International Labour Review最新文献

In response to a renewed focus on multi-employer bargaining in policy recommendations and policymaking, this article analyses and discusses coordination in the Danish multi-employer bargaining system. Focusing on two main dimensions of coordination – horizontal, between various key actors at a centralized national level, and vertical, between national and local actors – I find that several interwoven processes of coordination strengthen the multi-employer bargaining system, offering potential benefits for both employers and employees. However, it takes considerable resources to be part of a highly coordinated multi-employer bargaining system and to harvest the benefits. Accordingly, various capacities among key actors are decisive for a well-functioning multi-employer bargaining system.

There is renewed interest around the world in the potential of multilevel collective bargaining to contribute to a more inclusive and sustainable model of economic development. Recent country experiences nevertheless highlight tensions and contradictions in the roll-out of new collective bargaining systems and suggest knowledge gaps regarding the idiosyncrasies of institutional design. This Special Issue provides a critical appraisal of the empirical evidence to date, guided by industrial relations institutional theory, and identifies lessons for policy and practice in the building and sustaining of effective multilevel bargaining systems.

This article reviews the international evidence for economic benefits of multilevel collective bargaining, indicating that the expected gains are highly contingent and depend upon a raft of interlocking enabling conditions. We argue that the process of institutional reform requires that particular attention be paid to four key factors - a country's political commitment to social dialogue, the degree of understanding of the complex institutional architecture of collective bargaining, the prioritizing of inclusive democratic representation and the resources available to invest in the capacities of workers' and employers' organizations. The article concludes by setting out key policy issues.

This article examines the preconditions for successful implementation of multi-employer collective bargaining in countries lacking supportive institutions. It presents cases from the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia, three liberal market economies where multi-employer bargaining has either survived in some sectors or where there have been recent attempts to strengthen it. The findings highlight the importance of both “regulatory” institutions (e.g. laws) and “cognitive” institutions (e.g. social norms) to ensure that, first, employment relations actors have the power and resources to support multi-employer bargaining in practice and, second, workers and employers accept this form of wage-setting as legitimate.

This article explores the rise of worker-driven social responsibility (WSR) initiatives to combat labour and human rights abuse in global supply chains. We focus on the Dindigul Agreement, a pioneering WSR agreement initiated by an independent, majority Dalit trade union run by women in Dindigul, India, which seeks to address gender-based violence in garment supply chains. Through key informant interviews and documentary analysis including coding in NVivo 12, we explore the establishment of the Dindigul Agreement, its distinctiveness in relation to other WSR agreements and its interactions with other supply chain governance tools.

Economists have long theorized that sentiments, or spontaneous beliefs that are unjustified by economic fundamentals, are a driver of economic behaviours. In this study, I explore whether such sentiments influenced firms’ behaviours following the outbreak of COVID-19. Using a sample of Italian firms, I observe that in the immediate aftermath of the outbreak, firms’ expectations about post-COVID economic recovery largely reflected beliefs unexplained by their COVID-related experiences. I then show that these beliefs were associated with firms’ labour market behaviours. Firms that displayed more pessimistic beliefs were more likely to implement cost-cutting labour market measures, such as dismissing employees and reducing work hours.

Despite the importance of household enterprises in employment in developing economies, little is known about their creation, survival and growth. This article examines the dynamics of household enterprises, using panel data for the period 1998–2018 in Egypt. The analysis explores the individual, household and enterprise characteristics that contribute to these dynamics. The findings show that high rates of enterprise creation and closure in the household enterprise sector drive employment, more so than dynamics of growth in existing enterprises. Household enterprises may be a fallback or survival strategy for less educated and less privileged workers, but may also provide an opportunity for accumulating wealth.