,  especially  resonated  with  the  Lithuanian  government  because  unemployment  remained  persistently  high  (in  double  digits  2009-­‐2015)  despite  the  fact  that  in  the  immediate  post-­‐crisis  years  economic  growth,  at  least  in  GDP  terms,  had  rebounded.  Persistently  high  unemployment  was  also  the  primary  concern  of  the  European  Commission,  which  counseled  Lithuanian  government  to  increase  flexibility  of  labor  market  through  “a  comprehensive  review  of  the  labour  law”  .  .  .  “to  find  ways  of  alleviating  the  administrative  burden  on  employers”  (Council  of  the  European  Union,  2014).      Competiveness:  Unlike  the  “liberalization  of  labor  relations”  as  a  discourse  which  is  deployed  to  argue  for  increasing  effectiveness  on  intra-­‐firm  level,  “competitiveness”  as  a  

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strategic  discourse  adopts  national  and  transnational  perspectives.  In  this  iteration,  claims  are  made  that  the  new  labor  law  will  increase  efficiency  of  national  economy  vis-­‐à-­‐vis  global  and  regional  competitors,  again  excluding  political,  social  or  ethical  dimensions  of  domestic  labor  market  restructuring.    Rankings  produced  by  the  World  Economic  Forum  (WEF)  are  used  as  for  the  evidence  of  the  lagging  competitiveness  of  Lithuania.  Although  WEF  uses  12  sets  of  indicators  or  (“pillars”)  to  describe  a  country’s  competitiveness,  the  advocates  of  labor  reform  had  focused  on  and  selected  one  indicator  (out  of  a  possible  6)  in  the  “Labor  Market  Efficiency”  pillar,  namely  “hiring  and  firing  practices.”  According  to  WEF  global  rankings  on  this  indicator  Lithuania  ranked  at  125th  out  of  144  countries  worldwide1,  or  as  advocates  for  the  new  code  were  fond  of  observing,  placing  Lithuania  “on  a  par  with  countries  in  Sub-­‐Saharan  Africa”  (Zabulis,  2015).      “Competitiveness”  as  a  strategic  discourse  is  also  framed  in  a  regional  context,  to  indicate  that  Lithuania  with  its  currently  “restrictive”  labor  code  is  becoming  less  attractive  for  foreign  investment  than  its  (rival)  Baltic  neighboring  states  -­‐  Latvia  and  Estonia,  both  of  which  had  recently  liberalized  their  labor  laws.  According  to  the  main  architect  of  the  new  labor  code,  Dr.  Tomas  Davulis,  an  academic  labor  lawyer  from  Vilnius  University,  the  dilemma  was  simple:  “would  a  <foreign>  firm  chose  to  invest  in  Lithuania  knowing  that  <in  our  country>  employees  have  twice  as  long  annual  holidays  than  in  neighboring  Latvia  and  Estonia?  What  should  potential  investors  think  about  investing  <…>  when  in  Lithuania  we  have  many  protective  measures  covering  a  number  of  categories  of  employees  <…>  while  severance  payments  can  reach  up  to  six  monthly  salaries  and  lay-­‐off  notices  should  be  provided  <to  employees>  up  to  four  months  in  advance,  <…>  when  in  Latvia  and  Estonia  both  severance  pay  equals  one  month  of  salary  and  lay-­‐off  notice  is  provided  to  employees  one  month  in  advance?”  (15min.lt,  2015).  Parallel  arguments  were  advanced  by  the  Lithuanian  Investors’  Forum,  an  umbrella  organization  for  the  largest  investors  in  Lithuania  according  to  whose  Chairperson  the  country  would  attract  more  investment  were  it  not  for  the  fact  that  “<its>  annual  overtime  is  limited  to  120  hours,  while  in  neighboring  Latvia  and  Estonia  overtime  can  reach  up  to  400  hours  or  more.  <These  countries  also  have>  less  cumbersome  hiring,  simpler  labor  contracts,  and,  what  is  especially  important,  easier  procedures  of  laying-­‐off    <employees>”  (Baltrusyte,  2015).      Modernization:  “Modernization”  as  a  strategic  discourse  attempts  to  cast  political  conflict  over  the  new  labor  code,  not  in  class  conflict  terms,  but  as  generational  conflict  between  interests  and  ideals  of  the  old  and  the  young.  It  is  argued  that  the  current  labor  code,  characterized  as  a  leftover  from  the  Soviet  era,  corresponds  to  the  interests  and  values  of  an  older  generation  which  grew  up  in  Soviet  times  under  the  paternalistic  system  of  a  “factory-­‐manufacturing  plant  system,”  of  employees  working  from  9  to  5,  now  “clinging”  to  their  lifetime  jobs,  and  afraid  or  unable  to  choose  where  to  work  in  the  modern  economy.  Their  economic  and  historical  marginality  was  perfectly  characterized  by  the  president  of  the  Lithuanian  Confederation  of  Industrialists  as  those  workers:  “living  in  provinces  and  working  minimum  wage  jobs.  They  are  of  very  low                                                                                                                  1  Labor  market  efficiency  in  Lithuania  was  evaluated  via  a  2013  survey  of  146  “business  leaders”  in  Lithuania  who  provided  answers  to  the  following  question:  “In  your  country,  how  would  you  characterize  the  hiring  and  firing  of  workers?  [1  =  heavily  impeded  by  regulations;  7  =  extremely  flexible;  the  average  score  for  Lithuania  was  3.0].  Thus,  an  online  survey  to  WEF  staff  in  Geneva  was  transmitted  back  to  Lithuania  via  “global  rankings,”  becoming  “objective”  evidence  of  lagging  in  “hiring  and  firing”  flexibility.  

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qualification,  they  cannot  move  because  they  have  self-­‐subsistence  farms  which  provide  them  with  an  additional  income.  And  they  are  satisfied  with  such  a  predicament”  (Lukaitytė-­‐Vnarauskienė,  2015).      In  an  elaboration  of  this  socially  invidious  discourse,  the  “younger  generation,”  which  by  contrast  craves  to  rid  itself  of  the  “clutches”  of  the  past,  is  defined  not  only  in  terms  of  age,  but  also  in  terms  of  gender  and  a  particular  entrepreneurial  outlook.  As  women’s  rights  advocates  pointed  out,  the  new  labor  code  assumes  that  “the  ideal  employee  is  a  young,  educated  man,  of  good  health  and  single”,  while  treating  social  responsibilities,  especially  ones  associated  with  the  roles  of  women,  as  secondary  and  of  little  importance  (Saukienė,  2015).  This  gendered  trope  is  elaborated  by  the  architect  of  the  labor  code  reform,  Davulis  describing  the  younger  worker  as  “energetic,  creative,  enthusiastic,  using  most  advanced  technologies,  residing  in  social  networks  and  looking  for  self-­‐realization.  Today’s  world  is  offering  him  (sic)  numerous  alternatives  and  choices  -­‐  he  can  choose  to  work  anywhere  in  the  world,  day  and  night,  he  is  himself  choosing  suitable  for  him  ways  to  labor,  planning  his  work  hours  and  leisure.  And  he  neither  wants,  nor  needs  any  restrictions.  <Today’s>  labor  laws  want  to  restrains  him,  and  he  is  escaping  from  them”  (Davulis,  2013).      Thus,  the  “modernization”  discourse  portrays  the  new  labor  code  in  terms  of  transformation  of  regular  employment  into  “flexible”  forms  as  bringing  new  “freedoms”.  The  idealized  image  of  young,  educated,  self-­‐sufficient  and  hard-­‐working  entrepreneur  is  also  juxtaposed  to  those  who  lack  moral  fiber.  At  the  extreme,  are  the  views  signaled  in  articles  entitled  “Only  spongers  need  guarantees  provided  in  the  Labor  Code”  (Sadauskas-­‐Kvietkevičius,  2015),  “Changes  in  Labor  Code:  are  dangerous  only  to  those  who  see  their  wages  as  entitlement”  (Bardauskas  &  Anilionytė,  2015),  and  again,  “If  we  were  to  work  like  in  Soviet  times,  we  will  live  like  in  Soviet  times”  (Mazuronis,  2015).  The  latter  article  resonates  with  the  old  familiar  joke  characterizing  employment  during  the  Soviet-­‐era:  “they  pretend  to  pay  us,  we  pretend  to  work”.      Moral  exhortation  counters  populist  arguments  of  labor  unions  which  exploit  fear  of  loss  of  employment  guarantees  for  their  members.  Thus,  employees  are  advised  to    “work  in  a  way  that  your  lay  off  would  result  in  a  significant  loss  <to  your  employer>,”  as  this  will  be  the  best  guarantee  of  your  job  security,  because  no  business  would  willingly  lay  off  a  valuable  employee  (Labutytė-­‐Atkočaitienė,  2015).  Fretting  over  the  loss  of  employment  protections  associated  with  “the  Soviet  era  labor  code”  is  depicted  as  misguided  because  “today  the  ball  is  employees’  court  <vis-­‐à-­‐vis  employers>.  These  are  employees  who  are  in  a  position  to  choose  where  to  work,  how  much  money  they  were  to  be  paid,  are  they  satisfied  or  not  with  their  employment  conditions.  Today  employers  are  feverishly  looking  for  employees  who  would  assure  their  growth  and  survival.  Current  debates  <over  the  new  labor  code>  miss  the  point  that  the  main  guarantee  for  job  security  today  is  not  the  law,  but  a  person’s  qualifications,  knowledge  and  capacities”  (Lukaitytė-­‐Vnarauskienė,  2015)    As  to  evidence  that  in  a  current  labor  market  “the  ball  is  in  employees’  court”,  proponents  of  the  new  labor  code  cite  surveys  showing  that  up  to  70%  of  employers  claim  that  they  are  experiencing  shortages  of  qualified  labor  (Vainalavičiūtė,  2015).  Such  survey  data  are  not  an  indication  of  a  booming  national  economy,  but  a  sign  of  fundamental  structural  imbalances  in  the  labor  market  produced,  in  a  large  part,  by  

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neo-­‐liberal  economic  policies,  and  especially  by  their  most  recent  reiteration  in  an  austerity  regime  which  reduced  wages  by  about  one  fifth  and  led  to  significant  increase  in  emigration  from  Lithuania.  Currently  Lithuania’s  GDP  per  capita  is  about  75%  of  EU  average,  while  wages  are  only  25%  of  EU  averages,  propelling  the  enormous  centripetal  forces  fueling  emigration  of  qualified  labor  from  the  country  (Kubilius,  2015).  At  the  same  time,  in  a  predominantly  low-­‐wage  and  low  value-­‐added  export-­‐oriented  national  economy,  some  55%  of  young  people  are  ‘underemployed’,  while  about  one  fifth  of  the  labor  force  are  earning  the  minimum  wage,  and  the  overall  unemployment  rate  is  9.4%  (Mockus,  2014).  Furthermore,  of  the  8.1%  of  working-­‐age  population  (about  146.4  thousand)  currently  unemployed,    the  majority  are  living  in  rural  and  other  underdeveloped  (in  terms  of  infrastructure  and  quality  of  labor  force)  regions  that  are  of  little  interest  to  employers  (BNS,  2015a).      This  partisan  juxtaposition  between  moral  worth  of  the  young,  or  “creative  class”  (Paluckas  (2015)  and  the  older  generation  of  workers,  exemplifies  the  conscious  articulation  of  socially  invidious  distinction  that  fragment  social  solidarities  and  immobilize  counter-­‐movements  in  order  to  preclude  the  articulation  of  specifically  class-­‐based  responses.  For  example,  supporters  of  the  new  labor  code,  the  “makers”,  attempted  to  accentuate  their  moral  superiority  over  the  “takers”  as  a  major  labor  union  rally  protesting  the  new  legislation  took  place.  The  Investors’  Forum,  an  umbrella  group  for  major  business  organizations,  decided  to  conduct  a  workshop  under  the  title  “Working  Lithuania”  on  the  day  of  demonstration.  At  the  workshop  were  “all  those  supporting  the  new  social  model  <about  100  participants  who>  were  able  to  continue  their  regular  daily  work  activities,  and,  at  the  same  time,  listen  presentations  from  a  variety  of  experts  on  the  new  social  model”  (Jankaitytė,  2015).  The  public  relations  goal  of  Investors’  Forum  was  underscore  the  contrast  between  members  of  “the  creative  class,”  all  supporters  of  the  new  labor  legislation  and  all  young  and  dressed  in  business  attire  while  multi-­‐tasking  –  working  on  computers  and  simultaneously  listening  to  presentations,  while  demonstrators  in  the  streets  in  the  middle  of  the  working  day  were  lobbying  the  government  for  the  preservation  of  previous  outdated  employment  protections.      The    narrative  of  the  necessary  “modernization”  of  the  labor  code  not  only  critiques  outdated  labor  norms  ostensibly  inherited  from  Soviet  era  (Savickas,  2015),  but  also  takes  distance  from  “socialist”  elements  of  a  more  social  democratic  kind,  typically  associated  with  contemporary  versions  of  the  European  Social  Model.  The  proposed  new  Lithuanian  ‘social  model’,  by  contrast,  was  characterized  as  “more  advanced  than  similar  legislation  in  the  EU  core  countries;  <…>  because  <core  EU  countries>  cannot  liberate  themselves  from  certain  clutches  <…>  and  ossified  institutions”  (Jankaitytė,  2015)  specifically  labor  unions,  collective  bargaining  arrangements,  and  consultative  tripartite  commissions,  involving  social  dialog  between  employers  and  trade  union  representatives.  In  this  respect,  the  discourse  of  modernization  was  driven  by  an  avowedly  neoliberal  reform  agenda.  The  tropes  of  “advanced,”  set  against  “clutches”  of  past  and  "ossified  institutions”  now  characterized  the  “modernization”  discourse  as  the  favored  employer  keyword  rather  than  the  more  abstract  and  ideologically  saturated  discourse  of  ‘liberalization”.      This  semantic  shift  from  “liberalization”  to  “modernization”  is  illustrated  by  Arvydas  Avulis,  President  of  the  business  group  “Hanner”:  “We  all  must  understand  that  the  

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current  Labor  Code  make  us  look  woeful  and  uncivilized.  This  is  similar  to  a  situation  when  some  are  traveling  by  cars,  while  we  are  still  riding  horse  drawn  buggies…”  or,  according  to  Valdas  Sutkus,  Director  General  of  the  Lithuanian  Business  Employers’  Confederation:  “Modernization  means  reorganizing  and  coming  into  21st  century.  I  have  repeated  many  times  <…>  that  we  are  living  in  the  21st  century,  while  the  Tripartite  Commission  is  a  relic  from  the  19th  century"  (Savickas,  2015);  and  in  a  similar  vein,  “Businessmen  in  support  of  the  new  labor  code:  we  must  live  in  the  21st  century”  (Šimulis,  2015).    Between  labor  laws  and  labor  practices:  De  facto  and  de  jure  debates.  The  Government  had  found  an  ingenious  (disingenuous)  way  to  respond  to  the  labor  union  claims  that  the  workers’  rights  and  protections  would  be  significantly  reduced  by  the  new  labor  law.  Instead  of  comparing  the  current  and  the  new  labor  law  provisions,  Prime  Minister  Butkevičius  repeatedly  urged  labor  leaders  to  compare  actual  labor  practices  with  the  new  labor  law  provisions  which  would  be  supported  by  effective  enforcement  favoring  workers’  legal  rights,  currently  disregarded  by  employers.  This  juxtaposition  of  formal  and  substantive  was  essentially  a  claim  to  ensure  legal  (and  moral)  decency  on  behalf  of  the  advocates  of  reform.  More  specifically,  it  was  argued  that  even  if  current  labor  law  provides  more  formal  protections,  e.g.,  (depending  on  seniority)  more  extended  time  for  posting  layoff  notices  (2  to  4  months)  and  1  to  6  monthly  wages  as  a  severance  pay,  in  practice,  these  provisions  are  rarely  implemented.  Thus,  in  2014  there  were  565  thousand  labor  contracts  terminated  in  Lithuania  out  of  a  labor  force  of  1.3  million.  Of  these,  about  one  fifth  or  112  thousand  were  temporary  labor  contracts  that  had  ended  because  of  their  term  expiration,  and  391  thousand  more  (or  about  70%  of  total  terminations)  were  “at  the  request  of  the  employer”.  The  current  labor  law  has  no  severance  compensation  provisions  for  expiring  temporary  contracts  or  contracts  that  had  been  terminated  by  the  “voluntary”  request  of  employee.  Just  how  far  “voluntary”  employee  discretion  operates  in  the  private  sector  can  be  debated  (Lukaitytė-­‐Vnarauskienė,  2015).    Therefore,  according  to  Prime  Minister,  it  is  not  the  proposed  new  labor  code,  but  current  labor  practices  that  are  characterized  “by  <extreme>  liberalism  because  the  previous  year    (2014)  following  termination  of  labor  contracts,  in  93%  of  cases  people  had  not  received  even  1  Litas  <in  severance  pay>,  while  among  those  7  percent  that  did  receive  severance  pay,  most  were  laid  off  from  public  sector”  (Lapienytė,  2015).  Therefore  the  new  law  would  increase  social  protections  for  employees,  because  it  makes  sure  that  businesses  will  actually  pay  on  average  2  months  wages  in  severance,  instead  of  what  is  currently  an  “empty”  compensation  statutory  provision  of  6  months  wages  which  in  practice  is  ignored  by  business.      Why  businesses  which  are  now  able  to  evade  the  current  law  so  easily  would  want  to  follow  the  new  law  code?  The  response  of  Prime  Minister  was  three-­‐fold.  First,  in  this  interpretation  employers  are,  in  general,  willing  to  pay  severance  if  it  is  not  excessive.  Up  to  six  monthly  wages  maximum  severance  pay,  especially  for  small  businesses,  is  excessive  and  if  paid  out,  as  is  required  by  the  current  law,  could  lead  to  wave  of  bankruptcies,  while  paying  two  months  would  be  within  the  possibilities  of  even  small  firms.  Second,  in  order  to  placate  opposition  from  labor  unions  and  coalition  members,  the  government  negotiated  creation  of  a  new  severance  compensation  fund  paid  by  

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employers  and  administered  by  the  state  Social  Security  Fund  (SODRA).  Employers  agreed  to  pay  into  this  fund,  in  return  for  having  a  provision  in  the  law  that  would  allow  them  to  fill  permanent  jobs  for  a  period  of  up  to  two  years  with  temporary  employees  (Lrytas.lt,  2015a).  From  the  severance  fund,  laid-­‐off  employees  will  be  paid  additional  severance  pay  based  on  seniority:  those  with  5  years  seniority  will  get  an  additional  one  month  wages,  those  with  10  years  seniority  2  months  wages,  and  those  with  20  years  of  seniority  –  3  months  wages  (Lrytas.lt,  2015b).  Finally,  the  prime  minister  assured  the  public  that  employers  will  be  subjected  to  unspecified  fines  if  they  were  to  fail  to  honor  the  new    severance  pay  requirements  (Bakūnaitė,  2015).    In  summary,  several  strategic  discourses  of  pro-­‐labor  code  reform  have  been  identified:  liberalization,  competitiveness,  modernization,  flexicurity  and  de  facto  practice  as  against  de  jure  protections.  The  combined  ideological  weight  of  these  discourses,  at  around  70%  of  the  total,  comprised  the  dominant  discourse  in  the  media  representations  analyzed  here.  Importantly,  all  dominant  pro-­‐reform  discourses  eschew  any  utterance  or  word  that  in  any  way  could  be  linked  to  and  indicate  class  conflict;  class  stratification  is  dissolved  into  plurality  of  morally  ranked  individuals;  fluid  class  boundaries  that  can  be  transcended  by  moral  mobilization  and  transformation  of  an  individual.  In  attempting  to  give  a  “supra-­‐class”,  or  eternal  and  “immutable”  quality  to  word  meaning  to  language,  the  proponents  of  the  new  labor  code  adopt  strategic  discourses  enshrining  reification  of  the  market  as  an  objective  reality  requiring  or  even  demanding,  like  Greek  gods,  reforms  and  sacrifice  (mostly  of  employees),  otherwise  punishing  the  recalcitrant  and  unfaithful;  labor  reform  is  needed  soon  and  quickly,  because  without  it  the  wrath  of  market  will  be  upon  us;  in  this  way  strategic  discourses  fostered  a  binary  opposition  between    rationality  and  efficiency  of  “non-­‐ideological”  market  regulation,  as  opposed  to  “ideological”  regulation  by  the  state  in  the  form  of  labor  rights  and  protections.      

6. The  counter-­‐discourses  of  labor    By  contrast,  the  counter-­‐narratives  to  labor  code  reform  reflect  more  circumscribed  discursive  resources.      Social  disenfranchisement/class  conflict  discourse.    This  strategic  discourse  was  used  mostly  by  labor  union  activists  to  frame  negotiations  over  the  new  labor  laws  in  class  conflict  terms,  as  an  attempt  by  an  alliance  of  the  government,  big  business  and  employers  to  strong-­‐arm  employees  into  accepting  a  social  contract  depriving  them  their  legal  rights,  and  reducing  their  wages  and  benefits.  If  proponents  of  the  new  labor  code  claimed  that  the  legislation  would  allow  for  the  young,  educated  and  ambitious  males  to  become  heroic  entrepreneurs,  its  opponents,  suggested  workers  will  be  turned  into  obedient  draft  animals,  such  as  in  an  article  entitled  “The  Labor  Code:  Horse  as  an  ideal  employee”  (Kabakaitė,  2015).  While  advocates  of  reform  argued  that  the  proposed  legislation  would  free  Lithuania  from  clutches  of  its  Soviet  past  and  propel  the  nation  into  the  21st  century,  labor  union  activists  claimed  that  historical  transformation  would  be  in  an  opposite  direction,  back  to  19th  century  or  even  pre-­‐industrial  times,  towards  a  disenfranchisement  of  the  labor  force  comparable  to  “serfdom”  and  “slavery”.      Use  of  terms  “disenfranchisement”  (beteisiškumas  in  Lith.)  and  “serfdom”  (baudžiava  in  Lith.)  are  not  new  tropes,  and  became  especially  popular  in  the  news  media  at  the  onset  

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of  austerity  era,  which  began  with  the  global  financial  crisis  in  2008.  These  terms  were  used  to  express  popular  dissatisfaction  with  perceptions  of  increasingly  oppressive  and  authoritarian  state  and  labor  relations  as  insidious  subversion  of  the  social  contract,  expressed  in  humiliating  dependency  on,  condescending  attitudes,  and  the  helplessness  of  ordinary  people  as  citizens  and  workers  when  dealing  with  state  officials  and  employers  (Juska  &  Woolfson,  2012).  How  then  should  “a  descent  into  serfdom  and/or  slavery”  discourse  be  interpreted  if,  de  facto  current  labor  practices  are  not  that  different  or  even  worse  than  those  that  the  new  labor  code  attempts  to  institutionalize?  One  possible  answer  to  this  question  would  be  to  construe  the  competition  of  pro-­‐  and  against-­‐new  labor  code  discourses  as  a  form  of  legitimacy  struggle  in  society.  Seen  in  this  light,  it  is  a  struggle  between  and  among  social  groups  and  classes  to  vindicate  claims  of  moral  superiority  and  inferiority.  For  example,  the  modernization  discourse  has  been  explicitly  developed  to  juxtapose  the  higher  moral  status  of  business  entrepreneurs  and  to  represent  as  symbolically  of  lesser  social  and  moral  value  that  of  employees,  and  especially  employees  on  the  labor  market  margins,  such  as  those  living  and  working  in  provinces  or  unemployed.  It  is  both  a  moral  or  moralizing  discourse,  because  it  claims  that  for  those  at  the  margins,  the  way  to  enter  the  class  of  entrepreneurs  is  through  individual  moral  rejuvenation  or  “modernization”:  study,  risk-­‐taking,  inventiveness,  ceaseless  energy,  learning  and  using  new  social  media  technologies,  etc.  And  in  reverse,  it  is  absence  of  these  moral  values  that  relegate  an  individual  to  the  margins  of  the  labor  market  as  a  “taker”  rather  than  a  “maker”  in  this  modern  morality  tale.      Thus,  the  discursive  contestation  over  the  new  labor  law  represents  a  struggle  to  redefine  the  boundaries  between  and  among  those  deemed  to  be  of  higher  and  lower  value.  The  power  to  invest  one  class  with  superiority  rests  on  their  ability  to  commodify  the  value  of  another.  Debates  about  the  new  labor  code  also  became  markers  of  the  ascendance  of  a  class  of  about  100,000  employers  in  Lithuania;  not  only  to  its  economic  and  political,  but  also  to  its  moral  dominance  in  which  the  wellbeing  and  success  of  entrepreneurial  class  is  equated  to  the  wellbeing  and  success  of  the  society  as  a  whole.  The  “serfdom”  and  “slavery”  tropes  used  by  labor  union  activists  served  an  expressive  function  of  contestation,  a  chance  to  strike  back—if  only  rhetorically—at  those  attempting  to  explicitly  degrade  their  stature  and  dignity  as  employees.  As  one  critic  had  aptly  put  it,  “It  looks  like  the  new  labor  code  will  be  passed  into  law  in  Lithuania  <…>  We  need  to  resign  ourselves  to  this  outcome  <…>  What  is  left  for  us  is  to  come  to  terms  with  the  fact,  that  you,  as  employee  are  of  a  lesser  value  than  the  employer  in  Lithuania,  and  that  a  measure  of  your  human  moral  worth  is  equal  to  that  of  your  economic  usefulness”  (animusrationalis.blogspot.com,  2015).    Substitution  of  society  by  the  market-­‐led  discourse.  Proponents  of  this  strategic  discourse  argued  against  the  narrow  economic  character  of  the  new  labor  laws,  which  tended  to  treat  society  as  if  it  were  the  market,  and,  by  extension,  the  interests  of  employers  as  the  best  interests  of  society  itself.  In  such  an  interpretation,  society  instead  of  being  seen  as  a  collective  of  people  connected  by  multitude  of  social  and  cultural  ties  and  oriented  towards  a  common  good,  is  reduced  to  set  of  individuals  and  firms  acting  on  imperatives  of  economic  rationality  and  maximization  of  profit.  Thus,  in  the  words  of  one  labor  union  leader,  when  the  commission  to  prepare  the  proposals  for  the  new  labor  code  was  formed  in  Spring  2014,  it  was  asked  “to  improve  investment  climate  <in  the  country.  However,  the  commission  was  not  asked>  about  the  need  to  

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create  a  more  just  society,  reduce  exclusion,  improve  the  quality  of  newly  created  jobs,  or  encourage  social  dialog”  (Judina,  2015).  Therefore  “the  new  labor  code  is  based  on  ideology  supporting  businesses  <and>  should  be  called  not  the  Labor  Code,  but  the  Business  Code”  (Savickas  &  Fuks,  2015).  Here  is  an  example  of  Voloshinov’s  multi-­‐accentuality  of  the  word  within  contested  class  discourses.      Other  broader  concerns  over  the  societal  impacts  were  also  raised  such  as  potential  of  widening  “social  polarization  <in  the  country>  by  producing  the  winners  as  well  as  generating  social  exclusion  and  marginal  groups”  (Guogis,  2015)  and  further  increasing  emigration  from  the  country  because  of  the  weakened  employment  protections  (Zasčiurinskas,  2015).  The  latter  issue  remained  highly  sensitive,  as  the  severe  demographic  crisis  facing  Lithuanian  society,  was  intimately  bound  up  with  questions  of  the  survival  of  the  nation  as  a  viable  entity.        The  mass  demonstration  to  protest  the  new  labor  code  in  September  2015,  organized  by  the  three  major  trade  union  confederations,  brought  these  arguments  into  the  public  arena.  Media  reports  echoed  the  placards  held  up  by  protestors:  “Labor  Unions  fight  back:  No  to  serfdom  at  work!”  (Jakilaitis,  2015)  or  “Labor  Union  rally:  New  Labor  Law  means  return  to  the  slavery”  (Savickas  &  Fuks,  2015).  A  number  of  protestors  at  the  rally  had  dressed  themselves  in  ‘serf-­‐like’  linen  costumes,  roped  together  to  symbolize  their  subjugation,  while  tape  plastered  across  their  mouths  signaled  the  suppression  of  their  voice  as  workers  and  the  smothering  democratic  debate  over  the  new  labor  law.  Placards  held  up  by  “silenced”  protesters  to  denote  serfdom  read  ironically:  “We  came  to  speak”.  One  protestor  dressed  himself  in  the  striped  uniform  of  a  concentration  camp  inmate,  replete  with  a  number  across  his  chest.  Holding  a  semi-­‐circular  mock-­‐up  of  an  ‘entrance  gate’  inscribed  with  the  words  “ARBEIT  MACHT  FREI”,  etched  beneath  were  the  letters  ‘DK’  (Darbo  kodeksas).  One  demonstration  placard  read:  Lithuanian  citizens,  don’t  emigrate  but  stay  and  fight  for  your  and  my  rights.  There  were  also  fears  about  businesses  using  labor  code  reform  to  stimulate  emigration  from  Lithuania  so  that  cheap  labor  from  Belarus  and  Ukraine  could  be  brought  in  into  the  country  (Kabakaitė,  2015).  One  placard  reflected  this  undercurrent  of  xenophobic  fear:  Parliament,  time  to  care  about  your  own  people  and  raise  the  minimum  salary  at  least  until  450-­‐480  euros  and  pensions,  but  not  for  refugees.      The  Soviet-­‐era,  so  frequently  referenced  by  proponents  of  the  new  labor  code,  was  re-­‐framed  by  the  protestors  in  their  own  banners  and  placards  in  a  counter-­‐discourse.  Thus,  the  old  Soviet  exhortation:  “Work  ‘adorns’  the  human  being”  displayed  on  one  banner  ironically  asked  “but  what  adorns  the  employer?”  In  another  reference  to  Lithuania’s  Soviet  past,  a  large  red  banner  proclaimed:  “The  nation  should  be  able  to  recognize  its  own  ‘Heroes’”.  This  banner  was  “framed”  by  solemn  iconic  images  on  individual  posters,  much  in  the  style  of  bygone  marches  “celebrating”  Marx,  Lenin,  Stalin  and  other  revered  “heroes  of  the  Soviet  Union”,  but  with  the  “lesser  heroes”  of  today  –  the  author  of  the  labor  code  proposals  Tomas  Davulis,  the  Prime  Minister,  the  Minister  of  Labor  and  the  Employers’  Federation  representative.  Finally,  to  counter  the  charge  that  in  defending  their  labor  rights,  demonstrators  were  some  kind  of  Soviet  re-­‐incarnation,  placards  proclaimed:  “Red  plague  –  NO!”,  “Moscow  houses  –  NO”.  These  were  juxtaposed  in  a  kind  of  anti-­‐communist  triptych,  between  the  flag  of  Lithuania  (symbolizing  loyalty  of  the  demonstrators  to  the  nation)  and  the  flag  of  NATO  (symbolizing  reassuring  loyalty  of  the  demonstrators  to  the  Western  military  alliance  

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and  by  implication,  hostility  to  Russia  and  the  Soviet  legacy).  This  latter  was  especially  salient  in  the  febrile  political  atmosphere  in  the  Baltics  post-­‐Crimea  invasion  by  Russia.  This  condensed  telegraphy  of  protest  displays  theatricality  that  both  expressed  outrage,  framing  the  new  labor  code  in  terms  of  an  attack  on  the  rights  of  labor,  but  at  the  same  time,  its  very  pantomimic  symbolic  references  were  a  measure  of  the  weakness  of  labor  and  its  lack  of  discursive  resources.      

7. Conclusion:  the  moral  politics  of  “post-­‐crisis”  discourse    This   paper   has   attempted   in   a   preliminary   way   to   map   new   terrains   of   struggle   for  meaning  and  legitimacy  in  “post-­‐crisis”  era  in  Lithuania.  It  has  identified  pivotal  nodes  of   contestation   over   labor   rights,   termed   strategic   discourses  which   exist   both   at   the  level  of  public  media  and   in   the  more  visceral   voices  of  protestors   in   the   streets.  The  conventional  narrative  of  austerity  as  a  necessary  response  to  the  global  crisis,  and  the  accompanying   “Baltic   morality   tale”   of   successful   austerity   management   through  immense   sacrifice   as   the   path   to   economic   redemption,   is   currently   sharply  contradicted  by  the  objective  indicators  of  declining  growth  and  competitiveness.  This  has  presented  capital  with  a  new  contingency.  The  mobilization  of  discursive  resources  based  on  the  “iron  logic”  of  the  market  and  the  equality  of  “burden-­‐sharing”  during  the  crisis   is  more  difficult   to  effect   in  the  contemporary  phase  of  “post-­‐crisis”.  This  makes  strategic  discourses  that  can  portray  the  dismantling  of  labor  protections  as  a  practical  policy  necessity,  somewhat  problematic.  Hence,  the  elaboration  of  discourses  during  the  new  phase  of  “post-­‐crisis”  which  require  more  socially  and  politically  embedded  forms  of  discursive  construction,  along  explicitly  “moral”  and  simultaneously  fissiparous  lines.    Adopting  the  method  of  an  applied  Marxist  discourse  analysis  pioneered  by  Voloshinov,  the  previous  analysis  attempts  to  “apprehend”  the  non-­‐class  or  supra-­‐class  discourse  of  the  ruling  circles  in  pursing  the  agenda  of  labor  code  reform.  In  this  case,  moral  legitimation  was  needed  to  achieve  ideological  hegemony,  as  naked  power  and  just  money  are  in  themselves  insufficient  —these  are  purely  instrumental  dimensions  in  class  relations,  while  the  crucial  symbolic  dimension  is  a  struggle  for  moral  superiority/inferiority  in  a  stratified  society  in  which  moral  legitimacy  belongs  to  capital  (employers).  Thus,  the  advocates  of  reform  act  as  “moral  entrepreneurs”  engaging  in  a  moral  crusade  aimed  at  securing  the  labor  law  reform.      In  a  Polanyian  perspective  (1957,  (1944)),  it  could  be  argued  that  such  strategic  interventions  “from  above”  in  contemporary  conditions,  also  call  forth  dialogic  contestation  “from  below”.  These  discourses  uncover  the  sometimes  contradictory,  “indexical”  utterances  of  participants  at  a  point  when  new  demands  of  a  previously  absent  discourse  of  social  justice  are  being  raised.  Voloshinov’s  Marxist  method  draws  awareness  to  the  complexity  of  tracing  direct  linkages  and  transitions  between  “generative  processes  of  existence”/  “base”  and  ideological  forms  of  culture  and  social  consciousness  –  the  domain  of  “behavioural  ideology”  –  in  trying  to  detect  what  is  changing,  when  and  how  and  what  is  new.  The  dialogical  character  of  competing  strategic  discourses  however  offers  insight  into  an  emerging  but  incomplete  class-­‐based  critique  of  new  and  harsh  legislative  impositions.  Such  critiques  can  point  in  a  number  of  opposing  directions.  There  are  ambivalences  in  the  emergent  discourses  which  point  to  xenophobia  and  an  appeal  to  deeper  forms  of  internal  social  division  as  well  as  to  new  recognitions  of  common  interest  and  solidarities.  Lacking  matching  discursive  coherence  of  the  pro-­‐labor  code  reform  discourses,  those  who  opposed  the  new  

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legislation  adopted  a  dialogical  discourse  that  relied  on  seemingly  “archaic”  representations  of  “serfdom”  and  “slavery”.    Such  metaphors  had  perhaps  only  a  limited  resonance  with  those  who  were  directly  engaged  in  and  framed  by  this  discourse.  For  the  mass  of  the  Lithuanian  workforce,  such  notions  hardly  constituted  deterioration  in  their  current  already  precarious  condition,  social  and  economic  unfairness  being  an  enduring  part  and  parcel  of  everyday  working  life.  Moreover,  the  very  pantomimic  nature  of  the  slogans,  costumes,  banners  and  placards,  and  the  theatricality  of  the  costumes  of  those  demonstrating  against  the  new  labor  code  also  can  be  seen  as  a  token  of  their  discursive  and  political  weakness.        Yet,  despite  the  seeming  hegemonic  dominance  of  certain  strategic  discourses  and  the  weakness   of   counter-­‐discourses,   the   kernel   of   new  kinds  of   collectivist   consciousness  can  also  be  discerned,  a  consciousness  rooted  in  the  perception  of  class  injustice.  For  the  first  time  in  a  generation,  the  voice  of  organised  labor  has  been  heard  offering  not  just  a  passive   expression   of   discontent,   but   an   emergent   wider   critique.   These   “dialogic”  statements   of   discontent   “from   below”   addressed   the   ruling   authorities   and   posed  uncomfortable,   even   potentially   incompatible   questions   about   the   social   and   moral  justice   of   the   neoliberal   project.   Addressing   issues   of   fairness   and   social   justice   in  society,  such  dialogic  protest,   infuses  a  new  dialogical   flux   into   the   language  of  power  and  resistance.  The  dimension  of  the  collective  experience  of  disempowerment  and  an  absence  of  “industrial  citizenship”  (Fudge  2005)  has  struggled  hard  and  hard  to  find  its  discursive   legitimation   in   contemporary  public  debates  and  media   in  post-­‐communist  Lithuania.   In   this   discursive   world   alternative   forms   of   discursive   practice   to   that   of  neoliberal   capitalism   based   on   the   collective   assertion   of   labor’s   independent   rights  have  been  so  far  at  least,  largely  extinguished.  This  makes  the  appearance  of  any  form  of  discursive   struggle   or   discourse   around   the   issue   of   workplace   rights   all   the   more  remarkable.  Whether  or  not  such  emergent  strategic  discourses   ‘from  below’  over  the  new  labor  code  in  Lithuania  mark  a  signal  turning-­‐point  of  more  enduring  significance,  remains   to  be   seen.  At   the  very   least,   however,   their   creative   signification  points   to  a  newly  embryonic  recognition  of  the  class  interests  of  labor  as  separate  and  opposed  to  those   of   capital.  What  was   elided   as   the   objective   necessity   of   “common   sacrifice”   in  response  to  the  economic  and  financial  crisis  in  Lithuania,  an  event  over  which  no  one  could  be  said  to  have  been  in  control  of  or  responsible  for,  has  in  part  at  least,  failed  to  sustain  comprehensive  ideological  traction  as  new  assaults  on  labor  are  launched  in  the  phase  of  “post-­‐crisis”.  Using  the  perspective  of  Voloshinov  enables  us  to  suggest  that  the  inauguration  of  an  important  new  element  of  reality  inevitably  generates  new  dialogical  forms   of   contestation   and   spaces   of   resistance.   In   themselves,   these   dialogical  discourses  of  contestation  no  matter  how  weak,  constitute  markers  of  one  of  the  many  global  voices  being  raised  against  the  contemporary  neoliberal  reconfiguration  of  labor  rights.      References      15min.lt.  (2015,  January  19).  Naujas  socialinis  modelis:  didins  konkurencingumą  ar  

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