INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS JOURNAL最新文献

Unionisation continues to decline in the UK. This paper examines the changes over time in the relationship between politics and union membership, and it is based on European Social Survey data from 2002 to 2018. Political attitudes have been analysed by considering the interest in politics and ideological orientation according to self-placement on the left–right scale, and behaviour looking at political participation. Political orientation (being left-wing) and political participation are determinants of union membership. However, in the UK, a centrist political orientation prevails, and political participation is low. The relationship between political attitudes, behaviour and unionisation over time has been stable.

The 2016 Trade Union Act (TUA) added ‘draconian’ restrictions to the already tortuous postal balloting regime for holding lawful strikes. The government predicted that 29–35% of ballots would lose. Using data from trade union returns to the Certification Officer, the first detailed account of ballots under the TUA shows that unions have, generally, mobilised successfully to ‘get the vote out’. Far fewer ballots now fail to win a simple majority; the 50% turnout barrier has led to only half the predicted losses; the 40% yes-vote rule in ‘important public services’ has limited independent effect. To avoid reballoting under the 6-month ballot mandate, unions often launch into longer (mainly discontinuous) strikes. Judged on these criteria, the TUA has failed, which suggests further legislation will follow. Some national ballots have been lost, but the tactic of disaggregated ballots has seen unions strike (associated) employers where threshold turnout has been achieved.

This paper focuses on the changing relationship between attitudes towards European Union (EU) membership and workers affected by globalization and technological advances in the lead-up to the UK's EU referendum in 2016. It is found that workers employed in middling occupations, where both relative wages and employment have fallen, were significantly more likely than workers in high-paying occupations to indicate that the UK's long-term policy should be to leave the EU. This view was particularly noticeable amongst males with middling occupations in the post-recessionary period between 2012 and 2015 and had increased significantly relative to the mainly pre-recessionary period between 2004 and 2008.

The need to promote fairness at work, as a way of both enhancing employee well-being and raising productivity, has become increasingly central to political discourse. There has been little research, however, on perceptions of fairness across the diverse spectrum of employees in the workforce—the extent to which they regard their organisations as fair and the work experiences that most strongly inform their judgements about fairness. The paper draws on a representative national sample of British employees to examine the distribution and potential determinants of their views about the overall fairness of their organisations and how these differ by occupational class and sex. As well as pointing to the central importance of employee voice and the quality of supervisory treatment, it shows that the level of work intensity and job security are strongly associated with evaluations of fairness. In contrast, the effects of pay policies are relatively modest.

Although trade union density is the most influential and most commonly used indicator to map trade union strength, comparing between countries and time, the author argues that trade union density is lacking both specificity and comparability. Additionally, many studies on industrial relations neglect developing countries. Therefore, the paper offers a new concept based on a combination of different theoretical approaches that identify determinants of trade union strength involving developing countries. On that basis, the author creates a novel, composite index that is better at capturing trade union strength than previous indices. First evaluations of this collective labour force index, which covers the years 2000 to 2016 in 72 countries, show that it is quite capable of doing so.

Although the scale of the current crisis undoubtedly implies heavy repercussions on employment and work, this paper draws on the experience of French firms that implemented various workforce adjustments during the 2008 crisis. We focus on how adjustments were negotiated and the bargaining leeway for employee representatives. On the basis of 14 case studies, we seek to determine whether the crisis has led to concession bargaining and, if so, assess the characteristics of the bargaining. Mobilizing the power resources approach, we identify three types of concession bargaining based on their reciprocal and reversible features and question how actors were able to mobilize resources (institutional, associational and structural) at the workplace level. Our analysis shows that times of crisis are conducive to concession bargaining, the counterparts of which are not always identifiable for employees. Ultimately, it raises the need to identify new resources that unions could mobilize to defend jobs in the face of the COVID-19 crisis.

The coronavirus crisis reignited the debate over the ethical dimension of employment practices in the hotel sector. This study, which draws on the findings from semistructured interviews conducted with 51 Polish hotel workers during the pandemic, aims to ascertain their views on fairness in the workplace, their well-being, the attractiveness of hotel employment and collective representation. Our findings were, in many respects, at variance with earlier research and our a priori assumptions. Specifically, most interviewees had regular contracts, were satisfied with their jobs, rated the attractiveness of hotel employment highly and did not complain of emotional labour. Some highlighted managerial disrespectful treatment, especially after the outbreak of the pandemic. Most were indifferent to unions or viewed them unfavourably, doubted the efficacy of collective action and were uninterested in unionisation, with the crisis having little impact on their attitudes. The paper concludes by discussing theoretical and practical implications of the findings.

The fragility of employers' voluntary, business-case-based improvements to employment standards for front-line hourly paid staff is revealed in two organisational case studies from the art and care sectors. For different reasons, Covid provided a catalyst for employers to enact passive and active exit strategies that made work more precarious.

Despite consistently high rates of part-time employment among older women, the quality of this cohort's work is largely under-researched with the focus being mainly on younger women. To address this gap, our paper engages with the key strands of this debate—age, gender and employment status—to interrogate the job characteristics and position of this worker cohort in the Irish labour market. Findings reveal notable differences between this cohort's job characteristics compared with those of other part-time workers and older women working full-time. These job characteristics include low-wage employment in poor-quality jobs, suggesting that job quality is influenced by age, gender and employment status, raising concerns regarding the likelihood for precarious employment among this cohort. In addition to individual-level consequences, this study's findings have major implications for public and organisational policy on part-time labour market participation, highlighting the need for a new research agenda on older workers.

The near-exclusive privileging of the rational-strategic action framework in employment relations shapes debate on the intersection of employment relations with claims for corporate social responsibilities (CSRs). Employment relations scholarship and trade unions are readily disposed to regard company claims regarding CSR as strategic market response. Prospects for widening the scope of debate come into view through further engagement with a moral turn in socio-economic scholarship and greater public salience of demand for sustainable development. This article investigates the moral dimension and its invocation by labour and management actors. It contends that moral ideations and motivations are under-recognized yet play an inherent part in employment relations. It draws particular attention to the moral dimension of transnational actors' interests and efforts in the negotiation, enactment and sustaining of Global Framework Agreements.