Pub Date : 2024-09-14DOI: 10.1177/0143831x241276945
Andrew DA Smith, Kevin D Tennent
How managers collaborate across firm boundaries to legitimate novel institutional arrangements in the eyes of the public is a topic that has attracted the interest of a wide range of researchers. This article, which is informed by this literature, explores the rise and fall of the employee representation movement in the United States. The period 1913–1935 saw intense interest on the part of American managers in the creation of non-union employee representation plans (ERPs) such as works councils and shop committees. The article uses archival and other primary sources to argue that the employee representation movement of the pre-1935 era was an attempt to legitimate big business in the eyes of a wide range of stakeholders, not just workers.
{"title":"The employee representation plan movement in the United States 1913–1935: The attempted legitimation of novel organizational forms","authors":"Andrew DA Smith, Kevin D Tennent","doi":"10.1177/0143831x241276945","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0143831x241276945","url":null,"abstract":"How managers collaborate across firm boundaries to legitimate novel institutional arrangements in the eyes of the public is a topic that has attracted the interest of a wide range of researchers. This article, which is informed by this literature, explores the rise and fall of the employee representation movement in the United States. The period 1913–1935 saw intense interest on the part of American managers in the creation of non-union employee representation plans (ERPs) such as works councils and shop committees. The article uses archival and other primary sources to argue that the employee representation movement of the pre-1935 era was an attempt to legitimate big business in the eyes of a wide range of stakeholders, not just workers.","PeriodicalId":47456,"journal":{"name":"Economic and Industrial Democracy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142255163","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-09-10DOI: 10.1177/0143831x241268171
Heather Connolly, Élodie Béthoux, Rémi Bourguignon, Arnaud Mias, Paul Tainturier, Pauline de Becdelièvre
This article analyses the 2017 reforms to worker representation in France, focusing on the transition and implementation phases. The authors conducted 160 interviews with managers, union and employee representatives in seven large French companies across retail, finance, energy and pharmaceuticals. The article introduces the notion of institutional discontinuity to describe the path taken through the 2017 reforms, where a change to the formal institutional structures is expected to bring about a change in the functioning of representative institutions. The findings contribute to debates on the trajectories of employment relations in France. The authors argue that institutional discontinuity has opened a wider path towards more discretion-enhancing representative institutions, reflecting a clearer neoliberal path in employment relations. Yet, recognising that changing institutional form does not necessarily, nor automatically result in institutions functioning differently, the authors also analyse how actors play a role in shaping the process, whether they try to facilitate the change or to limit its effects.
{"title":"Neoliberalism by stealth? Labour reforms and institutional discontinuity in worker representation in France","authors":"Heather Connolly, Élodie Béthoux, Rémi Bourguignon, Arnaud Mias, Paul Tainturier, Pauline de Becdelièvre","doi":"10.1177/0143831x241268171","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0143831x241268171","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyses the 2017 reforms to worker representation in France, focusing on the transition and implementation phases. The authors conducted 160 interviews with managers, union and employee representatives in seven large French companies across retail, finance, energy and pharmaceuticals. The article introduces the notion of institutional discontinuity to describe the path taken through the 2017 reforms, where a change to the formal institutional structures is expected to bring about a change in the functioning of representative institutions. The findings contribute to debates on the trajectories of employment relations in France. The authors argue that institutional discontinuity has opened a wider path towards more discretion-enhancing representative institutions, reflecting a clearer neoliberal path in employment relations. Yet, recognising that changing institutional form does not necessarily, nor automatically result in institutions functioning differently, the authors also analyse how actors play a role in shaping the process, whether they try to facilitate the change or to limit its effects.","PeriodicalId":47456,"journal":{"name":"Economic and Industrial Democracy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142179382","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-09-07DOI: 10.1177/0143831x241273044
Ignacio Bretos, Rory Ridley-Duff, David Wren
Drawing on an interpretative study primarily based on two waves of interviews, the authors traced two cooperativisation experiences over 10 years from an actor-centred approach. The shift to worker ownership did not automatically lead to workplace democratisation and workers’ emancipation. Indeed, the early development of the cooperativisation experiences was marked by internal conflict and worker-owners’ dissatisfaction. Over time, a paradoxical alternative workplace was consolidated, in which worker-owners’ emancipation was ultimately sustained through the exploitation of non-member employees. The study makes a twofold contribution to the cooperativisation literature. First, it moves beyond utopian or sceptical perspectives to provide a more nuanced view of worker-buyout co-ops, emphasising the paradoxical nature of their emancipatory potential. Second, the study’s longitudinal analysis of co-ops formed out of financially sound firms, rather than bankrupted ones, advances knowledge of the diversity of cooperativisation experiences and the mechanisms that contribute to the longevity and sustainability of worker-buyout co-ops.
{"title":"Crafting alternative work organisations: Paradoxes of workplace democracy and emancipation in worker-buyout cooperatives","authors":"Ignacio Bretos, Rory Ridley-Duff, David Wren","doi":"10.1177/0143831x241273044","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0143831x241273044","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing on an interpretative study primarily based on two waves of interviews, the authors traced two cooperativisation experiences over 10 years from an actor-centred approach. The shift to worker ownership did not automatically lead to workplace democratisation and workers’ emancipation. Indeed, the early development of the cooperativisation experiences was marked by internal conflict and worker-owners’ dissatisfaction. Over time, a paradoxical alternative workplace was consolidated, in which worker-owners’ emancipation was ultimately sustained through the exploitation of non-member employees. The study makes a twofold contribution to the cooperativisation literature. First, it moves beyond utopian or sceptical perspectives to provide a more nuanced view of worker-buyout co-ops, emphasising the paradoxical nature of their emancipatory potential. Second, the study’s longitudinal analysis of co-ops formed out of financially sound firms, rather than bankrupted ones, advances knowledge of the diversity of cooperativisation experiences and the mechanisms that contribute to the longevity and sustainability of worker-buyout co-ops.","PeriodicalId":47456,"journal":{"name":"Economic and Industrial Democracy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142179383","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-09-05DOI: 10.1177/0143831x241272968
Mark Harcourt, Gregor Gall, Margaret Wilson
By understanding both the role of unions as an ‘experience good’ and the place of inertia in contributing to the prevalence of non-unionism, this article suggests that a union default could have a major impact in recruiting new members. Drawing upon a sub-sample of non-union workers in unionised workplaces from a study conducted in New Zealand, the authors show that a significant minority would stay in membership and support a union default. These results have positive implications for understanding how to shape the preferences of non-union workers in union and non-union workplaces.
{"title":"The union default: Increasing union membership by facilitating the experience of unionism and overcoming the role of inertia","authors":"Mark Harcourt, Gregor Gall, Margaret Wilson","doi":"10.1177/0143831x241272968","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0143831x241272968","url":null,"abstract":"By understanding both the role of unions as an ‘experience good’ and the place of inertia in contributing to the prevalence of non-unionism, this article suggests that a union default could have a major impact in recruiting new members. Drawing upon a sub-sample of non-union workers in unionised workplaces from a study conducted in New Zealand, the authors show that a significant minority would stay in membership and support a union default. These results have positive implications for understanding how to shape the preferences of non-union workers in union and non-union workplaces.","PeriodicalId":47456,"journal":{"name":"Economic and Industrial Democracy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142179387","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-09-04DOI: 10.1177/0143831x241268292
Luigi Stirpe, Antonio J Revilla
Although high-investment HR systems (HIHRS) help forge a more dedicated workforce, our understanding of their effectiveness across employee profiles is imperfect. Integrating the social exchange perspective with human capital insights, this article investigates the engagement outcomes of HIHRS for employees of different education levels. Analyses on an international sample of 24,976 employees reveal, first, that HIHRS deliver greater marginal engagement outcomes at low to moderate than at moderate to high intensities, defining a concave HIHRS–engagement relationship. Additionally, they show that at low to moderate intensities, the curve rises less steeply for more (versus less) educated employees, suggesting that education lessens the marginal engagement outcomes of HIHRS. However, at moderate to high intensities, these marginal outcomes drop less steeply for more educated employees. Such findings highlight the intricacies of HIHRS as motivational tools and advise cautious use by employers.
{"title":"Elucidating the relationship between high-investment HR systems and workforce engagement: The role of employee education","authors":"Luigi Stirpe, Antonio J Revilla","doi":"10.1177/0143831x241268292","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0143831x241268292","url":null,"abstract":"Although high-investment HR systems (HIHRS) help forge a more dedicated workforce, our understanding of their effectiveness across employee profiles is imperfect. Integrating the social exchange perspective with human capital insights, this article investigates the engagement outcomes of HIHRS for employees of different education levels. Analyses on an international sample of 24,976 employees reveal, first, that HIHRS deliver greater marginal engagement outcomes at low to moderate than at moderate to high intensities, defining a concave HIHRS–engagement relationship. Additionally, they show that at low to moderate intensities, the curve rises less steeply for more (versus less) educated employees, suggesting that education lessens the marginal engagement outcomes of HIHRS. However, at moderate to high intensities, these marginal outcomes drop less steeply for more educated employees. Such findings highlight the intricacies of HIHRS as motivational tools and advise cautious use by employers.","PeriodicalId":47456,"journal":{"name":"Economic and Industrial Democracy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142179384","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-09-03DOI: 10.1177/0143831x241265911
Jannes ten Berge, Fabian Dekker
There is an emerging literature focusing on the impact of technological change on work quality. This study contributes to the literature by examining (1) workers’ expectations regarding the effect of technological change on perceived job insecurity, as well as physical and psychological job demands, and (2) how these expectations are shaped by the degree of labor organization within countries. The article uses cross-national data for 25 OECD countries. It is found that labor organization decreases perceived levels of job insecurity related to technological change, but also lowers workers’ expectations of technology improving the quality of their work. These findings may indicate that in environments where technological change is less strongly moderated by organized labor, workers put greater emphasis on technology as a driver of (short-term) work changes. Alternatively, these findings may signal a lack of ‘worker power’ of organized labor to enforce technologies that improve the quality of employment.
{"title":"New technology and workers’ perceived impact on job quality: Does labor organization matter?","authors":"Jannes ten Berge, Fabian Dekker","doi":"10.1177/0143831x241265911","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0143831x241265911","url":null,"abstract":"There is an emerging literature focusing on the impact of technological change on work quality. This study contributes to the literature by examining (1) workers’ expectations regarding the effect of technological change on perceived job insecurity, as well as physical and psychological job demands, and (2) how these expectations are shaped by the degree of labor organization within countries. The article uses cross-national data for 25 OECD countries. It is found that labor organization decreases perceived levels of job insecurity related to technological change, but also lowers workers’ expectations of technology improving the quality of their work. These findings may indicate that in environments where technological change is less strongly moderated by organized labor, workers put greater emphasis on technology as a driver of (short-term) work changes. Alternatively, these findings may signal a lack of ‘worker power’ of organized labor to enforce technologies that improve the quality of employment.","PeriodicalId":47456,"journal":{"name":"Economic and Industrial Democracy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142179385","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-08-26DOI: 10.1177/0143831x241265901
Fredrik Engelstad, Sissel Trygstad
Working life relations are in a continuous state of change. So are the institutions of working life democracy. In Norway, three well-established components of working life democracy have been in place since the 1960s and 1970s, developing along different institutional tracks: collective bargaining at the national level, employee representation on the boards, and employee participation in protection of health and safety in the work environment. From 2007, legal protection of whistleblowing was included in the Working Environment Act (WEA), anchored in specific institutional arrangements. Before the turn of the century, a common assumption was that whistleblowing mainly targets irregular, even criminal, dispositions of the enterprise. After the inclusion in the WEA, data from Norway from the years 2016 to 2022 demonstrate that to a large extent, psycho-social problems have become the object of whistleblowing. However, institutional specificities limit the handling of social interaction problems by the traditional work environment arrangements. Against the background of its separate institutions for the handling of grievances, it is argued that whistleblowing, along with freedom of expression, are parts of a fourth track of democratization. Even though the institutional setup of whistleblowing has been revised twice since 2007, the findings indicate that additional revisions are still desirable.
{"title":"Whistleblowing – an extension of working life democracy? The case of Norway","authors":"Fredrik Engelstad, Sissel Trygstad","doi":"10.1177/0143831x241265901","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0143831x241265901","url":null,"abstract":"Working life relations are in a continuous state of change. So are the institutions of working life democracy. In Norway, three well-established components of working life democracy have been in place since the 1960s and 1970s, developing along different institutional tracks: collective bargaining at the national level, employee representation on the boards, and employee participation in protection of health and safety in the work environment. From 2007, legal protection of whistleblowing was included in the Working Environment Act (WEA), anchored in specific institutional arrangements. Before the turn of the century, a common assumption was that whistleblowing mainly targets irregular, even criminal, dispositions of the enterprise. After the inclusion in the WEA, data from Norway from the years 2016 to 2022 demonstrate that to a large extent, psycho-social problems have become the object of whistleblowing. However, institutional specificities limit the handling of social interaction problems by the traditional work environment arrangements. Against the background of its separate institutions for the handling of grievances, it is argued that whistleblowing, along with freedom of expression, are parts of a fourth track of democratization. Even though the institutional setup of whistleblowing has been revised twice since 2007, the findings indicate that additional revisions are still desirable.","PeriodicalId":47456,"journal":{"name":"Economic and Industrial Democracy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-08-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142179386","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-08-24DOI: 10.1177/0143831x241265755
Bernadette Scott, Rhiannon Lammie
This article provides critical evaluation of the impact of Covid-19 on NHS employee perceptions of workplace well-being at The State Hospital (Scotland) during the global pandemic, focusing on lessons learned for NHS management during times of crisis. An exploratory case study qual→QUAL sequential dependent strategy was adopted, extracting themes from the NHS deployed Staff Well-Being Survey of summer 2020 (227 respondents, 35% of all staff) (qual) to inform thematic progression for 10 in-depth interviews with a range of NHS employees (QUAL). The Job Demands-Resources Model (JD-R Model) was adapted during the study to incorporate personal demands and resources (personal challenges and coping mechanisms at work and in wider life), providing a more holistic and detailed picture of working life during the pandemic for NHS workers. Three recommendations emerged to enhance employee well-being during periods of crisis around management development, workload issues and communication strategies.
{"title":"Recognition of the importance of personal demands and resources in employee well-being: Lessons for management at The State Hospital during the Covid-19 pandemic – a critical evaluation of NHS employee perceptions","authors":"Bernadette Scott, Rhiannon Lammie","doi":"10.1177/0143831x241265755","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0143831x241265755","url":null,"abstract":"This article provides critical evaluation of the impact of Covid-19 on NHS employee perceptions of workplace well-being at The State Hospital (Scotland) during the global pandemic, focusing on lessons learned for NHS management during times of crisis. An exploratory case study qual→QUAL sequential dependent strategy was adopted, extracting themes from the NHS deployed Staff Well-Being Survey of summer 2020 (227 respondents, 35% of all staff) (qual) to inform thematic progression for 10 in-depth interviews with a range of NHS employees (QUAL). The Job Demands-Resources Model (JD-R Model) was adapted during the study to incorporate personal demands and resources (personal challenges and coping mechanisms at work and in wider life), providing a more holistic and detailed picture of working life during the pandemic for NHS workers. Three recommendations emerged to enhance employee well-being during periods of crisis around management development, workload issues and communication strategies.","PeriodicalId":47456,"journal":{"name":"Economic and Industrial Democracy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-08-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142179388","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-08-10DOI: 10.1177/0143831x241265551
J. Hassard, Jonathan Morris
The article asks what the main consequences have been for managerial work arising from changes to human resource management (HRM) practices during an era of neoliberal corporate restructuring. The authors answer this by making two contributions: (a) theorizing a range of HRM and organizational practices emerging in different socio-economic contexts, and (b) presenting qualitative empirical evidence on changes to managerial work associated with these practices across economies. For the former the authors analyse divergent and convergent human resources trends in relation to national contexts, drawing on wider debates on Varieties of Capitalism (VoC). For the latter, they examine implications for HRM and managerial work arising from firms introducing new organizational forms in Japan, the UK, the US and Brazil. Contending that HRM practices have commonly been researched within a contextual vacuum, the authors develop a position that moves ‘beyond the enterprise’ to explain HRM in ways situated within wider organizational, economic and political domains.
{"title":"The impact of human resource management practices on managerial work: Institutional constraints, strategic actions and organizational outcomes","authors":"J. Hassard, Jonathan Morris","doi":"10.1177/0143831x241265551","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0143831x241265551","url":null,"abstract":"The article asks what the main consequences have been for managerial work arising from changes to human resource management (HRM) practices during an era of neoliberal corporate restructuring. The authors answer this by making two contributions: (a) theorizing a range of HRM and organizational practices emerging in different socio-economic contexts, and (b) presenting qualitative empirical evidence on changes to managerial work associated with these practices across economies. For the former the authors analyse divergent and convergent human resources trends in relation to national contexts, drawing on wider debates on Varieties of Capitalism (VoC). For the latter, they examine implications for HRM and managerial work arising from firms introducing new organizational forms in Japan, the UK, the US and Brazil. Contending that HRM practices have commonly been researched within a contextual vacuum, the authors develop a position that moves ‘beyond the enterprise’ to explain HRM in ways situated within wider organizational, economic and political domains.","PeriodicalId":47456,"journal":{"name":"Economic and Industrial Democracy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2024-08-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141920937","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-08-08DOI: 10.1177/0143831x241265023
Ricardo Barradas
The deregulation and flexibilisation of labour relations has been on the active neoliberal agenda of policymakers all over the world, including in Portugal. Against this backdrop, labour conditions have been worsening since the 1970s and 1980s, and workers have progressively lost some labour rights, which is noticeable in stagnant (or falling) wages, the rise of personal income inequalities, the proliferation of atypical work, the increase of precariousness, the surge of emotional abuse in the workplace, the deterioration of work–life balance and the spread of informal work. Nonetheless, workers have evidenced higher resignation and conformism and lower claimant behaviour in order to demand higher wages and better labour conditions, which is visible in the strong reduction in strike activity in the last four decades. In this article the author argues that workers’ financialisation and indebtedness levels restrain their demands for higher wages and better labour conditions due to the fear of decreasing their income and losing their jobs and the consequent risks of default. The article aims to assess the relationship between workers’ financialisation and indebtedness levels and their strike activity by performing a time-series econometric analysis focused on Portugal during the period 1979–2021. It is found that workers’ financialisation and indebtedness levels have a negative effect on strike activity in Portugal, both in the short term and in the long term, especially on strike volume and strike duration, and indeed have been one of the main drivers behind the decline of strike activity in Portugal in the last four decades.
{"title":"Why are (financialised) workers becoming more resigned and conformist and less claimant? Empirical evidence from Portugal","authors":"Ricardo Barradas","doi":"10.1177/0143831x241265023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0143831x241265023","url":null,"abstract":"The deregulation and flexibilisation of labour relations has been on the active neoliberal agenda of policymakers all over the world, including in Portugal. Against this backdrop, labour conditions have been worsening since the 1970s and 1980s, and workers have progressively lost some labour rights, which is noticeable in stagnant (or falling) wages, the rise of personal income inequalities, the proliferation of atypical work, the increase of precariousness, the surge of emotional abuse in the workplace, the deterioration of work–life balance and the spread of informal work. Nonetheless, workers have evidenced higher resignation and conformism and lower claimant behaviour in order to demand higher wages and better labour conditions, which is visible in the strong reduction in strike activity in the last four decades. In this article the author argues that workers’ financialisation and indebtedness levels restrain their demands for higher wages and better labour conditions due to the fear of decreasing their income and losing their jobs and the consequent risks of default. The article aims to assess the relationship between workers’ financialisation and indebtedness levels and their strike activity by performing a time-series econometric analysis focused on Portugal during the period 1979–2021. It is found that workers’ financialisation and indebtedness levels have a negative effect on strike activity in Portugal, both in the short term and in the long term, especially on strike volume and strike duration, and indeed have been one of the main drivers behind the decline of strike activity in Portugal in the last four decades.","PeriodicalId":47456,"journal":{"name":"Economic and Industrial Democracy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141944630","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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