INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS JOURNAL最新文献

Trade unions can shape employees' positive perceptions of digital technology introduction, and thus help achieve desirable outcomes. Our understanding of why and how remains limited. This article develops the argument that employees' trust in senior management's digital competency is a central issue, and a power-sharing trade union can play an important role in mediating that relationship. We propose that workplace trade-union power enables workers to ‘trust’ the process when they know the union can collectively bargain with senior management. This reduces digitalisation-induced job insecurity, thereby engendering an engaged workforce to remain in post. This leads to our hypothesis that trade-union voice has both a stronger direct and indirect effect in reducing employees' intention to exit than direct voice (direct communication with senior leaders). Our sequential mediating model supports the hypotheses on both direct and indirect pathways using 520 valid responses to a staff survey during digitalisation from a major UK public service organisation.

This study argues that sectoral bargaining offers a flexible alternative to legal regulation in setting terms and conditions of employment, encourages participation and involvement, brings benefits to employers and improves productivity and performance. It also provides a platform for sector and cross-sector social dialogue leading to improved policymaking and better macroeconomic outcomes. A statutory framework based on Wages Council-type arrangements and Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service Codes of Practice is recommended for the United Kingdom, with sectors in the ‘foundational economy’ being prioritised. Sector agreements need to be about much more than pay, though, if they are to realise their potential.

This article analyses the strategic construction of a factory management regime as an instrument of local value extraction, set against an intensely competitive global value chain in the apparel sector. The article focuses on Bangladesh where, as elsewhere, work in ready-made garment factories is characterised by long hours, poor pay, hostility to freedom of association and the suppression of independent collective bargaining. This article presents a long-term study of the ways that managers who preside over such environments are identified, recruited and deployed. In the context of the global value chain in garments, this article shines a light on managerial regimes which squeeze labour and perpetuate inequality as part of extracting value at workplace level, in the context of a broader, internationally dispersed, industrial regime of exploitation.

Canada is widely recognized as a desirable destination for new immigrants and all levels of governments are generally supportive of ambitious immigration targets set to help meet labour demand. Canada's immigration system is based primarily on human capital, selecting the world's most highly skilled newcomers. However, immigrants to Canada have often faced difficulty in attaining labour market outcomes commensurate with their knowledge and experience. In this analysis, we examine the paradox apparent in the Canadian immigration system—the selection criteria attract highly educated and skilled workers, yet many are not able to find employment opportunities that match their abilities—through the lens of the Labour Utilization Framework. Using data from the Canadian Labour Force Survey for the years 2006–2019 inclusive, we explore five different dimensions of skill underutilization or brain waste: involuntary part-time work, minimum wage work, unemployment, over-education (i.e., underemployment), and worker discouragement. Our results suggest that on all dimensions of labour underutilization measured in the study, immigrants are overwhelmingly at a disadvantage relative to their Canadian-born, non-Indigenous counterparts. We discuss the ethical implications of immigrant brain waste for both individuals and society and conclude by suggesting some possible policy responses to improve the utilization of immigrant talent in Canada.

Vocational education and training (VET) has been promoted as a key strategy for refugees' integration into the labour markets of their host societies, with the expectation that it would provide refugees the skills that are necessary to access better employment in their host countries. Nevertheless, evidence from both high-income and middle-income countries (MICs) shows that refugees predominantly work in labour-intensive jobs under precarious conditions, and, VET has not always been an effective instrument to improve refugees' employment conditions. This article aims to understand the reasons behind this situation. It studies the multiplicity of factors influencing the viability of VET for refugees' labour market integration, focusing on Syrian refugees in Tarsus, Turkey, a MIC currently hosting the largest number of refugees worldwide. It shows that the top-down, supply focused VET programmes may have limited effectiveness in promoting better employment for refugees if the designers and implementers of these programmes do not fully consider the local context and the refugees' specific realities.

The paper takes up two questions. Do we observe, universally in the advanced capitalist world, the weakening of collective bargaining? Have employers everywhere and always tried to achieve this outcome and abandoned structures and policies that sustain collective bargaining? For answering the first question, the paper proposes three indicators—bargaining coverage, centralisation and control, measuring the incidence of collective agreements across workers and workplaces, the degree to which these agreements are bound by rules set by agents at higher levels, and whether these rules are enforced. For answering the second question the paper proposes a model that considers the relative strength of organised labour versus capital, the coordinating capacities of employers and the inheritance of past investments in collective bargaining. The analysis covers 32 Member States of the OECD with annual data on unions, employers and collective bargaining from 1980 to 2019.

This article uses the work of Willy Brown, John Purcell, Linda Dickens, and Keith Sisson to identify the critique of management within pluralist industrial relations. The notion of the ‘fallible manager’ captures the essence of this critique. Within the pluralist tradition, fallible managers are identified as the source of industrial relations problems and are also deemed incapable of reversing the harms they cause in the absence of supportive state intervention. While managers are deemed fallible in the pluralist tradition, however, management typically is not regarded as illegitimate and in a reformed institutional context is capable of managing for the common good, to generate ‘shared value.’

Understanding tissue biology's heterogeneity is crucial for advancing precision medicine. Despite the centrality of the immune system in tissue homeostasis, a detailed and comprehensive map of immune cell distribution and interactions across human tissues and demographics remains elusive. To fill this gap, we harmonised data from 12,981 single-cell RNA sequencing samples and curated 29 million cells from 45 anatomical sites to create a comprehensive compositional and transcriptional healthy map of the healthy immune system. We used this resource and a novel multilevel modelling approach to track immune ageing and test differences across sex and ethnicity. We uncovered conserved and tissue-specific immune-ageing programs, resolved sex-dependent differential ageing and identified ethnic diversity in clinically critical immune checkpoints. This study provides a quantitative baseline of the immune system, facilitating advances in precision medicine. By sharing our immune map, we hope to catalyse further breakthroughs in cancer, infectious disease, immunology and precision medicine.

The past 20 years were convulsive for industrial relations in Ireland: from boom to bust and back again, with the Financial Crisis killing off national bargaining; the Supreme Court first undermining sectoral bargaining, then shifting back in favour of it; and of course, the Covid-19 pandemic generating an overhaul of working conditions across society. All along, widespread industrial unrest has been notable by its absence. Long-term decline in Irish trade union density continues, despite recent research showing significant popular support for trade unions, particularly among young workers. Now, the obligation to transpose the Directive on Adequate Minimum Wages has brought Ireland to a crossroads in collective labour law and industrial relations reform. How Ireland has responded to these pressures, internal and external, holds lessons for other jurisdictions, of which this article highlights three: a commitment to pragmatic adaptation over principled coherence makes measuring the success of any reform project difficult; different methods of reform enjoy varying levels of legitimacy; and disjunction between different levels of bargaining generates pressure on the system, including risks to the legitimacy of the system itself and the actors within it—particularly beleaguered trade unions.

This article argues that industrial relations (IR) in the German public sector are not just a replica of private sector IR. It suggests that neither the structures, nor the outcomes can be sufficiently explained by derivation from private sector IR processes. Primarily, the specifics and developments of the public sector explain public sector IR. It is of fundamental importance whether trade unions operate in a profit-driven market environment or a publicly financed environment that is under public control. Differences between the public and the private sector result not least in the distinct relevance and meanings of trade union power resources. This influences the ways in which industrial action in the private and the public sector works and is relevant for trade union strategies.