The frequent claim that employment relations have become irrelevant is not new: it has been cyclically repeated over the last 40 years. What recent times have provided is critical cases where employment relations have been actively marginalised in the pursuit of an ideal neoclassic labour market: new market economies of Central Eastern Europe, recent reforms in crisis countries in Southern Europe and global competition on labour costs. The disastrous effects of these experiments confirm, in fact, the relevance of employment relevance.