INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS JOURNAL最新文献

Concerns about work intensification within universities have been an issue over the past decade and the Covid-19 pandemic may have accelerated any trend toward excessive job demands associated with work-related stress. This paper reports a longitudinal study conducted in two English universities based on observations at 11 time points from March 2020 to February 2021, covering academic and nonacademic workers. The results show that four measures of job demands increased during the period and that blended learning has contributed to these increases. Various measures of well-being are negatively associated with work intensity, while work–nonwork conflict is positively related to it and mediates the demands–well-being relationship. The study also shows that the use of a variety of methods of accommodating the increased demands—increasing total hours, working at weekends, extending the work day and forsaking breaks, normal holidays and exercise—are associated with increased work intensity. The policy implications of the study are that interventions aimed at employee well-being should be focused on the causes of stress and, particularly, job demands, rather than coping with stress and that future decisions about homeworking should take account of these causes and not simply the satisfaction or performance levels of homeworkers.

The longstanding concerted attacks on unions from multiple fronts in the United States have threatened to undermine labour's institutional security. Though much has been written on the nature and scope of labour's declining membership, less research exists on unions' financial state. We have addressed this void in several ways through an analysis of the finances of 53 major national unions in the United States over the years between 2006 and 2019. Our study has reported on the financial resources and performance of these 53 national unions on aggregated and disaggregated bases. Building from relevant theory, we have analysed an exploratory model to identify the determinants of variation in union financial resources and performance. We have shown that the unions' net worth over the 2006–2019 span deteriorated, though, in aggregation, their member-based income grew. The unions have maintained high levels of liquidity and resilience in their capacity to fund their operating budgets. Business Income has fallen as a share of overall net revenues. Disaggregated data have shown vast variation in financial resources and performance across unions and over time. Multivariate analyses suggest differences correlated with selected organizational and environmental factors, such as union density, earnings and membership levels.

Using an extensive database of job adverts, we investigate the extent to which homeworking is likely to continue. We track how advertisement language has evolved to indicate homeworking opportunities and how the characteristics of jobs offering these opportunities have changed, including a greater degree of polarisation in opportunity by salary.

The decentralisation of European collective bargaining has been subject to much research and IR modelling. However, these studies mainly focus on the implications for national and sectoral bargaining institutions and rarely include a company perspective. Based on cross-sectional representative survey data among managers and shop stewards in Denmark, this paper offers a fresh perspective on the recent decentralisation process. We explore if company-based bargaining structures are in place and whether local social partners have utilised these bargaining opportunities across distinct sectors after decades of decentralisation. Analytically, we seek inspiration from Visser's (2016) distinct forms of organised decentralisation and combine these with insights from the broader literature on IR and institutional change. We find that bargaining practices and institutions at company level depend on a combination of provisions for company-based wage bargaining within individual sector agreements and strong union-affiliated workplace representation.

There is an emerging narrative that the global COVID-19 pandemic has led to a resurgence of labour activism. Despite this popular narrative, scholars lack empirical data on the relationship between workers' exposure to the pandemic and their interest in collective representation. Using original survey data from 240 ride-hail drivers, I find that greater exposure to the COVID-19 virus is associated with greater interest in joining a labour union. This article provides the first empirical evidence linking the COVID-19 pandemic to the recent wave of labour activism, giving rise to what I refer to as a ‘global hot shop’ phenomenon.

While solidarity is widely understood as key to worker capacity to improve terms and conditions of employment, the creation of solidarity has received less attention. This article advances the theory that dignity is the creative process, based on a psycho-social understanding of dignity not as an outcome but an interpersonal exchange. Mutual recognition of each other's capacities to participate in social rules creates solidarity, thereby catalysing collective action and making workplace improvements more likely. The argument is developed through comparison of three cases of worker struggles in the strawberry sector that produced varied outcomes, from steady improvements through union collective bargaining to persistence of poverty wages and gender-based violence. The proposed model of dignity-based worker power suggests both functional and psychological effects of democratic practice within worker organizations, coalitions and workplaces.

Work intensity in the United Kingdom has increased, yet gaps in our understanding of its causes and effects remain. It is often missing in current debates around job quality. This paper presents new evidence on the relationship between work intensity and job insecurity and on the negative effects of high work intensity for health and well-being. Its findings help to inform debates about ‘good work’.

The concept of a structured antagonism lying at the heart of the employment relationship is widely cited but also commonly misinterpreted. The paper firstly returns to the origin of the concept to locate its approach to workplace industrial relations. It forms part of labour process analysis, within which its distinct emphasis is two-fold: a focus on levels of analysis, such that the connections between the underlying antagonism and concrete behaviour can be interrogated; and a preference for comparative analysis, which allows the relevant processes to be identified. In this paper, we apply these themes to contemporary workplaces such as those in the gig economy. Recent research demonstrates substantial empirical and theoretical progress but can be taken further using the above two ideas. A methodological checklist emerges to guide a future programme of research.

This longitudinal case study contributes to debates concerning how ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ forms of regulation can interact to contribute to the advancement of worker rights. More specifically, the article explores the contribution of Scotland's soft fair work (FW) programme and the UK's hard statutory recognition procedure to union re-recognition in a voluntary sector social care provider. In combination, hard and soft regulations are found to have added breadth to the pressures for re-recognition exerted by the union, bringing reputational and financial costs associated with derecognition to the employer. Concerns nevertheless arose regarding the depth of impact from this interaction due to union compromises on key issues in the final recognition agreement. Due to the specific public service context of the study, doubts are also expressed regarding the potential for unions in other hard to organise sectors to achieve similar outcomes.

Following the 2017 constitutional referendum under the Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (Justice and Development Party-AKP) rule in Turkey, the reforms granted judicial and legislative powers to the head of the executive under a presidential system. Initial observations reveal that some blue-collar workers who are members of a historically progressive union have also supported these reforms. This is surprising because the union leadership has publicly opposed these changes. What explains this discrepancy? Why did some of these workers support reforms in favour of a powerful executive? Based on a sample from a major metalworking union, this paper finds that partisan identity moderates support for AKP's push for challenging the separation of powers. Although we find that higher amount of debt may reduce worker support for stronger executive, this is conditional on the metal workers' pre-existing partisan commitments. Under these circumstances, highly indebted partisan workers do not diverge from the party line. These results also raise further questions for students of labour and regime change elsewhere in the developing world.