Transnational trade union action has expanded significantly over the last few decades and has taken a variety of shapes and trajectories. This book is concerned with understanding the spatial extension of trade union action, and in particular the development of new forms of collective mobilization, network-building, and forms of regulation that bridge local and transnational issues. Through the work of leading international specialists, this collection of essays examines the process and dynamic of transnational trade union action and provides analytical and conceptual tools to understand these developments. The research presented here emphasizes that the direction of transnational solidarity remains contested, subject to experimentation and negotiation, and includes studies of often overlooked developments in transition and developing countries with original analyses from the European Union and NAFTA areas. Providing a fresh examination of transnational solidarity, this volume offers neither a romantic or overly optimistic narrative of a borderless unionism, nor does it fall into a fatalistic or pessimistic account of international union solidarity. Through original research conducted at different levels, this book disentangles the processes and dynamics of institution building and challenges the conventional national based forms of unionism that prevailed in the latter half of the twentieth century.

George Ranken Askwith was a key figure in the development of British industrial relations. This new biography is based on a wide range of archival sources including government records, newspaper articles, Askwith's personal correspondence and his wife's private diaries.

China s economic reforms have brought the country both major international clout and widespread domestic prosperity. At the same time, the reforms have led to significant social upheaval, particularly manifest in labour relations. Each year, several thousand disputes break out over working conditions, many of them violent, and the Chinese state has responded with both legal and political strategies.

This book investigates how Chinese governments have used law, and other forms of regulation, to govern working conditions and combat labour disputes. Starting from the early years of the Republican period, the book traces the evolution of the law of work in modern China right up to the reforms of the present day. It considers the structure of Chinese work law, drawing on both Chinese and Western scholarship to provide new insights into its unique features and assess where the law is innovative and where it is stagnant and unresponsive. The authors explore the various legal and extra-legal techniques successive Chinese governments have adopted to enforce work law and the responses of firms, workers and organizations to these practices.

First published in English in 1924 this ambitious work, by the famous Marxist theoretician Karl Kautsky, aims to provide nothing less than an "exposition of the methods to introduce socialism" amongst the capitalist economies of Europe in the post-World War One era. Looking back on the experiences of the German socialist movement and looking forwards to the likelihood of a Labour government in Great Britain, he discusses the problems facing a labour revolution in Europe, with particular reference to the role of the middle classes, the transitional period between capitalism and socialism, and the economic impact of a socialist revolution.

Reflecting the increased attention to gender and women in the field of employment relations, there is now a growing international literature on women and trade unions. The interest in women as trade unionists arises partly from the fact that women comprise 40 percent of trade union membership in the USA and over 50 percent in the UK. Further, despite considerable overall union membership decline in both the UK and USA, more women than men are joining unions in both countries. Recognition of the importance of women to the survival and revival of trade union movements has in many cases produced an unprecedented commitment to equality and inclusion at the highest level. Yet the challenge is to ensure that this commitment is translated to action and improves the experience of women in their union and in their workplace.

Gender and Leadership in Trade Unions explores and evaluates the similarities and differences in equality strategies pursued by unions in the US and the UK. It assesses the conditions experienced by women union members and how these impact on their leadership, both potential and actual. Women have made gains in both countries within union leadership and decision-making structures, however, climbing the ladder to leadership positions remains far from a smooth process. In the trade union context, women face multiple barriers that resonate with the barriers facing aspiring women leaders in other organizational contexts, including the gendered division of domestic work; the organization and nature of women s work; the organization and nature of trade union work and the masculine culture of trade unions. The discussion of women trade union leaders is situated more broadly within debates on governance, leadership and democracy within social justice activism.

Examining the experiences of leadership among trade unionists in a range of unions and labor movements around the world, Trade Union Diversity, Leadership, and Change addresses perspectives of women and men from a range of identities such as race/ethnicity, sexuality, and age. This volume analyses existing models of leadership in various political organisational forms, especially trade unions, but also including business and management approaches, leadership forms which arise from fields such as community, pedagogy, and the third sector.

Analyzing and critiquing concepts, expectations, and experiences of union leaders and leadership in labor organizations, comparing and contrasting gender, cultural and diversity perspectives, contributors to the volume draw on empirical research to identify key ideas, beliefs and experiences critical to achieving change, setting up resistance, and in transforming the inertia of traditionalism.

Politicians and public managers utilize branding to communicate with the public as well as to position themselves within the ever-present media now so central to political and administrative life. They must further contend with stakeholders holding contradictory opinions about the nature of a problem, the desirable solutions , and the values at stake. Branding is used as a strategy to manage perceptions, motivate stakeholders, communicate clear messages in the media, and position policies and projects. Brands have a unique ability to simplify such messages and motivate different actors to invest their energy in governance processes. Public administration scholars so far have however paid little attention to branding. This book provides a systematic analysis of branding as phenomenon in governance. It deals with the nature of public branding, its relation to existing theories in public administration, the way branding is used as a managerial strategy in governance processes, and the risks and limitations of branding. Branding in Public Governance and Management highlights the growing importance of public banding as a public management strategy to influence political events, decision-making processes and outcomes in governance processes.

Combating climate change will increasingly impact on production industries and the workers they employ as production changes and consumption is targeted. Yet research has largely ignored labour and its responses. This book brings together sociologists, psychologists, political scientists, historians, economists, and representatives from international and local unions based in Australia, Brazil, South Africa, Taiwan, Spain, Sweden, the UK and the USA. Together they open up a new area of research: Environmental Labour Studies. The authors ask what kind of environmental policies are unions in different countries and sectors developing. How do they aim to reconcile the protection of jobs with the protection of the environment? What are the forms of cooperation developing between trade unions and environmental movements, especially the so-called Red-Green alliances? Under what conditions are unions striving to create climate change policies that transcend the economic system? Where are they trying to find solutions that they see as possible within the present socio-economic conditions? What are the theoretical and practical implications of trade unions' "Just Transition", and the problems and perspectives of "Green Jobs"? The authors also explore how food workers' rights would contribute to low carbon agriculture, the role workers' identities play in union climate change policies, and the difficulties of creating solidarity between unions across the global North and South. Trade Unions in the Green Economy opens the climate change debate to academics and trade unionists from a range of disciplines in the fields of labour studies, environmental politics, environmental management, and climate change policy. It will also be useful for environmental organisations, trade unions, business, and politicians.

This book examines countries that have tried, with varying degrees of success, to use legislative strategies to encourage and support collective bargaining, including Australia s Fair Work Act. It is the first major study of the operation and impact of the new collective bargaining framework introduced under the Fair Work Act, combining theoretical and practical perspectives. In addition, a number of comparative pieces provide rich insights into the Australian legislation s adaptation of concepts from overseas collective bargaining systems including good faith bargaining, and majority employee support as the basis for establishing bargaining rights. Contributors to this volume are all leading labor law, industrial relations, and human resource management scholars from Australia, and from Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States.

First published in 1990, this work examines the link between the economic performance of companies and profit sharing. The relationship is a complex one: industrial relations may be improved by schemes, but good employers are likely to introduce profit sharing in any case; and though attitudes to work do change, schemes have more immediate impact on satisfaction an communications than on productivity and effort put into work.

Politicians and public managers utilize branding to communicate with the public as well as to position themselves within the ever-present media now so central to political and administrative life. They must further contend with stakeholders holding contradictory opinions about the nature of a problem, the desirable solutions, and the values at stake. Branding is used as a strategy to manage perceptions, motivate stakeholders, communicate clear messages in the media, and position policies and projects. Brands have a unique ability to simplify such messages and motivate different actors to invest their energy in governance processes.

Public administration scholars so far have however paid little attention to branding. This book provides a systematic analysis of branding as phenomenon in governance. It deals with the nature of public branding, its relation to existing theories in public administration, the way branding is used as a managerial strategy in governance processes, and the risks and limitations of branding. Branding in Public Governance and Management highlights the growing importance of public banding as a public management strategy to influence political events, decision-making processes and outcomes in governance processes.

Innovative and offering a sociological analysis of trade unionism in the globalized era, this book provides a robust and coherent comparative analysis of the debate surrounding trade unions and their renewal. In recent decades, trade unions suffered major reversals. They experienced declining memberships. Employers were increasingly assertive if not hostile. Transnational corporations and state-owned multi-nationals increasingly implement deteriorating terms and conditions of employment, vulnerable and insecure job contracts. Using theory and a variety of case studies, this book explores: the debate about the form of trade unionism; the bases for collective organization; and the struggle and the future of trade unionism. This is a must read for all those studying industrial relations, human resource management, the sociology of work and employment, economic sociology, economic and labour geography and business studies in general.

This comprehensive collection brings together an impressive range of papers on the economics of labor unions. Some of these are classics, and others are less well known - included because they cover significant but under-researched areas, or because they raise interesting questions that as yet remain unanswered. The study of labor unions has long fascinated economists. Over the last quarter of the twentieth century there has been a tremendous evaluation of research in this area. This blossoming occurred with the growth of labor economics as a discipline separate from industrial relations, and with the development of micro data sets and the dissemination of sophisticated new micro-econometric techniques with which to analyse them. These volumes include papers that not only span the most important topics in the economics of labor unions, but also offer a useful overview of the field and its methodology. They will prove invaluable both to researchers and practitioners.

The Global Perspective of Urban Labor in Mexico City, 1910-1929 examines the global entanglement of the Mexican labor movement during the Mexican Revolution. It describes how global influences made their entry into labor culture through the cinema, the theater, and labor festivals as well as into the development of consumption patterns and advertisement. It further shows how the young labor movement constituted its discourse and invented its tradition at meetings and in the columns of newspapers. The local conditions constitute the framework for the examination of Mexican labor's perspectives on and engagement with contemporary events of global significance. Thereby, this book demonstrates how workers turned to the global context in search of guidance and role models, embracing global developments and narratives. It also reveals the differentiations from this context in order to create a unique local identity. This approach allows new perspectives on the role of a neglected revolutionary actor and on the influence of global developments in a revolution that has been predominantly interpreted from a national point of view. It shows the way global ideas were brought to life in the framework of revolutionary Mexico City - providing new insights into the grand-narratives of Globalization and Revolution.

As unions in most other industrialized democracies continue to decline, unions in Spain have been able to regain and maintain strength despite unfavorable institutional, political, and economic conditions. The Politics of Industrial Relations provides a comprehensive analysis of Spanish unions from the Franco dictatorship until the present. It builds on industrial relations, comparative politics, and political economy literature to investigate the trajectory of Spanish unions. The book analyzes unions as political actors, that is, their interaction and involvement with governments, political parties, and nationwide policy-making processes to explain why Spanish unions appear in some ways as atypical in West European comparison. The development of Spanish unions and industrial relations is framed in a historical-institutionalist approach while also taking into account globalization and Europeanization processes. Using the case of the Spanish transition to democracy, the book demonstrates that the historical sequencing of institutional reforms in the political and industrial relations arenas holds significant and long-lasting consequences for the nature of unions and labor relations. The book concludes that by understanding unions as political actors, the history of Spanish unionism and industrial relations institutions is more easily accommodated than looking at unions as industrial actors alone.

Comprehensive in its theoretical scope and empirical depth, The Politics of Industrial Relations presents Spain as an anomaly, and thus as a test case, for a multitude of theories developed in the political economy and industrial relations literatures.

The Economics of Technology Transfer presents a selection of the most important articles in the field, many of which are not easily accessible. The volume pays particular attention to issues facing developing countries in the context of rapid technical change, globalisation of production and the international spread of innovation itself. Part I focuses on theory and concepts. Part II, which examines multinationals, deals with the main engines of technology development and transfer. Part III discusses developing countries, pointing to the possible conflict between internalised technology transfer (via multinational enterprises) and the needs of domestic technological capability building. The final two parts include papers on technology transfer processes and issues in selected countries of Latin America, East Asia, the transition economies and the mature industrial economies. The Economics of Technology Transfer will be essential reading for students, researchers and policy makers concerned with international technology transfer.

Based on an industrial relations case study conducted in a British Steel plant in the north east coast iron and steel industry, this book, first published in 1976, is an account of the application of sociological concepts and ideas to the process of social relations between employer and employee, and between all types of workers in industrial organisations.

This book, first published in 1973, analyses and sets in context one of the major issues in the growth of the European economy. Workers' participation played an increasingly vital role in industrial relations. This book looks at the background and development of different types of participation in Britain, ranging from workers' attempts at co-operative production, through the schemes in the nationalised industries of mining and steel, to the Fairfields Experiment and the Upper Clyde 'work-in' in shipbuilding. This book concludes with an account of the developments in worker councils and worker directors in nine other European countries.

First published in 1990, this work examines the link between the economic performance of companies and profit sharing. The relationship is a complex one: industrial relations may be improved by schemes, but good employers are likely to introduce profit sharing in any case; and though attitudes to work do change, schemes have more immediate impact on satisfaction an communications than on productivity and effort put into work.

Focussing on a period of rapid and significant change in the coal industry, this volume, originally published in 1936, sets out the economic facts of the industry and discusses the extent to which politics and industry became interwoven during the years 1910-1936. As well as covering key events such as the General Strike of 1926 and the effects this had on both the UK mining industry and the general population, this volume also examines industrial relations, the growth of the unions and modernization of the industry.

Work and Struggle: Voices from U.S. Labor Radicalism focuses on the history of U.S. labor with an emphasis on radical currents, which have been essential elements in the working-class movement from the mid nineteenth century to the late twentieth century. Showcasing some of labor's most important leaders, Work and Struggle offers students and instructors a variety of voices to learn from -- each telling their story through their own words -- through writings, memoirs and speeches, transcribed and introduced here by Paul Le Blanc. This collection of revolutionary voices will inspire anyone interested in the history of labor organizing.

The nail-biting story of when the hardhats of downtown Manhattan beat scores of hippies bloody in May 1970, four days after Kent State, and how the nation reacted. In May 1970, four days after Kent State, construction workers chased students through downtown Manhattan, beating scores of protestors bloody. As hardhats clashed with hippies, it soon became clear that something larger was happening; Democrats were at war with themselves. In The Hardhat Riot, David Paul Kuhn tells the fateful story-how chaotic it was, when it began, when the white working class first turned against liberalism, when Richard Nixon seized the breach, and America was forever changed. It was unthinkable one generation before: FDR's "forgotten man" siding with the party of Big Business and, ultimately, paving the way for presidencies from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump. In the shadow of the half-built Twin Towers, on the same day the Knicks rallied against the odds and won their first championship, we relive the schism that tore liberalism apart. We experience the tumult of Nixon's America and John Lindsay's New York City, as festering division explodes into violence. Nixon's advisors realize that this tragic turn is their chance, that the Democratic coalition has collapsed and that "these, quite candidly, are our people now." In this nail-biting story, Kuhn delivers on meticulous research and reporting, drawing from thousands of pages of never-before-seen records. We go back to a harrowing day that explains the politics of today. We experience the battle between two tribes fighting different wars, soon to become different Americas, ultimately reliving a liberal war that maimed both sides. We come to see how it all was laid bare one brutal day, when the Democratic Party's future was bludgeoned by its past, as if it was a last gasp to say that we once mattered too.

Trade Unions in a Neoliberal World is the first book to provide readers with an authoritative and comprehensive assessment of the impact of New Labour governments on employment relations and trade unions. This innovative text locates changes in industrial politics since the 1990s in the development of globalization and the worldwide emergence of neoliberalism. The advent of Tony Blair's government in 1997 promised a new dawn for employment relations. In this rigorous but readable volume, a team of experienced and respected contributors explain in detail how the story has unfolded. This book looks at all aspects of New Labour's policies in relation to employment relations and trade unionism. The first half of Trade Unions in a Neoliberal World presents an overview of industrial politics, the evolution of New Labour and an anatomy of contemporary trade unionism. It discusses relations between the Labour Party and the unions and the response of trade unionists to political and economic change. The second part contains chapters on legislation, partnership, organizing, training, strikes and perspectives on Europe.

The Japanese way of work is notoriously 'different'. But is it Japan or Britain which is the odd man out? When originally published this was the first book to explore the real differences, through a point-by-point comparison of two Japanese factories with two British ones making similar products. In the first half of the book this comparison is pursued in systematic detail and clear illustration of the attitudes and assumptions which underlie what the author calls the 'market-oriented' system of Britain and the 'organization-oriented' system of Japan. One chapter shows how the employment institutions of the two countries fit into their political, family and educational institutions - an exercise in functionalist sociology which dominates t he later chapters and makes a major contribution to the discussion of development and of the 'convergence' of different systems.

Based on extensive original research, this book examines the challenges confronting trade unions in the global South, by focusing on trade union struggles in Sri Lanka under neo-liberal globalisation. It centres on movement politics of unions; explains union capacities to mobilise workers as a part of broad counter movement; and specifies worker struggles in Sri Lanka. The author identifies key dimensions of variation in the approaches taken by oppositional groupings, in particular unions, other labour organisations and the labour movement, and locates those variations in a larger theoretical context. Three case studies on trade unions in tea plantations, garment factories and among the nurses show how these theoretical dimensions operate in practice, and the consequences for the sort of opposition that is (and is not) created. The book contributes to the on-going debate on social movement unionism, and it also reveals their gaps in terms of addressing how class injustices are mediated through ethno-nationalist projects reproducing ethnic and gender hierarchies. It acknowledges the diversity of experiences and forms of resistance in the global South and critically engages with issues of gender, ethnicity and labour internationalism, providing a useful contribution to studies on South Asian Politics as well as Labour and Development Studies.