This book explores how posting is changing industrial relations systems in several European countries from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. It looks at how opportunities to set up shell-companies and engage in unregulated transnational recruitment made a Europe-wide industry out of avoiding regulation and cheating workers.
Since the 1980s, the process of European economic integration, within a wider context of globalization, has accelerated employment change and placed a new premium on ‘flexible’ forms of work organization. The institutions of employment relations, specifically those concerning collective bargaining between employers and trade unions, have had to adapt accordingly. The Transformation of Employment Relations focuses not just on recent change, but charts the strategic choices that have influenced employment relations and examines these key developments in a comparative perspective. A historical and cross-national analysis of the most important and controversial ‘issues’ explores the motivation of the actors, the implementation of change, and its evolution in a diverse European context. The book highlights the policies and the role played by different institutional and social actors (employers, management, trade unions, professional associations and governments) and assesses the extent to which these policies and roles have had significant effects on outcomes. This comparative analysis of the transformation of work and employment regulation, within the context of a quarter-century timeframe, has not been undertaken in any other book. But this is no comparative handbook in which changes are largely described on a country-by-country basis, but instead, The Transformation of Employment Relations is rather focused thematically. As Europe copes with a serious economic crisis, understanding of the dynamics of work transformation has never been more important.
Exploring the historical roots of integration, they trace contemporary integration efforts back to nineteenth-century social action in response to capitalist development. As today, it was a time when internationalism - both that of workers and capitalists - sustained international cooperation and attempted to define a social dimension to economic development and to set universal standards for welfare. The reemergence of an integrated Europe as an alternative to the system of states produced by the settlements of 1918 and 1945 has provided a new opening for internationalism.
This book comprehensively analyzes the impact of continuing European integration on industrial relations institutions and outcomes. It organizes an immensely rich body of theoretical and empirical material to sustain its core argument that the governance of industrial relations is increasingly multi-level. Cross-national influences are shown to mix with national ones and involve the European sector and company, as well as Community, levels. Competing tendencies towards 'Europeanization', 'Americanization' and 'Re-nationalization' are identified. The approach is multi-disciplinary and truly cross-national. It deals with both the theory and practice of industrial relations in contemporary Europe.
Why and how to study European solidarity? -- Analytical categories in conceptualizing solidaristic behaviour -- Presentation of cases -- The vertical dimension of Europeanization of the trade union movement -- Interaction and action as transformational mechanisms -- Framing solidarity : interests, identification and reciprocity -- Situational mechanisms : market integration and trade unions.
Using a common framework developed by a collaborative Harvard University and Brandeis University affiliated research team, this volume surveys and analyzes the strategic responses of national unions in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain to the last two decades of economic change. Also evaluated is the response of Sweden, long seen as the most successful variation of the European model, as well as EU level transnational unionism. The volume concludes with a reflection on new union positions and their implications, particularly on the question of what will happen to the "European model of society" as a consequence. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
This book provides an accessible introduction to diverse political economy perspectives on different aspects of European integration. It presents a critical appraisal of how scholars in the EU and US use theory to understand European integration.
This title was first published in 2003.The completion of the Single Market and the launching of the European Monetary Union during the 1990s have been accompanied by processes of socio-economic restructuring and major changes in the structure and forms of governance within the dynamic multi-level EU system. The patterns of reaction and adaptation of national industrial relations systems to these EU - developments are discussed under the heading of "Europeanisation" of national IR-systems. The Maastricht and Amsterdam Treaties have extended - to a certain degree - the scope for legislative and coordinated activities by the EU in the fields of social, labour - market and employment policies. These basic legal and political decisions have created new avenues for the development of transnational industrial relations and the establishment of new arenas for EU - level interaction, including social dialogues between the social partners. .