Fallen Heroes: Steelworkers in the New Capitalist System

Abstract

This chapter will shed light on what became of redundant steelworkers. The previous chapters have revealed the strong belief in entrepreneurship amongst political and, in particular, labour-market actors, management and trade unions. Interestingly, this belief in entrepreneurship contradicts public assumptions, or even workers’ (self-)perceptions, of laid-off workers having “eaten up the money” of redundancy, being drunkards and loitering in the streets. This chapter will offer a broader and more realistic picture, drawing on 38 interviews with workers. While this number is far from allowing any generalisations, constant comparisons are made with the other available studies on workers in Poland. The analysis is structured as follows: first, it traces the paths taken by steelworkers following restructuring and evaluates how restructuring affected the lives of steelworkers, while distinguishing between three groups: early pensioners, workers in subsidiaries and the unemployed; second, it investigates how workers experience and deal with redundancy; third, it reconstructs workers’ worlds beyond the steel industry: their relationship to trade unions, how they search for a new job, how they see trade unions and how they experience the free market economy.