P. Borghi, A. Murgia, Mathilde Mondon-Navazo, Petr Mezihorak
{"title":"Mind the gap between discourses and practices: Platform workers’ representation in France and Italy","authors":"P. Borghi, A. Murgia, Mathilde Mondon-Navazo, Petr Mezihorak","doi":"10.1177/09596801211004268","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09596801211004268","url":null,"abstract":"This article, based on a 6-month cross-national ethnography conducted in France and Italy, aims at contributing to comparative debates on the representation of platform workers. The study takes the cases of both traditional and alternative actors that currently represent platform workers. In particular, by investigating both trade unions and grassroots groups, research findings show the gap between discursive and effective representation in the two European countries studied. Drawing on Hyman and Gumbrell-McCormick’s concept of ‘variable geometry of resistance’, we discuss how these gaps are wider or narrower depending on to what extent – in the two countries and in the studied organizations – there is capacity to build both solidarity in difference and alliances between traditional and alternative actors.","PeriodicalId":47034,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Industrial Relations","volume":"27 1","pages":"425 - 443"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2021-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/09596801211004268","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47038989","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}
Susanne Pernicka, Vera Glassner, Nele Dittmar, Klaus Neundlinger
{"title":"Forces of reproduction and change in collective bargaining: A social field perspective","authors":"Susanne Pernicka, Vera Glassner, Nele Dittmar, Klaus Neundlinger","doi":"10.1177/0959680121998478","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0959680121998478","url":null,"abstract":"The paper addresses the endurance of sector collective bargaining despite many announcements of its demise. Bourdieusian social theory is used to interpret collective bargaining as a dominated social field that is distinct and relatively autonomous from other economic, political and transnational fields. Empirically, we trace the trajectories of German and Italian metal sector’s collective bargaining fields. In Germany, field agents contributed to a continuing erosion of collective bargaining, regional differentiation of membership strategies, and a reorientation of dominated employers’ associations towards their members. In Italy, some field agents resisted supranational and national liberalization demands and contributed to the adaptation and innovation of bargaining practices and hence, to the preliminary re-stabilization and re-balancing of collective bargaining between industry and company level.","PeriodicalId":47034,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Industrial Relations","volume":"27 1","pages":"345 - 363"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2021-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0959680121998478","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43634627","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}
Barbara E. Bechter, Sabrina Weber, M. Galetto, Bengt Larsson, Thomas Prosser
{"title":"Opening the black box: Actors and interactions shaping European sectoral social dialogue","authors":"Barbara E. Bechter, Sabrina Weber, M. Galetto, Bengt Larsson, Thomas Prosser","doi":"10.1177/09596801211000012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09596801211000012","url":null,"abstract":"This article highlights the importance of organizational resources and individual capabilities for interactions and relationships among social partners in European sectoral social dialogue committees (SSDCs). We use an actor-centred approach to investigate work programme setting in the hospital and metalworking SSDCs. Our research reveals differences in how European social partner organizations coordinate and integrate members in SSDCs. In hospital, European Union (EU)-social partners build bridges that span otherwise separate actors or groups. The findings suggest that the absence of bridging efforts can lead to the dominance of a few actors. In metalworking, small cohesive groups are more effective in forming close networks and determining work programmes. While work programmes in hospital represent issues which are on national agendas, in metalworking, they focus mainly on EU policy areas.","PeriodicalId":47034,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Industrial Relations","volume":"8 1-2","pages":"269 - 288"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2021-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/09596801211000012","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41297658","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}
{"title":"Editorial","authors":"G. Meardi","doi":"10.1177/0959680121998540","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0959680121998540","url":null,"abstract":"At the European Journal of Industrial Relations (EJIR), we have been concerned with the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on research and publication. First, we have monitored possible effects on the flow of submissions. In total, during 2020, submissions to the EJIR have increased compared to 2019 (+26 percent). They have been, in comparison to the previous year, relatively slower in the second and fourth quarters, when healthemergency restrictions were highest. Thanks to the commitment of our reviewers, the journal’s work has proceeded smoothly so far, and we already have (as ‘OnlineFirst’) some excellent articles that were submitted after the start of the pandemic. Second, we are concerned with possible inequalities, in particular with regard to gender given the unequal division of care duties and the possible different effects of work-fromhome and of school closures. In the absence of gender self-declaration data, we looked at the approximate, binary indicator of the first author’s first name (some studies on gender and publications prefer to look at the gender of the last author, but in our field the first author seems more representative). The share of female first authors on the total submissions of 2020 has been, at 36.3 percent, slightly above the average of previous years, but it was lower in the second and fourth quarters (23.8 and 29.4 percent, respectively). The number of observations is too small to confirm any significant trend. Yet, a decline in female-authored submissions has been registered in the life sciences (Ribarovska et al., 2021) and it is therefore important to keep monitoring the situation in case of lagged effects of the enduring pandemic. In the meanwhile, the EJIR is keen to encourage authors with caring duties and reassure them not to hesitate to contact the editor if in need of advice, extensions on resubmissions or specific editing for their submissions. A further specific issue for the EJIR concerns the implications of the health emergency for qualitative comparative research, which has traditionally constituted a strong stream in the journal. Researchers are demonstrating initiative and entrepreneurship in developing new methods, adapting the traditional ones, and investigating the rise of remote working and the advances of work digitalization. As always in the study of work, we cannot let data availability considerations become an excuse for forgetting those sectors, jobs and tasks that are less visible, but no less essential or less critical for today’s society and economy. As four articles on the topic of outsiders show in this issue, industrial relations research needs to be ‘inclusive’, especially at times like this.","PeriodicalId":47034,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Industrial Relations","volume":"4 1","pages":"3 - 3"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0959680121998540","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41289797","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}
{"title":"Power resources and supranational mechanisms: The global unions and the OECD Guidelines","authors":"M. Ford, M. Gillan","doi":"10.1177/0959680120988238","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0959680120988238","url":null,"abstract":"This article uses the power resources approach to analyse the Global Union Federations’ (GUFs) use of the specific instances mechanism associated with the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises. While this mechanism has serious limitations, it has proved to be a useful tool when combined with public campaigns and the exercise of other power resources at multiple scales. This is so, we argue, because the fact that multi-national enterprises themselves operate across national boundaries creates an incentive to engage power resources at a supranational level, as well as within the countries where they, or their suppliers, are present. As this finding suggests, consideration of unions’ power resources benefits from deeper consideration of the multi-scalar and interrelated character of union action and of the role that intermediary coordinating organizations like GUFs play in supporting the exercise of power at the supranational level.","PeriodicalId":47034,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Industrial Relations","volume":"27 1","pages":"307 - 325"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2021-01-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0959680120988238","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42375570","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}
{"title":"Transnational transfer of lean production to a dependent market economy: The case of a French-owned subsidiary in Romania","authors":"Zoltán Mihály","doi":"10.1177/0959680120986781","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0959680120986781","url":null,"abstract":"This article addresses the implementation of lean production techniques in the Romanian subsidiary of a second-tier automotive supplier. Given the liberal institutional environment of the host country, the company anticipated a smooth transfer of lean production practices. However, the findings show that a host country’s economic dependence can be detrimental to the transfer of practices from the home country. The combination of low-complexity production and work intensification led to depressed employee motivation and frequent conflicts. These can be attributed to a mismatch between work organization and national economic profile, which suggests incompatibility between low-wage, low-complexity strategies and Japanese organizational models.","PeriodicalId":47034,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Industrial Relations","volume":"27 1","pages":"405 - 423"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2021-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0959680120986781","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47514240","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}
Sofía Pérez de Guzmán, Esteban Martínez, Ester Ulloa
{"title":"Down but not out: Union strategies and power resources in response to liberalization and changes in national postal services – The cases of Spain and Belgium","authors":"Sofía Pérez de Guzmán, Esteban Martínez, Ester Ulloa","doi":"10.1177/0959680120980676","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0959680120980676","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyses national postal services unions’ strategic capacity in Spain and Belgium in response to the effects of liberalization and changes in the postal sector. The analysis shows, first, that despite having had to operate in a hostile context, Correos and bpost unions have been able to mobilize their power resources to resist the impact of market pressures on employment and working conditions. Second, it detects the relevance of national industrial relations institutions in order to understand the strategies unions adopt.","PeriodicalId":47034,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Industrial Relations","volume":"27 1","pages":"387 - 403"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2020-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0959680120980676","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48219846","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}
{"title":"Dualism or solidarity? Conditions for union success in regulating precarious work","authors":"Laura Carver, Virginia Doellgast","doi":"10.1177/0959680120978916","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0959680120978916","url":null,"abstract":"This article summarizes and reviews research on union responses to precarious work in Europe, based on a systematic coding of 56 case study-based articles published between 2008 and 2019. Analyses of these cases suggest two paths to labour market dualism, with the first involving institutional fragmentation and union division, and the second a combination of weak structural power and partnership-oriented union identities. The authors also identify two paths to solidarity, with the result of reduced precarity for peripheral workers: a conflict-based path and a social partnership-based path. Campaigns to organize migrant workers present distinctive institutional and structural challenges to unions, with studies involving migrants most often finding ‘failed solidarity’, in which inclusive organizing fails to reduce precarity. The article integrates these findings with past frameworks on union responses to precarious work and concludes with recommendations for future research.","PeriodicalId":47034,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Industrial Relations","volume":"27 1","pages":"367 - 385"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2020-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0959680120978916","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42053001","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}
{"title":"Editorial","authors":"G. Meardi","doi":"10.1177/0959680120951753","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0959680120951753","url":null,"abstract":"Of the many intellectual challenges that the field of industrial relations has met with in recent decades, two are particularly serious. The first is the individualization of work in forms making it arduous or impossible to recognize the distinction between employer and employee, which is a precondition of an industrial relation – think of freelancing, the gig economy, new forms of self-employment. The European Journal of International Relations (EJIR) has long hosted research on these phenomena, including on the structural forces that reproduce workers’ economic dependence while obfuscating it. The second challenge is the environmental crisis, and specifically climate change. This raises the question of whether employers and employees, as producers, are now so strongly interdependent that labour is fully subordinate in the joint exploitation of natural resources – think of the Volkswagen emissions scandal. Industrial relations research and the EJIR have not been as present on this latter huge societal question. This Special Issue, edited with passion and experience by Linda Clarke and Carla Lipsig-Mummé, helps to fill the void. Its articles map the dilemmas of trade unions with regard to climate change and disentangle the issues raised by the idea of a Just Transition to a carbon-neutral economy. They show evidence of variation and influence in trade union actions on climate change and will certainly inspire more research on the complex problems they present. This issue also concludes the first volume under the stewardship of this new Editor. The transition, including to the online submission system, seems to have worked out smoothly. But the COVID-19 pandemic has made it a difficult year for all. In the absence of physical conferences, the comparative studies research community relies even more on journals like the EJIR to keep the flow of ideas and debates going. Exceptional gratitude is owed to all involved (in writing, reviewing, editing and producing) for keeping up the work on the journal in unprecedented difficult circumstances – which by redefining the rules and boundaries of work will certainly call for more research, including on these pages.","PeriodicalId":47034,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Industrial Relations","volume":"26 1","pages":"349 - 349"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0959680120951753","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47765168","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}
{"title":"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":"D. Foster, Märt Masso, Liina Osila","doi":"10.1177/0959680120971896","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0959680120971896","url":null,"abstract":"The under-utilization of the labour of disabled and older people is a problem across the European Union (EU) but is most pronounced in Central and Eastern European (CEE) member states, where labour shortages are greatest. This presents a puzzle that is explored with reference to a project with social partners from Estonia, Hungary and Poland, the objective of which was to stimulate debate and actions around the role of industrial relations actors in facilitating work accommodations for disabled and older people. After establishing the extent of the demographic labour crisis in these countries, the policy tools being employed to address it are scrutinized and found wanting. A variety of factors are identified as having contributed to debate in this area: historical legacy, social policy path-dependency, social partner identity and agency, a ‘dead letter’ approach to EU policies, and the limited role of civil society organizations. We examine the potential of the concept of sustainable work, more commonly found in Northern Europe, to influence alternative approaches to the employment of disabled and older people in countries where state, labour and employment relations differ.","PeriodicalId":47034,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Industrial Relations","volume":"27 1","pages":"149 - 165"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2020-11-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0959680120971896","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45190142","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}