Co-determination, trade unions, supervisory boards and other inflexible features of German business life have already been put firmly on the sidelines.

ECONOMIST: German industry: Neighbours | The

Will Europe's unions fight to preserve their privileges in inflexible national labour markets a strategy that benefits union members at the expense of non-members or will they throw their lot in with governments and employers to ease the movement of workers to where jobs are, through training and so forth?

ECONOMIST: Unions

Thatcher became Prime Minister in 1979, British labor unions were quite powerful but labor markets were rigid, inflexible and in many ways uncompetitive.

FORBES: This is a guest post by Stephen Bronars,