INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS JOURNAL最新文献

This article examines the methodological challenges involved with measuring the duration of strikes. On the one hand, several studies opt to calculate the average ‘duration’ of stoppages by dividing the number of working days lost by the maximum number of employees involved in work stoppages. On the other hand, many other studies use an average measure of the duration of strikes calculated by either using the arithmetic mean or median number of strike days taken across all strikes in a given period. While both measures have their use, they fundamentally measure different things. This article aims to theoretically explain the important difference between these two measures of strike duration, before presenting empirical arguments in favour of studying these measures of duration separately (primarily drawing on official strike data from Canada, 1960–2024).

This article explores how male and female Uber drivers in Johannesburg navigate safety and violence within a high-crime urban context, highlighting the gendered dimensions of digital platform work. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 30 Uber drivers (15 male and 15 female), the study reveals that while all drivers face threats such as hijackings, assaults, and extortion, often linked to tensions with the minibus taxi industry, female drivers experience heightened vulnerabilities due to gendered perceptions of weakness and societal norms around women's safety. These perceptions lead female drivers to adopt restrictive work strategies such as operating only during daylight hours and in familiar areas, which significantly limit their earning potential and reinforce structural gender inequalities in the gig economy. In contrast, male drivers confront territorial violence and extortion, particularly near taxi ranks, but are less constrained in their spatial and temporal mobility. Despite these risks, drivers perceive Uber as relatively safer than competing platforms due to features like card payments and client identification. In response to pervasive threats, male and female drivers employ safety strategies including spatial avoidance, selective rider acceptance, and participation in WhatsApp safety networks. These findings contribute to debates on precarity and platform capitalism by demonstrating how violence, gender, and urban transport dynamics intersect to shape the lived experiences of digital labour. The study advances understanding of how platform workers negotiate safety, highlighting the gendered, precarious, and relational nature of gig work in a high-crime setting.

There are quite a few robust estimates of the earnings effects of successful apprenticeships for individuals, but there is a shortage of research concerning the relationship between apprentices and firm performance, and most of this study is qualitative or based on surveys. This paper aims for an empirical investigation of this relationship using quantitative data available from large government registers. We analyse data for all English businesses, which—linked to Individual Learner Record data (ILR) for participants in apprenticeship programmes—provide structural information on apprenticeship firms and other firms for the years 2010 to 2015. The descriptions show that around 10%–15% of all eligible firms undertook apprenticeships and that apprenticeship firms are larger both in terms of turnover and employment than other firms. Regression analysis is used to explore the nature of the relationship between apprenticeships and the firms' turnover. In models employing a range of observable characteristics and using Inverse Probability Weighting to alleviate the selection into apprenticeships, our findings point towards a positive relationship between engaging in apprenticeships and firm growth, but not to a change in business productivity.

This article demonstrates the uneven development of trade union strategies on equal pay within UK local government through an examination of the shift from litigation to industrial action in the Glasgow City Council equal pay dispute. It analyses new oral history interviews with key actors involved in the Glasgow City Council dispute (union officials, grassroots activists, lawyers) to identify four critical incidents between 2016 and 2018 that prompted trade unions (particularly the GMB) to prioritise equal pay. It considers the extent to which equal pay legislation has acted as a resource for or barrier to achieving equal pay and concludes that the combination of legal and industrial strategies was central to reaching a settlement in the Glasgow City Council dispute.

Over the last five decades, the degree of unionisation of workers has been decreasing and, therefore, by inadvertently accepting the deterioration of labour relations, the loss of labour rights, and the increase in the exploitation of labour all over the world, workers have not genuinely contested the neoliberal agenda and the deregulation and flexibilisation of the labour market. Our argument to explain this puzzling paradox of worsening labour conditions yet a lesser degree of unionisation finds that this is due to the financialisation of workers. On the one hand, workers with financial assets tend to reduce their unionisation due to their more financially solid position, pro-capital predisposition, perceived disconnection from union priorities, access to attractive remuneration benefits, a (psychological) sense of being owners (employers) and an alignment with capital's (employers’) interests. On the other hand, workers with financial liabilities tend to reduce their unionisation due to their more financially fragile position, fears of job and income loss and concerns about default, reluctance to incur the immediate costs of monthly union dues, worries about the social stigma linked to potential default and a tendency to prioritise individual interests over collective action. This paper aims to study the relation between the financialisation of workers and their unionisation by performing a time series econometric analysis centred on Portugal over the period from 1980 to 2023. Our results confirm that the financialisation of workers exerts a negative effect on the degree of unionisation in Portugal. The financialisation of workers has indeed been one of the main factors behind the deunionisation in Portugal since the 1980s.

This paper provides an expanded analytical framework on the effects of financialisation on the finance wage premium. Current analyses focus on how financial deregulation has increased employee compensation in the financial sectors via rent-sharing. We argue that rising financial payments—the source of financial rents—also induce wage suppression in the rest of the economy. First, nonfinancial corporations pass increases in their financial payments to workers through wage reductions. Second, simultaneously, indebted workers lower their wage demands to avoid unemployment and personal default. Thus, understanding the growth of the finance wage premium requires scrutinising the impact of business and household indebtedness. To evaluate this argument, we use quarterly data from Eurostat for Greece over the period 1999Q1–2021Q3, and we show that increases in all components of private debt are strongly associated with positive changes in the finance wage premium.

This article examines the impact of devolution on employment relations and trade union dynamics in Northern Ireland within the unique framework of its power-sharing institutions. It considers how employment policy has developed under devolution, given that employment law is a devolved matter for the region. It also seeks to address what influence the trade union movement has had on the devolved political arrangements. The article argues that the governing administration has engaged in limited innovation in employment law, although there is evidence of intended and unintended divergence from Westminster policy. It is proposed that while the trade union movement played a critical role under Direct Rule during “the Troubles,” its influence has waned since devolution, although it retains pockets of influence within the local political structure.