Pub Date : 2022-09-24DOI: 10.1177/09596801221127110
Cassandra Bowkett
This article undertakes a cross-national comparison of the aerospace sectors in two ‘liberal’ countries, the UK and Australia, examining how several multinational firms engage with engineering skill institutions: regulation of entry to profession, entry-level and ongoing training. The paper empirically demonstrates and theoretically argues that the social partners and employment protection institutions can in certain contexts play an important role in professional skill development. Institutional legacy matters, shaping multinational responses and providing distinct resources for various actors including unions. Tension between existing skill institutions (‘country’ or ‘sector’ effects) and the capacity of multinationals (MNCs) to shape practices are addressed. Both country cases demonstrate how MNCs may be able to shape practices in such a way that they create ‘MNC’ effects, defined as a combination of large firm/subsidiary, and ‘corporate’ effects, that affect engineering skill development for other firms.
{"title":"MNC effects? A cross-national comparison of the role of aerospace multinationals in the UK and Australian professional engineering skill formation systems","authors":"Cassandra Bowkett","doi":"10.1177/09596801221127110","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09596801221127110","url":null,"abstract":"This article undertakes a cross-national comparison of the aerospace sectors in two ‘liberal’ countries, the UK and Australia, examining how several multinational firms engage with engineering skill institutions: regulation of entry to profession, entry-level and ongoing training. The paper empirically demonstrates and theoretically argues that the social partners and employment protection institutions can in certain contexts play an important role in professional skill development. Institutional legacy matters, shaping multinational responses and providing distinct resources for various actors including unions. Tension between existing skill institutions (‘country’ or ‘sector’ effects) and the capacity of multinationals (MNCs) to shape practices are addressed. Both country cases demonstrate how MNCs may be able to shape practices in such a way that they create ‘MNC’ effects, defined as a combination of large firm/subsidiary, and ‘corporate’ effects, that affect engineering skill development for other firms.","PeriodicalId":47034,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Industrial Relations","volume":"29 1","pages":"123 - 140"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2022-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43868084","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-08DOI: 10.1177/09596801221120468
J. Rubery, D. Grimshaw, P. Méhaut, Claudia Weinkopf
By comparing protections for part-time work in France, Germany and the UK, this article contributes to the comparative debate over whether industrial relations actors are mitigating or creating labour market dualisation. Significant variations in incidence and form of part-time work (a ‘spectrum of precariousness’), between and within the three countries, are explained through a theoretical frame that layers the actions of industrial relations actors against a backdrop of welfare and labour market rules and gender relations. This reveals important path dependent differences in part-time work patterns, including in the lines by which part-time work is segmented. The findings call for a more nuanced approach to dualisation that recognises that trade union responses to precarious work, albeit conditioned by their own path dependencies, have involved active efforts to extend protections to part-timers through twin strategies of support for legislative instruments and new forms of organising, albeit with only partial success.
{"title":"Dualisation and part-time work in France, Germany and the UK: Accounting for within and between country differences in precarious work","authors":"J. Rubery, D. Grimshaw, P. Méhaut, Claudia Weinkopf","doi":"10.1177/09596801221120468","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09596801221120468","url":null,"abstract":"By comparing protections for part-time work in France, Germany and the UK, this article contributes to the comparative debate over whether industrial relations actors are mitigating or creating labour market dualisation. Significant variations in incidence and form of part-time work (a ‘spectrum of precariousness’), between and within the three countries, are explained through a theoretical frame that layers the actions of industrial relations actors against a backdrop of welfare and labour market rules and gender relations. This reveals important path dependent differences in part-time work patterns, including in the lines by which part-time work is segmented. The findings call for a more nuanced approach to dualisation that recognises that trade union responses to precarious work, albeit conditioned by their own path dependencies, have involved active efforts to extend protections to part-timers through twin strategies of support for legislative instruments and new forms of organising, albeit with only partial success.","PeriodicalId":47034,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Industrial Relations","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2022-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43235811","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-13DOI: 10.1177/09596801221118852
B. Samaluk, Kairit Kall
This article studies trade union revitalization within broader trends of projectification that marks a shift towards project work and its temporary organization. It accordingly compares instances of project-based organizational restructuring in post-crisis Estonia and Slovenia in order to identify their drivers, power resources employed and their outcomes and wider impact. In both countries, project-based organizational restructuring was driven by proactive activists capable of innovatively utilizing available power resources and new opportunity structures that had opened up with EU integration. While Slovenian unions utilized a more diverse set of power resources and revitalization strategies, activists in both countries stimulated trade union project-based organizational restructuring in order to initiate and sustain their main, context specific, revitalization strategies. Findings also show that project-based organizational restructuring can be an interim phase for unions to increase their resources and use them to turn their revitalization strategies into more permanent ones.
{"title":"Trade union project-based revitalization strategies in Central and Eastern Europe: The Case of Slovenia and Estonia","authors":"B. Samaluk, Kairit Kall","doi":"10.1177/09596801221118852","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09596801221118852","url":null,"abstract":"This article studies trade union revitalization within broader trends of projectification that marks a shift towards project work and its temporary organization. It accordingly compares instances of project-based organizational restructuring in post-crisis Estonia and Slovenia in order to identify their drivers, power resources employed and their outcomes and wider impact. In both countries, project-based organizational restructuring was driven by proactive activists capable of innovatively utilizing available power resources and new opportunity structures that had opened up with EU integration. While Slovenian unions utilized a more diverse set of power resources and revitalization strategies, activists in both countries stimulated trade union project-based organizational restructuring in order to initiate and sustain their main, context specific, revitalization strategies. Findings also show that project-based organizational restructuring can be an interim phase for unions to increase their resources and use them to turn their revitalization strategies into more permanent ones.","PeriodicalId":47034,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Industrial Relations","volume":"29 1","pages":"7 - 24"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2022-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42031458","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-30DOI: 10.1177/09596801221104943
Orestis Papadopoulos, Gregoris Ioannou
Existing literature suggests that terms and conditions of employment are universally poor in hospitality and catering. Based on fieldwork comprising more than 70 semi-structured in-depth interviews conducted in the UK and Greece in 2018 and 2019, this article maps the field in the two countries and discusses the key parameters that structure working conditions, pay determination, and the impact of trade unionism and absence thereof. Poor working conditions and precariousness are prevalent in both contexts as expected, but surprisingly wages and other terms and conditions at least for a significant section of the hospitality workforce are comparatively better in Greece. An explanation for these findings is suggested with reference to the tradition of collective bargaining in hotels in Greece which partially survived the 2008 crisis and the legal reforms that followed. Trade unionism, despite its weakening and discrediting, has left its mark as a tradition contributing to the emergence of formal labour-based initiatives and more broadly to maintaining an openness to collectivism and collective action, more so than in the UK context. This combination of the distinct institutional and sectoral features of the Greek case and worker agency has served to ameliorate the context and content of employment for substantial sections of the hospitality workforce.
{"title":"Working in hospitality and catering in Greece and the UK: Do trade union membership and collective bargaining still matter?","authors":"Orestis Papadopoulos, Gregoris Ioannou","doi":"10.1177/09596801221104943","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09596801221104943","url":null,"abstract":"Existing literature suggests that terms and conditions of employment are universally poor in hospitality and catering. Based on fieldwork comprising more than 70 semi-structured in-depth interviews conducted in the UK and Greece in 2018 and 2019, this article maps the field in the two countries and discusses the key parameters that structure working conditions, pay determination, and the impact of trade unionism and absence thereof. Poor working conditions and precariousness are prevalent in both contexts as expected, but surprisingly wages and other terms and conditions at least for a significant section of the hospitality workforce are comparatively better in Greece. An explanation for these findings is suggested with reference to the tradition of collective bargaining in hotels in Greece which partially survived the 2008 crisis and the legal reforms that followed. Trade unionism, despite its weakening and discrediting, has left its mark as a tradition contributing to the emergence of formal labour-based initiatives and more broadly to maintaining an openness to collectivism and collective action, more so than in the UK context. This combination of the distinct institutional and sectoral features of the Greek case and worker agency has served to ameliorate the context and content of employment for substantial sections of the hospitality workforce.","PeriodicalId":47034,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Industrial Relations","volume":"29 1","pages":"105 - 122"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2022-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45252360","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-09DOI: 10.1177/09596801221093059
Joel Kaitila, Ville-Pekka Sorsa, Antti Alaja
Industrial relations scholars are paying increasing attention to the role of ideas in explaining shifts in bargaining systems and wage policies. This article contributes to this growing body of literature by conducting a meso-level analysis of the uses and impacts of ideas in wage regulation policy processes in coordinated market economies. Through our in-depth case study of the Finnish policy process leading to the Competitiveness Pact of 2016, we argue that certain ideas – which we call the ‘economic outlook’ – prescribed and legitimized exhausting institutional resources in wage regulation and enabled temporary consensus among divergent interests regarding wage policy. The economic outlook linked and enabled compromises between wage policy and wage regulation interests and effectively solidified a commitment to an uncertain policy process. The case study suggests that an ideational analysis of policy processes can offer explanations for shifts in wage policy and regulation that deviate from macro-level regime shifts. While all Nordic countries have faced similar economic and institutional reform pressures, Finland’s readoption of centralized bargaining shows that national policy ideas can drive distinct industrial relations patterns within the Nordic context.
{"title":"The power of the economic outlook: An ideational explanation of the distinct pattern of Finnish wage setting within the Nordic context","authors":"Joel Kaitila, Ville-Pekka Sorsa, Antti Alaja","doi":"10.1177/09596801221093059","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09596801221093059","url":null,"abstract":"Industrial relations scholars are paying increasing attention to the role of ideas in explaining shifts in bargaining systems and wage policies. This article contributes to this growing body of literature by conducting a meso-level analysis of the uses and impacts of ideas in wage regulation policy processes in coordinated market economies. Through our in-depth case study of the Finnish policy process leading to the Competitiveness Pact of 2016, we argue that certain ideas – which we call the ‘economic outlook’ – prescribed and legitimized exhausting institutional resources in wage regulation and enabled temporary consensus among divergent interests regarding wage policy. The economic outlook linked and enabled compromises between wage policy and wage regulation interests and effectively solidified a commitment to an uncertain policy process. The case study suggests that an ideational analysis of policy processes can offer explanations for shifts in wage policy and regulation that deviate from macro-level regime shifts. While all Nordic countries have faced similar economic and institutional reform pressures, Finland’s readoption of centralized bargaining shows that national policy ideas can drive distinct industrial relations patterns within the Nordic context.","PeriodicalId":47034,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Industrial Relations","volume":"28 1","pages":"471 - 490"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2022-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41923878","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-06DOI: 10.1177/09596801221094740
Darragh Golden, R. Erne
In aviation, EU single market rules empowered Ryanair over three decades to defeat all pilot unions across Europe, regardless of the notionally strong power resources on which they were relying in their countries. Nonetheless, in December 2017, a transnational group of union-related pilots, the European Employee Representative Committee was critical in forcing Ryanair to finally recognize trade unions. This study shows that multinationals’ ability to circumvent national union power resources does not necessarily undermine transnational collective action. Hence, transnational union strength does not primarily depend on an aggregation of national power resources, but on union activists’ ability to exploit union-friendly peculiarities that the EU governance regime is also providing. We show that the apparently weaker institutional power resources at EU level provides more effective leverage for transnational collective action than apparently stronger power resources embedded within French, Danish, or Norwegian labour law. This requires an understanding of scale.
{"title":"Ryanair pilots: Unlikely pioneers of transnational collective action","authors":"Darragh Golden, R. Erne","doi":"10.1177/09596801221094740","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09596801221094740","url":null,"abstract":"In aviation, EU single market rules empowered Ryanair over three decades to defeat all pilot unions across Europe, regardless of the notionally strong power resources on which they were relying in their countries. Nonetheless, in December 2017, a transnational group of union-related pilots, the European Employee Representative Committee was critical in forcing Ryanair to finally recognize trade unions. This study shows that multinationals’ ability to circumvent national union power resources does not necessarily undermine transnational collective action. Hence, transnational union strength does not primarily depend on an aggregation of national power resources, but on union activists’ ability to exploit union-friendly peculiarities that the EU governance regime is also providing. We show that the apparently weaker institutional power resources at EU level provides more effective leverage for transnational collective action than apparently stronger power resources embedded within French, Danish, or Norwegian labour law. This requires an understanding of scale.","PeriodicalId":47034,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Industrial Relations","volume":"28 1","pages":"451 - 469"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2022-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47435880","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-10DOI: 10.1177/09596801221082456
Anke Hassel, Felix Sieker
While the effects of the platform economy on work are mainly studied through the lens of gig or cloud workers, many more employees are likely to be affected in non-platform firms or sectors. We discuss the mechanisms of platform economy’s impact on the employment relationships and indirect effect on employment trends. Platform firms enter the service economy with business models that put existing service providers under pressure and advance a platform model of employment relationship. However, their transformative force is limited by three factors: employment regulations, access to welfare provisions and the employment relations at legacy firms. We examine the case of Amazon logistics in the US, Germany and the UK and find that the employment contract, as a legal institution, prevents the dissemination of independent contracting as the preferred employment model. Moreover, the welfare state has a paradoxical effect on platform work: universal welfare and liberal employment law facilitate the rise of precarious work.
{"title":"The platform effect: How Amazon changed work in logistics in Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom","authors":"Anke Hassel, Felix Sieker","doi":"10.1177/09596801221082456","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09596801221082456","url":null,"abstract":"While the effects of the platform economy on work are mainly studied through the lens of gig or cloud workers, many more employees are likely to be affected in non-platform firms or sectors. We discuss the mechanisms of platform economy’s impact on the employment relationships and indirect effect on employment trends. Platform firms enter the service economy with business models that put existing service providers under pressure and advance a platform model of employment relationship. However, their transformative force is limited by three factors: employment regulations, access to welfare provisions and the employment relations at legacy firms. We examine the case of Amazon logistics in the US, Germany and the UK and find that the employment contract, as a legal institution, prevents the dissemination of independent contracting as the preferred employment model. Moreover, the welfare state has a paradoxical effect on platform work: universal welfare and liberal employment law facilitate the rise of precarious work.","PeriodicalId":47034,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Industrial Relations","volume":"28 1","pages":"363 - 382"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2022-04-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48010439","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1177/09596801221075077
{"title":"Corrigendum to Work accommodations and sustainable working: The role of social partners and industrial relations in the employment of disabled and older people in Estonia, Hungary and Poland","authors":"","doi":"10.1177/09596801221075077","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09596801221075077","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47034,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Industrial Relations","volume":"28 1","pages":"123 - 125"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47602961","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-28DOI: 10.1177/09596801211054364
F. Suleman, Henrique Duarte, C. Brewster, A. Suleman
A widespread rhetoric suggests that market-like rules dominate employment relationships, and particularly compensation, but empirical evidence is inconclusive. This research examines organisations’ compensation policies in clusters of European capitalist economies to test such a hypothesis. Four fuzzy clusters emerged from data, namely, Standard, Internalised, Competitive and Incentive, which illustrates a division between organisation- and market-based models. Collective pay rules characterise organisation-based model, and this is the predominant model in all countries except for the liberal market economies. Firms from different models of capitalism rely on internal labour market pay rules, suggesting that the scope of the liberal market system is narrow. Differences within clusters of capitalist economies suggest a role for agency and hidden labour market specificities in each grouping. The similarities of pay policies open room to identifying capitalist economies differently.
{"title":"Compensation policies and comparative capitalisms","authors":"F. Suleman, Henrique Duarte, C. Brewster, A. Suleman","doi":"10.1177/09596801211054364","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09596801211054364","url":null,"abstract":"A widespread rhetoric suggests that market-like rules dominate employment relationships, and particularly compensation, but empirical evidence is inconclusive. This research examines organisations’ compensation policies in clusters of European capitalist economies to test such a hypothesis. Four fuzzy clusters emerged from data, namely, Standard, Internalised, Competitive and Incentive, which illustrates a division between organisation- and market-based models. Collective pay rules characterise organisation-based model, and this is the predominant model in all countries except for the liberal market economies. Firms from different models of capitalism rely on internal labour market pay rules, suggesting that the scope of the liberal market system is narrow. Differences within clusters of capitalist economies suggest a role for agency and hidden labour market specificities in each grouping. The similarities of pay policies open room to identifying capitalist economies differently.","PeriodicalId":47034,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Industrial Relations","volume":"28 1","pages":"405 - 425"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2022-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49170155","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-17DOI: 10.1177/09596801211063306
Adam Rogalewski
This article analyses challenges in organising Polish workers by Unison (UK) and Unia (Switzerland). Using case studies of projects delivered by those unions with the aim to enhancing inclusion of Polish workers, the article argues that the internal union dynamics, such as union identity and structures are instrumental for a sustainable organisation of migrant members. Furthermore, the example of Unia demonstrates that an important factor for successful organising of Polish workers was the recognition of their collective agency and their contribution to union revitalisation. Finally, the research demonstrates that previous membership in Polish trade unions was not a significant factor influencing their involvement in British and Swiss workers’ movements.
{"title":"Trade unions challenges in organising Polish workers: A comparative case study of British and Swiss trade union strategies","authors":"Adam Rogalewski","doi":"10.1177/09596801211063306","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09596801211063306","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyses challenges in organising Polish workers by Unison (UK) and Unia (Switzerland). Using case studies of projects delivered by those unions with the aim to enhancing inclusion of Polish workers, the article argues that the internal union dynamics, such as union identity and structures are instrumental for a sustainable organisation of migrant members. Furthermore, the example of Unia demonstrates that an important factor for successful organising of Polish workers was the recognition of their collective agency and their contribution to union revitalisation. Finally, the research demonstrates that previous membership in Polish trade unions was not a significant factor influencing their involvement in British and Swiss workers’ movements.","PeriodicalId":47034,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Industrial Relations","volume":"28 1","pages":"385 - 404"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2022-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44983644","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}