INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS JOURNAL最新文献

Australia's major public dispute resolution agency has changed substantially since the 1990s from a stand-alone tribunal administering a collectivist system of compulsory conciliation and arbitration to an integrated agency resolving both individual and collective disputes as well as performing a broader regulatory role. It remains central to Australian industrial relations, reflecting its adaptability and the peculiarities of its political and industrial relations contexts.

This paper reports on a public transport company in which local unions, by repeatedly threatening to strike, managed to significantly enhance their negotiating position and exert considerable power over their management. While extant literature has mostly paid attention to ‘weak’ unions struggling for renewal and revitalization, the present study rather explores a situation in which unions manage to become ‘strong’ by making aggressive uses of power, as well as the implications for union effectiveness. It is shown that management deficiencies can provide unions with unprecedented opportunities for exerting power, yet hamper their ability to reach greater effectiveness as the absence of an engaged managerial line makes it difficult to secure decisions favouring workers and the organization. This paper contributes to theory on union power and effectiveness by offering an alternative to the resource-based view of union power that has been prevalent in prior research. Union power and effectiveness in the workplace appear to be deeply rooted in the power relations that unions sustain with other organizational actors, demonstrating the relevance of a relational perspective that goes beyond union-centred action, resources and capabilities to include the complex dynamics of their interactions with other organizational actors.

Since the early 1990s public dispute resolution in Ireland has undergone significant reform. The paper examines external and internal pressures for the reform of conflict resolution in Ireland and reveals the key roles played by senior public servants and conflict management professionals in a system where politics and political divisions had little effect on the reform process.

New Zealand provides a unique comparative case with its well-embedded, comprehensive and flexible public dispute resolution services. Changes from collective to individual disputes and a resulting rise in institutional caseload have occurred since 1990, culminating in increased public information, enforcement and dispute resolution efforts. However, debates exist about improving access to justice, reducing legalism and providing proactive conflict resolution.

Identifying the next generation of leaders is fundamental for union renewal. Taking a sequential mixed methods approach using interview (n = 25) and survey (n = 4765) data, our study seeks to identify roadblocks members may face on the path to union leadership. Specifically, we explore the impact of union efficacy, perceived role ambiguity and perceived work role overload on union members' intentions to pursue a leadership role. We found perceptions of union efficacy positively influenced leadership intentions, while perceived work role ambiguity and overload had a negative impact. Generational cohort (Boomer, Gen X, Millennial) moderated the relationship between perceived work role overload and leadership intentions, but not the other relationships in the model. Findings from this study help unions develop strategies to motivate members to take on leadership roles.

This article is based on data collected from almost 100,000 individuals who completed the www.howgoodismyjob.com quiz either side of the pandemic. The results show that overall non-pecuniary job quality has improved, differences between occupations have shrunk and the growth of remote working is a factor behind these trends.

This paper analyses the role of trades councils and trade unions in organising within local and regional contexts around the challenges facing and potential union strategies for addressing the needs of insecure and precarious workers. We deploy a case study on the Sheffield Trade Union Council  and the Sheffield Needs A Pay Rise campaign as a way of exploring innovations and challenges for the trade union movement for organising the unorganised. We explore the potentials as well as limitations of local organising and campaigning around insecurity and marginalisation by trade unions to demonstrate theoretically and empirically within industrial relations research the role of strategic spaces for action by workers and trade unions and the set of institutional, economic, social and cultural resources that workers can draw on in developing their respective strategies.

Are international framework agreements (IFAs) an effective trade union response for regulating multinational enterprises and protecting workers' rights? Using a metasynthesis methodological approach, which we apply to a corpus of 36 empirical studies, this article aims to 1—provide empirical and practical answers to this question and 2—offer a theoretical reflection on the notion of effectiveness as applied to the case of IFAs.

The article examines the existing legal framework for collective bargaining in Poland with the situation, strategies and opinions of social partners and discusses the result – the coverage by collective agreements (approximately 12%). Next, de lege ferenda proposals and expectations for the future are put forward.

The United States labour movement faces a potentially transformative moment, as workers have won breakthrough union organizing victories at various high-profile, private-sector employers. While winning an election is essential to establishing collective bargaining, unions then need to secure a first contract with employers to make tangible improvements in working conditions. Drawing on a sample of 126 responses about postcertification collective bargaining, we find that both employer and union tactics have significant impacts on first contract achievement. Employers continue to impede first contract achievement by committing unfair labour practices, but unions can improve their chances of establishing an agreement by utilizing tactics that engage the public.