Varieties of Liberalization and the New Politics of Social Solidarity


Book Description

This book examines contemporary changes in labor market institutions in the United States, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands, focusing on developments in three arenas - industrial relations, vocational education and training, and labor market policy. While confirming a broad, shared liberalizing trend, it finds that there are in fact distinct varieties of liberalization associated with very different distributive outcomes. Most scholarship equates liberal capitalism with inequality and coordinated capitalism with higher levels of social solidarity. However, this study explains why the institutions of coordinated capitalism and egalitarian capitalism coincided and complemented one another in the "Golden Era" of postwar development in the 1950s and 1960s, and why they no longer do so. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, this study reveals that the successful defense of the institutions traditionally associated with coordinated capitalism has often been a recipe for increased inequality due to declining coverage and dualization. Conversely, it argues that some forms of labor market liberalization are perfectly compatible with continued high levels of social solidarity and indeed may be necessary to sustain it.




Negotiating Our Way Up Collective Bargaining in a Changing World of Work


Book Description

Collective bargaining and workers’ voice are often discussed in the past rather than in the future tense, but can they play a role in the context of a rapidly changing world of work? This report provides a comprehensive assessment of the functioning of collective bargaining systems and workers’ voice arrangements across OECD countries, and new insights on their effect on labour market performance today.







The Race between Education and Technology


Book Description

This book provides a careful historical analysis of the co-evolution of educational attainment and the wage structure in the United States through the twentieth century. The authors propose that the twentieth century was not only the American Century but also the Human Capital Century. That is, the American educational system is what made America the richest nation in the world. Its educational system had always been less elite than that of most European nations. By 1900 the U.S. had begun to educate its masses at the secondary level, not just in the primary schools that had remarkable success in the nineteenth century. The book argues that technological change, education, and inequality have been involved in a kind of race. During the first eight decades of the twentieth century, the increase of educated workers was higher than the demand for them. This had the effect of boosting income for most people and lowering inequality. However, the reverse has been true since about 1980. This educational slowdown was accompanied by rising inequality. The authors discuss the complex reasons for this, and what might be done to ameliorate it.




Collective Bargaining and Wages in Comparative Perspective


Book Description

Remarkably, the core element of labour relations?wage determination?has been excluded from the European social dialogue about harmonisation of working conditions and national systems of social security. The present study responds by analysing the prospects of building up structures of wage formation in Europe through a reevaluation of collective bargaining and collective agreements as they exist under the law of the most industrialized Member States. The impetus for the study is the widely debated crisis of the system of concluding regional collective agreements on wages. Social partners seem to have been trapped in fruitless conflicts on how the system must be reformed. It has become obvious that no party concerned employers, trade unions, the state has the capacity to resolve the growing difficulties of collective wage formation. In an introductory essay by the distinguished editors, this important study takes the situation in Germany, the most prominent manifestation of this European crisis, as its starting point. Then, academic experts from France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Sweden describe comparable problems in their own countries, detail approaches to dealing with them, and provide a critical commentary, including judgements and suggestions in relation to the German case. Then follows a reexamination of the situation in Germany in the light of the experience of the other countries. A final chapter outlines some preliminary interpretations of European prospects. Salient issues investigated include the following: the erosion of such ideological and legal categories and concepts as `dependent work, `solidarity', `subsidiarity' and `social self-regulation' as preconditions of traditional collective bargaining structures at national level; the decreasing membership of the bargaining partners on both sides; the shrinking rate of employees covered by collective agreements; attempts to establish a national social pact; increasing competition on global markets; decentralizing management strategies, including the abandonment of collective bargaining; and, individualized employees. The authors examine the various state structures to determine if the legal and institutional developments of the different national systems of collective bargaining constitute starting points for mutual learning in order to meet the new challenges. This leads to a discussion of which practices are successful in their original environment, and how these practices might adapt to other systems in other countries.




The Future of Work


Book Description

Studies in Employment and Social Policy Volume 56 Digitalization, far from being solely a technological issue, has broad implications in the social, labour, and economic spheres. It leads to dangers as well as to new chances for the workforce, and thus labour law must develop effective ways to both protect workers and allow them to profit from new technological developments. The most thorough book of its kind, this collection of expert essays provides an abundance of well-thought-out material for understanding the consequences of digitalization for the labour market and industrial relations. Recognizing that only an international perspective can make it possible to face the challenges of the present (and the future), renowned authorities from the International Labour Organization and the International Society for Labour and Social Security Law, as well as outstanding labour law professors, examine in depth such salient issues as the following: transformation of production systems; the spread of artificial intelligence; precariousness and exploitation in the gig economy; lessons learned from COVID-19; employment status of platform workers; new cross-border issues; rights to trade union association and collective bargaining; role of the State in the new digital labour market; and blurred lines between work and private life. Thanks to the international team of contributors, the issues are dealt with from a variety of overlapping perspectives and points of view, combining aspects of labour law, commercial law, corporate governance, and international law. Highlighting the need to adapt, especially through the right to training, work, and professionalism with respect to the new technological landscape, the book draws on legislative, judicial, and theoretical initiatives suggesting ways of responding positively to the requests for protection that arise in the new forms of production. A uniquely valuable tool for study and reflection for policymakers and academics, the book is also sure to be valued by entrepreneurs, managers, consultants, corporate lawyers, judges, human rights experts, and trade unionists who are interested in the issues of labour, industrial relations, and social rights in European and international contexts.




Basic Guide to the National Labor Relations Act


Book Description




Unions and Collective Bargaining


Book Description

This book offers an extensive survey and synthesis of the economic literature on trade unions and collective bargaining and their impact on micro-and macro-economic outcomes. The authors demonstrate the effects of collective bargaining in different country settings and time periods. A comprehensive reference, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of labor policy as well as to policy makers and anyone with an interest in the economic consequences of unionism.




What Unions No Longer Do


Book Description

From workers' wages to presidential elections, labor unions once exerted tremendous clout in American life. In the immediate post-World War II era, one in three workers belonged to a union. The fraction now is close to one in five, and just one in ten in the private sector. The only thing big about Big Labor today is the scope of its problems. While many studies have explained the causes of this decline, What Unions No Longer Do shows the broad repercussions of labor's collapse for the American economy and polity. Organized labor was not just a minor player during the middle decades of the twentieth century, Jake Rosenfeld asserts. For generations it was the core institution fighting for economic and political equality in the United States. Unions leveraged their bargaining power to deliver benefits to workers while shaping cultural understandings of fairness in the workplace. What Unions No Longer Do details the consequences of labor's decline, including poorer working conditions, less economic assimilation for immigrants, and wage stagnation among African-Americans. In short, unions are no longer instrumental in combating inequality in our economy and our politics, resulting in a sharp decline in the prospects of American workers and their families.




Technological Change, Rationalisation and Industrial Relations


Book Description

Cover page -- Halftitle page -- Title page -- Copyright page -- Title page -- Copyright page -- CONTENTS -- PREFACE -- ABBREVIATIONS -- INTRODUCTION BETWEEN EROSION AND TRANSFORMATION: INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS SYSTEMS UNDER THE IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE -- Part One TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE AND LABOUR RELATIONS -- Chapter One TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION, ORGANISATION OF WORK, AND UNIONS -- Chapter Two CHANGING SKILL REQUIREMENTS AND TRADE UNION BARGAINING -- Chapter Three TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE, LABOUR MARKET, AND TRADE UNION POLICY -- Part Two THE POLITICS OF RATIONALISATION: THE CAR INDUSTRY -- Chapter Four RATIONALISATION AND INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS: A CASE STUDY OF VOLKSWAGEN -- Chapter Five THE POLITICS OF TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE AT BRITISH LEYLAND -- Chapter Six CHANGES OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS AT FIAT -- Part Three CRISIS AND RATIONALISATION: IMPACT ON UNIONS -- Chapter Seven BUREAUCRACY, OLIGARCHY, AND INCORPORATION IN SHOP STEWARD ORGANISATIONS IN THE 1980s -- Chapter Eight SHOP STEWARDS AND MANAGEMENT: COLLECTIVE BARGAINING AS CO-OPERATION -- Chapter Nine SOME CURRENT STRATEGY PROBLEMS OF THE ITALIAN TRADE UNIONS* -- Chapter Ten CENTRALISATION OR DECENTRALISATION? AN ANALYSIS OF ORGANISATIONAL CHANGES IN THE ITALIAN TRADE UNION MOVEMENT AT A TIME OF CRISIS -- Chapter Eleven SOCIAL CHANGE AND TRADE UNION MOVEMENT IN THE 1970s -- Chapter Twelve LABOUR CONFLICTS AND CLASS STRUGGLES -- Chapter Thirteen WORKERS' REACTIONS TO CRISIS -- NOTES ON EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS -- TRANSLATORS -- INDEX