INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS JOURNAL最新文献

Cross-national research is key to understanding the global presence of informal and non-compliant workplaces. This article comparatively examines how informalisation encourages or inhibits collective action led by migrant workers employed in Italian logistics warehouses (LWs) and the British hand car washes (HCWs). The term collective action derives from mobilisation theory and refers to joint resistance initiatives developed by workers and labour organisations to improve work conditions. The article argues that migrant labour does not necessarily lead to informal practices and claims that labour market regulatory agencies and trade unions play an important but dialectical role in responding to labour market non-compliance and informality. Finally, it notes that sector-based specificities contribute to and potentially inhibit the emergence of collective dynamics in such workplaces.

Using the Canadian General Social Survey of 2016, the present article examines how smoking and drinking associate with earnings. Among both men and women, those who drink have higher wages than the abstainers. The investigation of the channel of impact indicates that health and workplace social capital only explain a small portion of the drinking premium. There is a penalty associated with occasional smoking for men and daily smoking for women. Likewise, health status and workplace social capital cannot fully explain these gaps away. Further explorations, exploiting information on workplace size and union status of the employees, suggest that the patterns are at least partly driven by differentiated treatment and discrimination. The implications are discussed.

This paper explores the power dynamics in the process of Chinese seafarers' labour rights defence activities on social media during the crew change crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. It shows that while exercising symbolic power is at the core of such activities, the effectiveness of symbolic power depends on the networking/distributing power of hub nodes and associational power of the maritime community to help generate visibility. The hub nodes, however, are subject to tight control in China, and as such, their ability to deploy networking/distributing power is constrained. This suggests that worker power is conditioned by sociopolitical factors.

Framing is regarded as the primary mechanism through which unions generate societal power. This article examines the relationship between societal power and framing in a significant case study—a nursing strike that successfully challenged austerity wages in Ireland. Through analysis of messages of support for the strike in newspapers and on Twitter, the sources of societal power in the conflict are identified. The findings indicate that the framing strategies unions adopt and public acceptance of these strategies depend on historical and sectoral factors. In the instant case, nurses benefitted from increased societal support for the broader labour movement and recent waves of protest.

Information and communication technology (ICT) challenges traditional assumptions about the capacity to manage work beyond organizational and physical boundaries. A typology connects a variety of non-traditional work organizations made possible by ICT, including offshoring, outsourcing, remote work, virtual companies and platforms. A model illustrates how new technology serves as a proximate cause for a revision of social contracts between capital, labour and government reached through bargaining and how external shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the institutional environment and limitations in practice influence how technology changes the organization of work. An historical case study of the New Deal Industrial Relations System illustrates the general features of the model for tackling major transformations in the organization of work. A review of the outsourcing and offshoring literature provides examples of how features of the model will potentially influence the future of post-pandemic remote work.

This article investigates whether unions have power to influence turnover of poorly performing chief executive officers (CEOs). Employing the transparency coalition framework, we develop hypotheses regarding CEO tenure given unionization, performance-turnover sensitivity, and firm performance following CEO turnover. We use Cox regression and a data set of US firms from 1993 to 2013 to show that CEO turnover is accelerated at firms that unionize. Discontinuity analysis suggests that the relationship is causal. Overall, the results show the significance of unions in the key corporate governance event of CEO turnover and suggest that, though they may proceed independently and for their own traditional goals of good pay and job conditions for their members, unions can be allies of investors and boards or directors when it comes to removing underperforming CEOs.

This paper examines Iran and Thailand and shows that the distributional consequences of financialisation and globalisation do not depend exclusively on the extent of financial deepening and exposure to globalisation. Instead, the cultural and legal underpinnings of the creditor–debtor relationship and the form of global integration matter more.

The emerging field of green work–life balance (growing from the work–life balance and sustainability fields) largely centres its analysis around the organisational benefits of green work–life balance policies. Consequently, it often focuses on the way in which individual behaviours can reduce the environmental footprint of the organisation. This paper argues that the gendered assumptions underpinning the research mean that the nascent field of green work–life balance has failed to theorise the way in which personal, community, environmental and organisational needs interconnect. Specifically, it has failed to address the way in which ‘care’—for people and the environment—lacks recognition because of gender norms of carework. This paper proposes a theoretical framework of green work–life balance that centres both environmental and people care. This theoretical framework can be used to inform both research and practice, including the way in which unions bargain and campaign for green clauses and just transition.

The objective of European Works Councils (EWCs) is to provide employees in multinational companies with information on transnational issues, and with the opportunity to voice their opinions, in order to influence managerial decision-making. Few, however, reach that goal. This article therefore asks the question: Why? What factors explain whether or not an EWC is able to reach its goals? Building on previously established models and using large-scale survey analysis, this article largely confirms the importance of factors related to management structure and policy, employee-side organisation and interaction with management. As several of the main determinants relate directly or indirectly to managerial agency, the study discusses alternative ways to improve EWC functioning by focusing on the role of management.