The term “social movement scene of labour” may be perhaps met with skepticism by those familiar with social movement studies. About 50 years ago the labour movement was not a distinct aspect of social movements; instead, it pervaded various forms of collective action. Nevertheless, the end of the 1960s signaled the advent of new social movements, bringing other actors to the forefront and enriching the activities, repertoires, frames and goals of the people taking to the streets. “Working class heroes” started to be replaced by middle-class citizens, while labour issues became marginal in the movements’ agenda, compared to broader post-material claims against neoliberal globalization.

The case of Greece did not show any particular differences as we discussed in Chapter 2. Nevertheless, the advent of the economic crisis accelerated the process of boundary enlargement, giving way for the development of the social movement scene of labour with quite distinctive characteristics. The cultivation of the principles of self-organization on labour issues within political collectives acted as a catalyst for the transition towards the establishment of autonomous self-managed cooperatives and, to a lesser extent, the incorporation of self-managed structures within social centres. However, in terms of its reach, the social movement scene of labour moved beyond the margins of its usual audience, with the formation of self-managed cooperatives by several people belonging either at the periphery or outside of the social movement community.