Trade Unions and European Integration brings together pessimists and optimists on trade unionism under the contemporary pressures of European integration. The Great Recession has brought new attention to structural problems of the European integration process, specifically monetary integration; holding the potential of disabling any trans-national co-ordination. Other authors argue that the current crisis also poses the chance for mobilization and new impulses for European trade unionism. This is discussed in the volume alongside a variety of topics including bargaining coordination, co-determination, European governance regimes, and European wide mobilization. While the importance of the question of how trade unionism and wage policy can, will, and should develop under the conditions of European integration seems widely shared, the polarization of the debate itself deserves our attention to learn about the opposing arguments and points of view; and to enhance academic discussion as well as consultancy to policy makers. This volume addresses this debate by bringing together the most distinguished voices and searching for common ground as well as new perspectives on European trade unionism and collective bargaining. The chapters of the volume, organised topically, are each accompanied by a comment from a distinguished scholar, highlighting the divisions of the debate. With this innovative approach, this book advances the dialogue between what have become openly opposed camps of optimists and pessimists on the future of European integration, trade unionism and its future chances. Trade Unions and European Integration will appeal to students and researchers interested in fields such as European Studies, Industrial Relations, Political Economics, Social Movements and Sociology of Work.

Key players in organized labour in the USA and abroad are busy modernizing their communications and making creative and effective use of computers and other technology. The author of this book argues that the road to CyberUnion has begun and that those unions are ensuring a future strength.

Originally published in 1986 the first part of this book outlines some of the general problems of technological change and labour relations. It discusses the politics of rationalisation and of industrialisation in the car industry by examining case studies of Volkswagen British Leyland and FIAT. The impact developments exert on trade unions in the UK, Germany and Italy is discussed simultaneously.

This study examines how unions representing telephone workers--one in Mexico and one in British Columbia, Canada--have responded to changes in technology, work organization, and government policy stemming from the rise of a more global economy. Some business writers have suggested that globalization will compel unions to cooperate with managers as workers are more exposed to international competition. By analyzing the actual record of two unions in the highly internationalized telecommunications industry, however, a different picture emerges.

This volume:
* explores the extent to which European Industrial Relations systems are converging
*explores what has been the unions' reaction to changes in the economic environment
* includes studies from key sectors: electronics, food manufacturing, banking and public administration
* compares trade unions in these sectors in five of Europes most important economies: Germany, the UK, Spain, Italy and Denmark

First published in 1998, this book, through a combination of theoretical and empirical research, tries to advance beyond the available literature to an understanding of the links between strike activity and the political process. Although its primary focus is upon the long-term impact of the 1984/85 Miners' Strike, it discusses other industrial settings and 'political' disputes. By linking the political socialisation process with strike activity in a refreshing and thought-provoking manner, this book provides an insight into why some people are more interested and involved in political activity in comparison with the population at large.

The public sector is one of the largest employers in the UK. Employees working in the NHS, local government, education, the police and fire services also represent a large and growing body of students taking business degree courses at universities.
This book also looks at the issue of employee relations in the public services. Starting from a legal, economic and financial context, Corby and White outline the main developments in the public sectors, decentralisation, contracting out, fragmentation and the growth of individualism in the employment contract.
The contributors then develop and analyse the themes which are currently affecting public sector employees - pay, equal opportunities, competitive tendering, flexibilities, quality and the position of trade unions.
This is a stimulating, up-to-date and intellectually rigourous text which will be essential reading for students of public policy, public sector management, human resource management, employee and industrial relations. The thematic approach will compliment many alternative texts which are more descriptive and focused on individual services.

Almost a fifth of all employees work in the public sector. Employees working in the civil service, NHS, local government, education, the police and fire services also represent a large and growing body of students taking degree courses at universities. Exploring this important and rapidly changing area, this book outlines the main developments in the public sector since 1979, including topical issues such as the rise of new public management, decentralisation and contracting out. Themes which currently affect public sector employees are examined, including:

* decentralization
* contracting out
* fragmentation and the growth of individualism in the employment contract.

This stimulating, up-to-date and intellectually rigorous text is thematic, rather than sector specific, and reflects the way this subject is taught in a range of courses. It will complement alternative texts in this area and will be a valuable resource for students of public policy, public sector management, human resource management, employee and industrial relations.

To reflect the need for increasing expertise in a highly complex legal arena, the Conseil International du Batiment pour la Recherche L'Etude et la Documentation (CIB) inaugurated an international task force, TG15, to study the area of construction disputes around the world, which now has more than 120 members in 30 countries. Drawing from an international expert author based from the CIB taskforce, and edited by coordinators of TG15, experts representing both the legal and construction professions, this book aims to provide a first reference for those considering, or already, working in the international workplace. Each of the 25 national monographs report on construction dispute practice and procedure according to a standard format, providing the reader with the necessary tools for managing conflicts and resolving disputes on construction projects in different countries.

Comprising the study, documentation, and comparison of plant-level workers' participation around the world, this volume meets the challenge of offering a global perspective on workers' participation, representation, and models of social partnership. Value chains, economic life, inter-cultural exchange and knowledge, as well as the mobility of persons and ideas increasingly cross the borders of nation-states. In the knowledge age, the active participation of workers in organizations is crucially important for sustainable and long-term growth and innovation. This handbook offers lessons from historical, global accounts of workers' participation at plant level, even as it looks forward to predict forthcoming trends in participation.

This book is a wide-ranging, radical and highly innovative critique of the prevailing orthodoxies within industrial relations and human resource management. It contains a detailed examination of the evolution of industrial relations arguing that the area is often under-theorised and influenced by the policy agenda of the state or employers. Subjects covered include:
* cenral problems in industrial relations
* the mobilisation theory of collective action
* the growth of non-union workplaces and the prospects and desirability of a new labour-management social partnership
* a historical account of worker collectivism, organization and militancy and state or employer countermobilisation
* a critique of postmodernism and accounts of the end of the labour movement.

eBook available with sample pages: HB:0415186722

This study looks at union responses to the changes in the Latin American automobile industry over the past 15 years. Chapters focus on Argentina, Brazil, Columbia, Mexico, and Venezuela, while considering the impact of the shift toward export production and regional integration. In addition, contributing authors discuss the degree to which political changes (the breakdown and perpetuation of authoritarian rule and state-corporatism) have influenced unions' responses to reorganization.

This study looks at union responses to the changes in the Latin American automobile industry over the past 15 years. Chapters focus on Argentina, Brazil, Columbia, Mexico, and Venezuela, while considering the impact of the shift toward export production and regional integration. In addition, contributing authors discuss the degree to which political changes (the breakdown and perpetuation of authoritarian rule and state-corporatism) have influenced unions' responses to reorganization.

In this ground breaking contribution to Marxist economic theory, Peter H. Jones provides a comprehensive analysis of profit rates in the lead up to the Great Recession. The Falling Rate of Profit and the Great Recession of 2007-2009 develops a new interpretation of Marx's labour theory of value rooted in non-equilibrium, and applies this theory to US national accounting data. In so doing Jones shows that, when measured correctly, the profit rate falls in the lead up to the Great Recession due to the rising organic composition of capital-the primary reason for crises in Marx's own account. From there Jones also details a new theory of finance, showing how cycles in the profit rate relate to stock market booms and slumps, and movements in the interest rate. He then discusses the implications of this analysis, and Marx and Engels' work generally, for a democratic socialist strategy.

First Published in 1998. This is Volume XV of the eighteen in the Sociology of Work and Organization series. This book provides a discussion of when and why workers turn into unionists, the view of industrial responsibility and civic virtue initially written in 1965.

First Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In this book, Prosser argues that labour movements respond to European integration in a manner which instigates competition between national labour markets. It bases its hypothesis on analysis of four countries - Germany, Spain, France and Poland - and two processes: the collective bargaining practices of trade unions in the first decade of the Eurozone and the response of trade unions and social-democratic parties to austerity in Southern Europe. In the first process, although unions did not intentionally compete, there was a drift towards zero-sum outcomes which benefited national workforces in stronger structural positions. In the second process, during which a crisis resulting from the earlier actions of labour occurred, lack of solidarity reinforced effects of competition. -- .

Industrial relations has traditionally been a national affair, characterized by distinct local laws, practices and cultures. The process of European integration, exemplified by the Single Market Programme, the Maastricht Treaty and the imminent prospect of Economic Monetary Union, has created a framework within which national practices have been exposed to growing cross-border influences - including European Union legislation requiring European Works Councils to be set up in large transnational firms. Might European integration create the basis for a new distinctly European-level of industrial relations? And what impact would this have on exisitng national systems? This volume explores the prospects for the emergence of a distinctly European pattern of industrial relations, in which the European-level organizations representing employers and trade unions gain in importance vis-a-vis their national organisations. In particular, individual contributions analyze the impact of the "Social Chapter" to the Maastricht Treaty, which created a new institutional framework within which European-level employers and trade unions can negotiate.

This book examines the most economically critical and politically sensitive issues of China's reform process -- labor market development, changing industrial relations, the altered role of trade unions, and labor-state and labor-capital conflict. By examining the nature of contemporary work in various sectors of the Chinese economy, the contributors demonstrate that formal ownership patterns, still heavily dominated by the state, are not a comprehensive guide to the character of the current economic system.

Building on the work of labor historians, industrial relations scholars, and institutional labor economists, this book offers not only a comprehensive analysis of the changing nature of shopfloor labor-management relations in the large manufacturing firms of this century, it also supplies empirical evidence of the effect of these institutional changes on labor productivity growth and injury rates. No other study has dealt with the broad sweep of shopfloor governence during the twentieth century, paid as careful attention to the process by which shopfloor institutional arrangements changed over these years, or offered hard evidence on the relationship between changing shopfloor institutions and changing shopfloor outcomes.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203431316

In Abusive Supervision in Government Agencies, Caillier uses both quantitative and qualitative survey data, a mixed-method approach, to argue that certain organizational norms and subordinate factors either increase or decrease the presence of abusive supervision in agencies and that when employees experience abusive supervision, their well-being and work attitudes are adversely affected. In addition, a mixed-method approach is used to contend that problems concerning the abusive supervision process are pervasive in agencies. More specifically, many targets of abuse supervision fail to report the incident, and for those who do, agencies seldom do anything to stop abusive supervisors and the overwhelming majority of targets experience some form of retaliation for reporting the abuse. The author also uses qualitative data to argue that many agencies still do not have a robust workplace aggression policy. The author concludes by identifying future directions for research concerning abusive supervision.

The book was written in the heat of controversies to which illusion is made, the somewhat severe criticisms being justified by the then facts and circumstances. If they now appear to be harsh, it is because the policy then denounced has been abandoned, or so modified as to be no longer open to the condemnation then pronounced. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

This is an appraisal of current offshore industrial relations, and safety regulations instituted after the 1988 Alpha disaster in the North Sea. This text discusses the oil industry's attempts to contain subsequent, unwelcome regulatory interference, and examines the fraught history of trade unionism in the offshore industry, the conflict over health and safety, and the sometimes brutal struggle over union rights as the workforce attempted to achieve a collective voice in the reshaping of the safety and production environment. The authors conclude that, as yet, offshore safety has been little, or not at all, improved.

This is an appraisal of current offshore industrial relations, and safety regulations instituted after the 1988 Alpha disaster in the North Sea. This text discusses the oil industry's attempts to contain subsequent, unwelcome regulatory interference, and examines the fraught history of trade unionism in the offshore industry, the conflict over health and safety, and the sometimes brutal struggle over union rights as the workforce attempted to achieve a collective voice in the reshaping of the safety and production environment. The authors conclude that, as yet, offshore safety has been little, or not at all, improved.

Recession in Japan has changed the face of Japanese industrial relations. Part one of the study outlines recent trends in Japanese labour markets, labour law and corporate strategy. It focuses on specific categories of labour such as: white collar workers; women workers; foreign workers; and older workers. The second part examines the changing interaction between the state, management and labour at both the macro and micro level. Topics include: the public sector and privatisation; collective bargaining and joint consultation; and labour-management relations in small firms. Drawing on research from leading Japanese scholars, this study considers the future of industrial relations in Japan in the face of increasing economic pressures.