Model Of Collective Bargaining Research Articles

Who benefits? Experimental evidence on Saudi women’s take-up of unemployment assistance

Does a woman’s take-up of government benefits vary with her perception of how they will be shared within the household? Using randomized assignment to alternative information treatments, we examine this question in the context of Saudi women’s willingness to apply for unemployment assistance (Hafiz). We compare the take-up among women who receive no program information to three groups: those who receive information on program eligibility conditions (Eligibility group) and those who receive additional information that their registration status is broadly confidential (Privacy group) or that they fully control registering and accessing benefits (Agency group). Three months later, the treatments, on average, doubled Hafiz applications, with the treatment impacts largest for the Agency group. Women from poorer households and married women are most responsive to the Agency and Privacy interventions respectively. These findings are consistent with collective household bargaining models where family members’ spending preferences differ; we predict larger treatment impacts when there is more competition for resources.

Social partnership, company-level collective bargaining and union revitalization in Ireland

This article explores recent trade union efforts in Ireland to re-engage activists and members and promote revitalization following the termination of a 22-year period of tripartite social partnership. It analyses four case studies of major unions’ strategies to involve activists and members in a workplace-anchored model of firm-level collective bargaining. The findings indicate that decentralized bargaining has become the preferred model of pay determination for Irish unions, and they express little interest in returning to national-level centralized bargaining. Union leaders are enthusiastic about company-level bargaining primarily for three reasons. First, it revitalizes unions by sustaining and expanding union membership at the workplace. Second, it supports local bargaining arrangements that produce tangible benefits for workers, showcasing the effectiveness of unions in advocating for their members. Third, workplace arrangements enhance union influence over management decision-making, both directly through firm-level collective bargaining and indirectly by fostering incentives for continuous dialogue and information exchange.

Sequential agenda setting with strategic and informative voting

We present a two-period collective bargaining model with asymmetric information and a persistent agenda setter. Voters have private information about their policy preferences. Only upon the failure of the initial proposal does the setter have a chance to revise it and call for a re-vote. The status quo gets implemented if the revised proposal fails. We establish the existence of an informative equilibrium for any number of voters and any q-rule, where the first-period voting enables the voters to signal their policy preferences and the setter makes a more compromising proposal upon more negative votes. We apply the model to identify important sources that improve political outcomes regarding individuals’ welfare and policy progress. Specifically, we show that the setter’s reconsideration opportunity improves her welfare and alleviates policy gridlock, which is defined as the outcome of no policy change. Meanwhile, the information revealed through voting can also benefit the voters, provided that the setter is sufficiently constrained by the voting rule. In addition, voters’ less sophistication can not only make a further Pareto improvement for themselves and the setter but can also avoid policy gridlock to a larger extent.

Losing money to make money: The benefits of redistribution in collective bargaining in sports

I develop a model of majority-rule collective bargaining between a sports league and its players when delay costs incurred by players are wealth-dependent. I propose a refinement of subgame perfect equilibrium that requires equilibrium strategies to be immune to deviations by any majority subgroup. I show this is equivalent to giving the player with median bargaining power the unilateral ability to negotiate with the league. Using this model, I demonstrate that policies reallocating surplus from high-talent to moderate-talent players, such as maximum contracts in professional sports, can improve the welfare of all players. Redistribution of surplus harmonizes players' interests, giving a majority of them a greater stake in the bargaining outcome. The model highlights the gains to be had if a heterogeneous group agrees to concessions that increase the alignment of their individual interests.

Sedating Democracy’s Watchdogs: Critical Reflections on Canada’s Proposed Online News Act

In April 2022, the Government of Canada introduced Bill C-18 (the Online News Act). This Bill is one of the recent attempts by governments in several countries to address a perceived crisis-level disruption to newspapers’ finances by requiring internet platform operators to pay for newspapers’ content displayed on their platforms. As of the writing of these comments, the Bill has passed the third reading at the House of Commons and is now awaiting review and voting by the Senate.
 The stated purpose of Bill C-18 is “to regulate digital news intermediaries with a view to enhancing fairness in the Canadian digital news marketplace and contributing to its sustainability, including the sustainability of news businesses in Canada, in both the non-profit and for-profits sectors, including independent local ones.” It seeks to accomplish this goal by “establish[ing] a framework through which digital news intermediary operators and news businesses may enter into agreements respecting news content that is made available by digital news intermediaries.”
 The key element of Bill C-18 is empowering an “eligible news business” or “group of eligible news businesses” to initiate a regulated bargaining process (either individually or collectively) with an “operator” of a “digital news intermediary” and imposing a corresponding duty on such operator to participate in the process, coupled with a duty on all participants to bargain in good faith. The bargaining process consists of three steps. It begins with bargaining sessions. If the parties are unable within a reasonable period to reach an agreement in the bargaining sessions, they enter mediation sessions, and if the mediation sessions do not result in an agreement within a reasonable period, then either party may initiate final offer arbitration.
 The underlying assumption behind the proposed legislation is that fundamental unfairness exists in the relationships between news publishers and internet platforms. Essentially, the Bill’s animating narrative draws a connection between newspapers’ declining revenue (both from advertising and from readers’ subscriptions), the growth of digital advertising and of Google’s and Facebook’s dominance thereof, and the fact that newspapers’ content can be accessed freely via Google News or Facebook users’ postings. The logic runs as follows: By providing links to newspapers’ stories, Google and Facebook freeride on that content to attract readers to their platforms (and away from newspapers). As readers have migrated, so have advertisers. Faced with dwindling advertising revenue and confronting platforms with unmatched bargaining power, newspapers have no choice but to acquiesce to the sharing of their stories through these platforms because without readers’ traffic to their websites, they would lose even more advertisers. Hence not only the need to force platforms into a negotiation process that could result in payment obligations imposed on them through mandatory arbitration but also the need to allow newspaper publishers to bargain collectively.
 In the following comments, I wish first to question the logic behind the proposed legislation and then to highlight and discuss three noteworthy elements of Bill C-18: (1) how it relates to and departs from copyright (and how it contemplates payments for actions and in circumstances that exceed news publishers’ entitlements under the Copyright Act); (2) the difference between collective administration of copyright and the Bill C-18’s collective bargaining model; and (3) the sweeping immunity from scrutiny under the Competition Act afforded to such collective bargaining. Finally, I will share my biggest concern about Bill C-18’s proposed solution: its sedating impact on the watchdog role of the press.

Anti-Communist Solidarity: US-Brazilian Labor Relations during the Dictatorship in Cold-War Brazil (1964–1985)

The last decade has witnessed a crusade by the Brazilian Right, losers of four consecutive presidential elections, to seize power through extralegal means. At the center of this was Operação Lava Jato, which used politicized corruption allegations to discredit the center-left Workers' Party and culminated in the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, the imprisonment of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and the election of the far-right Jair Bolsonaro. Although it has only gradually become clear, the United States played a key role through efforts to influence Brazilian prosecutors and judges via training programs and informal collaborations.Larissa Rosa Corrêa's monograph on US efforts to influence Brazilian trade unionism during the 1964–85 military dictatorship is thus remarkably timely. Anti-Communist Solidarity sheds light on the softer forms of power used by US empire. In the 2010s, US efforts to influence the Brazilian judiciary had little to do with eliminating corruption and everything to do with restoring US hegemony in an emerging oil-producing and diplomatic power. Similarly, as Corrêa conclusively demonstrates, efforts to bring collective bargaining to Brazil were less about empowering the Brazilian working class than weakening communists. These efforts were carried out by the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) and its American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), whose goals under George Meany were inextricably linked to those of US empire.Despite their history of mobilization against the military coups of the 1960s and the Central American wars of the 1980s, in recent decades US Latin Americanist scholars have de-emphasized explanations focused on empire. Thus, it is unsurprising that this vital book was written by a Brazilian, as Brazilian scholars have remained more attuned to the deleterious effects of US imperialism. This focus on US policy by a non-US historian is the book's greatest strength, not only in terms of theoretical orientation but also in terms of the sources consulted. As Alex Lichtenstein points out in his perceptive foreword, through her close examination of Portuguese sources produced by Brazilian trade unionists Corrêa complicates narratives that might assert a unidirectional flow of power from North to South. Despite AIFLD attempts to convince Brazilians of the superiority of the US model of collective bargaining, even some of the most conservative Brazilian trade unionists continued to assert the superiority of their own corporatist labor structure, particularly the labor courts.This final point emerges clearly over the course of the narrative, whose chapters unfold roughly across the administrations of four Brazilian presidents. Chapter 1 demonstrates how the AFL-CIO sought to promote a US trade union model as an antidote to the perceived communist sympathies of the labor movement during the turbulent years preceding the 1964 coup. Chapter 2 shows how US labor ideals were given their fullest expression under the pro-American government of Humberto Castelo Branco, the first military president. In chapter 3, we see how AIFLD began to clash with more nationalist currents in the Brazilian regime that questioned the assumption that a US model was directly applicable to Brazil. After a close analysis of Brazilian labor leaders' oft-critical reactions to the US labor model in chapter 4, chapter 5 shows how AFL-CIO influence in Brazil diminished in the 1970s, as the repression of the “years of lead” closed off opportunities for even capitalism-friendly, US-style labor mobilization.Despite the title, which indicates that Corrêa's book covers 1964–85, the narrative closes in 1974. This decision can be attributed to the fact that US influence over Brazilian unionism waned under more nationalist Brazilian governments. In addition, one set of sources vital to the book—the records of the US Department of State—had, as of the time of Corrêa's research, only been declassified until 1976. However, this means that the most obvious question—the relationship of North American “free and democratic unionism” to Brazil's “new unionism” that appeared in 1978—ultimately remains unanswered. How to explain the fact that Lula and a new generation of left-wing unionists advocated for direct collective bargaining and a weakening of corporatist labor relations—precisely the values AIFLD attempted to inculcate among Brazilian unionists? To what extent did the United States attempt to influence the new unionism led by Lula? These provocative questions will have to remain for future scholars.In addition, two issues may limit the book's impact on an Anglophone audience. First, while the original edition of the book is written in excellent academic Portuguese, the excessively literal translation results in awkward, clunky English that is not particularly readable. Second, the $97.99 price point may be prohibitive to all but the most dedicated specialists. This would be unfortunate because Anti-Communist Solidarity is a must-read not only for historians of Brazilian and Latin American labor history but also for those interested in US labor history, US–Latin American relations, and the strategies of modern-day empires to protect their interests.

Power resources and workplace collective bargaining: evidence from China

During the strike wave of 2010, S provincial authority began to support trade unions in experimenting with workplace union elections and collective bargaining. Drawing data from union documents and ethnographic research, the variability in workplace collective bargaining in the context of official union reform in Y City in S Province is explained in this article. By comparing multiple enterprise union collective bargaining cases, four models of workplace collective bargaining in practice are identified in the research: moderated mobilization, technical negotiation, collective consultation, and managerial domination. Using the power resources approach to analyze collective bargaining, the author argues that the various practices result from the dynamic interactions between workers’ power configuration and employers’ perception of disruption. Furthermore, the author argues that the variability in workplace collective bargaining is not a transient phenomenon but a semi-institutionalized middle ground.

Last trends on collective bargaining decentralization

Decentralisation of collective bargaining has been one of the key trends concerning labour market regulation of the last decades. Most of European countries have developed – with different breath and scope – procedures and reforms to strengthen the company level of bargaining. The Great Recession has stressed this orientation, particularly in those countries which were under financial pressure. This paper focuses on the cases of four Mediterranean countries – France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal – in order to assess how decentralisation has been carried out and, most importantly, what kind of practical results have been achieved. On the base of these outcomes, it highlights how the debate concerning the structure ofcollective bargaining is changing from a black or white perspective to a new one in which mixed models are possible if the whole system is coordinated, taking into consideration the type of collective bargaining model set in the country.

Intra-Household Bargaining Power and its Impact on the Female Labor Force Supply in Pakistan: Women Empowerment Perspective

Female labour participation is critical to the country's socioeconomic growth. This quantitative study aims to assess female decision-making processes in Pakistan, considering endogenous intra-household empowerment and female labour-force participation. The study's theoretical foundation is derived from the conventional Collective Bargaining Model of the family. According to the collective model, bargaining among household members serves as the foundation for household decisions, and these decisions shift the balance of power within the family. Cross-sectional data from the Pakistan Social and Living Standard Measurement Survey (PSLM) for 2013-14 were utilized in the study. We developed an Index of Female Bargaining Power (BPF) to measure the BPF and its relationship with female labour supply (FLS). In addition, the household and individual characteristics of females are considered in this study. To capture the endogeneity of women empowerment inside the home, the Instrumental Variable (IV) method is used. The study's findings indicated a strong and substantial endogenous relationship between the BPF and FLS.

Technological Strikebreaking: A Case Study of Quebec’s Anti-Scab Legislation

The right to strike has been constitutionally protected in Canada since 2015. In other jurisdictions where the right to strike is explicitly recognized in the constitution, protection against strikebreaking is recognized as part of that right. Only two Canadian provinces restrict the use of replacement workers during a strike or a lockout. Quebec’s Labour Code has provisions that prohibit the use of replacement workers at the employer’s establishment. Quebec arbitrators, courts, and boards have interpreted this ill-defined concept as a strictly physical location of production, while ignoring technological advances that make remote work possible. This paper examines how the restrictive interpretation of establishment allows a form of strikebreaking that the Spanish Constitutional Court has described as “technological strikebreaking” (esquirolaje technologico), while also allowing the use of technology already at the employer’s disposal to circumvent restrictions on replacement workers even when such technology is not routinely used. The impact of technology on strikebreaking is examined through two case studies: the successive lockouts at the Journal de Québec and the Journal de Montréal. In both cases, external contributors provided the newspapers with content electronically, thus allowing uninterrupted publication. Using Katz, Kochan and Colvil’s three-tier model of collective bargaining, this paper looks at how technological strikebreaking disrupts not only the balance of bargaining power but also bargaining strategy, and how, in the case of the Journal de Montréal, it led to devastating bargaining outcomes. Though the lockouts led to a call for legislative reform in 2011, legislative change is not necessary to align existing provisions with the goal of shortening labour disputes.

China Collective Negotiation in COVID-19: What We learn from a Comparative Analysis of China, the United States and Germany

Labor conflicts can be solved by an efficient collective bargaining system with consensus-based. Since the economic uncertainty caused by COVID-19, employers have been shut down or have had to reduce operations drastically and many employers want to furlough or dismiss employees under certain circumstances in China. Meanwhile, many workers have lost income. Since workers have gone back to the worksite in March 2020, labor unrest has spread out in order to ask for wage arrears in the manufactory, construction, and service sectors in terms of strikes map from China Labor Bulletin. The paper targets on three different countries with top economies, and examines its bargaining models to keep industrial peace. The paper argues that China bargaining model under state-control strongly depends on government intention for intervention where there is labor unrest, and the system less focuses on self-governance which may result in a hard time to maintain industrial resources, even though the state issued the related policies to highly encouraged companies to hold a negotiation before the lay off workers, reduce wages or work time in order to be employed. While fewer polices and China traditional command-and-control regulation models could not provide an efficient approach to relief labor unrest in the pandemic, Germany's bargaining model is more flexible to provide an example for new governance and co-determination. Also, the bargaining model with sector-level reforms could do more for the United States private sectors in order to the corporation instead of adversarialism. From a comparison among three collective bargaining models, the paper concludes the approaches to protect workers’ rights from global perspectives.

Back to the Future of Canadian Labour Law

The invitation to present the H.D. Woods Lecture came with a proposed subject: the future of labor law. That future won't come by means of a sudden legislative tsunami that sweeps in broad-based sect-oral collective bargaining or some other dramatic new system to replace the Wagner Model which has governed since the 1940s. Instead, change will come first in the form of smaller fore-shocks. In this paper, which is the text of the 2019 H.D. Woods lecture, I argue that clues as to what those fore-shocks may be found can be found in important debates that took place during the 1980s. One of those debates examined comparative labor law and proposals to improve the Wagner Model of collective bargaining by merging features of the Canadian and U.S. versions of that model to create a hybrid model that would better facilitate access to collective voice. A second debate related to the potential impact of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms on the future of Canadian Labor law. David Beatty argued that the Charter would eventually lead to the dismantling of the Wagner Model and its replacement with a new model that extended the reach of collective bargaining to workers long excluded by the Wagner Model. In early Charter litigation, the Supreme Court of Canada wholly rejected Beatty's normative vision for a post-Charter labor law. However, in important ways, Charter jurisprudence since 2001 has slowly shifted the labor law agenda towards a landscape that shares much in common with that which Beatty envisioned long ago. The paper concludes with some predictions about the changes that will come to Canadian labor law drawn from these debates of some 40 years ago.

Moderated Mobilization: A New Model of Enterprise-level Collective Bargaining in South China

AbstractIn response to a series of strikes in south China in 2010, a new model of collective bargaining has emerged, featuring what this article describes as “moderated mobilization.” Distinct from what is typically known as China's quadripartite industrial relations system, whereby workers are separated from the party-state, official trade unions and employers, this model shows workers and enterprise-level trade unions in collaboration with one another. According to our observations from 2012 to 2017, some enterprise unions have successfully mobilized workers throughout the collective bargaining process. These unions are democratically elected by workers and are relatively independent from the official authorities. At the same time, they have “moderated” such mobilization particularly to reduce labour militancy, given the political and institutional constraints within which they must work. The implication of this new model is significant. Although it might be far from solving the quadripartite dilemma, it has signalled an increase in local initiatives among enterprise unions – a previously neglected but pragmatically favourable channel for workers.

Offshoring, the threat effect, and wage inequality

The effects of offshoring threats on the domestic skill premium are widely accepted, but theoretically unanalyzed. This study constructs a simple theoretical model based on task‐trading offshoring and collective wage bargaining models to examine the effects of a firm's offshoring threat on the domestic skill premium. Theoretical analysis suggests that under a moderate demand for the final good, the possibility of offshoring could lower the wages of unskilled domestic workers, who are vulnerable to offshoring, more than the wages of skilled domestic workers. Thus, even when there is no actual offshoring, the skill premium between the two types of workers increases.

Towards a new web of rules

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to review “institutional experimentation” for protecting workers in response to the contraction of the standard employment relationship and the corresponding rise of “non-standard” forms of paid work.Design/methodology/approachThe paper draws on the existing research and knowledge base of the authors as well as a thorough review of the extant literature relating to: non-standard employment contracts; sources of labour supply engaging in non-standard work; exogenous pressures on the employment relationship; intermediaries that separate the management from the control of labour; and entities that subvert the employment relationship.FindingsPost-war industrial relations scholars characterised the traditional regulatory model of collective bargaining and the standard employment contract as a “web of rules”. As work relations have become more market mediated, new institutional arrangements have developed to govern these relations and regulate the terms of engagement. The paper argues that these are indicative of an emergent “patchwork of rules” which are instructive for scholars, policymakers, workers’ representatives and employers seeking solutions to the contraction of the traditional regulatory model.Research limitations/implicationsWhile the review of the institutional experimentation is potentially instructive for developing solutions to gaps in labour regulation, a drawback of this approach is that there are limits to the realisation of policy transfer. Some of the initiatives discussed in the paper may be more effective than others for protecting workers on non-standard contracts, but further research is necessary to test their effectiveness including in different contexts.Social implicationsThe findings indicate that a task ahead for the representatives of government, labour and business is to determine how to adapt the emergent patchwork of rules to protect workers from the new vulnerabilities created by, for example, employer extraction and exploitation of their individual bio data, social media data and, not far off, their personal genome sequence.Originality/valueThe paper addresses calls to examine the “institutional intersections” that have informed the changing ways that work is conducted and regulated. These intersections transcend international, national, sectoral and local units of analysis, as well as supply chains, fissured organisational dynamics, intermediaries and online platforms. The analysis also encompasses the broad range of stakeholders including businesses, labour and community groups, nongovernmental organisations and online communities that have influenced changing institutional approaches to employment protection.

Resolución de conflictos colectivos, comportamiento sindical, y dinámica legislativa y jurisprudencial en materia laboral en el postconflicto en Colombia

El presente artículo hace un recorrido por la crisis que afronta el modelo de negociación colectiva en Colombia y que ha traído como consecuencia el aumento del número de tribunales de arbitramento convocados por año y el incremento en los tiempos para la resolución de conflictos de origen laboral. En la segunda parte del documento se hace una aproximación a dos fenómenos que impactan directamente las relaciones laborales en el país: la fragmentación sindical y el crecimiento de la membresía de afiliación a organizaciones sindicales. En la tercera sección se realiza un análisis del proceso de internacionalización de los conflictos colectivos laborales en Colombia en la última década, especialmente, abordando la evolución de las quejas ante el Comité de Libertad Sindical (CLS) y las recomendaciones de la Comisión de Expertos en Aplicación de Convenios y Recomendaciones (CEACR) de la OIT. En la última, parte del artículo se muestra la dinámica de la agenda legislativa frente a temas laborales en el Congreso de la República en el período 2010-2016, así como las tendencias en materia de fallos por parte de la Corte Constitucional entre los años 1991 a 2016. A algunos de los elementos mencionados se intenta hacer un acercamiento en el presente documento. De manera específica, en la primera sección se analiza brevemente la crisis en el modelo de resolución de conflictos en Colombia, centrado en la incidencia de los tribunales de arbitramento y en lo complejo y tortuoso que es emitir un laudo arbitral en nuestro país. En la segunda parte se analiza de manera pormenorizada el impacto que tiene en las relaciones laborales la debilidad del sindicalismo criollo, se realiza un acercamiento a un fenómeno que vive el movimiento de trabajadores en Colombia y es que crece en materia de afiliación, pero pierde capacidad de negociación y poder en general. En la tercera parte se muestra un diagnóstico en torno al incremento de la conflicitividad laboral a nivel internacional, especialmente en dos esceanrios de la OIT el Comité de Libertad Sindical (CLS) y en la Comisión de Expertos en Aplicación de Convenios y Recomendaciones (CEACR). Finalmente, en la cuarta sección se presenta un informe de las tendencias de los fallos en materia laboral de la Corte Constitucional entre 1991 y 2015, asi como de las tendencias y el dinamismo legislativo en el ultimo quinqenio.

Trade unions and the sovereign power of the state. A comparative analysis of employer offensives in the Danish and Irish public sectors

The changing composition of trade unions has far-reaching consequences for the relationship between unions and the polity. In particular, the concentration of trade union membership in the public sector – a process that has been taking place in most EU countries – implies a shift away from collective agreements towards legislation as the dominant way of managing employment relations. Pluralist models of collective bargaining assume a neutral, mediating role of the state, but in the public sector the state by definition acts as an employer as well. The state is equipped with the sovereign power to circumvent traditional bargaining agreements and force its will upon trade unions through legislation. The article investigates major bargaining disputes in Europe after 2008, focusing on two countries (Ireland and Denmark) that have different political environments and that, although affected differently by the financial crisis, underwent similar government interventions in labour relations. The findings suggest that a shift towards legislation is a tendency that affects all types of industrial relations systems.

Impact of Collective Bargaining in Mining Industry in Odisha:A Hallmark for Peace in Industrial Relations

Article revolves around the collective bargaining process of selected mining industry of Odisha. The complexities of industrial relations have been increasing in a habitual basis. The problem of mis-match has been identified in the negotiation process and have been reviewed through the literature survey pertaining to collective bargaining ,work culture and various benefits availed by the workers since antiquities. It has been accolade with the Dunlop model to resolve on the issues. Hence, it has argued that the three players in the industrial relations have to resolve disputes through flexible interaction in the worker’s participation in the management, as collective bargaining ultimately ends with the reconciliation that is acceptable to both the parties. Article is a qualitative study into the research approach of collective bargaining. Paper uses ideal model of Collective Bargaining, identifying the gap and determining the objectives of employing tools and techniques viz. reliability statistics, frequency distribution, factor analysis in a comprehensive manner. The findings of the study indicate that collective bargaining has a positive impact on the mining industry in Odisha from the empirical data deduced from the analysis and data interpretation. The genuine co-operation of workers to achieve higher productivity can be gained only by mutual understanding through the process of collective bargaining which is ultimately proven method in the scenario of maintaining peaceful industrial relations.

Reprint of "The Scandinavian model—An interpretation"

The small open economies in Scandinavia have for long periods had high work effort, small wage differentials, high productivity, and a generous welfare state. To understand how this might be an economic and political equilibrium we combine models of collective wage bargaining, creative job destruction, and welfare spending. The two-tier system of wage bargaining provides microeconomic efficiency and wage compression. Combined with a vintage approach to the process of creative destruction we show how wage compression fuels investments, enhances average productivity and increases the mean wage by allocating more of the work force to the most modern activities. Finally, we show how the political support of welfare spending is fueled by both a higher mean wage and a lower wage dispersion.

Informalizing the Economy: The Return of the Social Question at a Global Level

ABSTRACTThe classical conceptualization of the working class, of workers’ collective action and, especially, of trade unionism, was implicitly or explicitly based on the Standard Employment Relationship that, for a few decades, has been dominant in North America, Europe, Japan and Australasia. The ‘classical’ model of collective bargaining, which has shaped the world's traditional labour movements, was based on this conceptualization. However, it is now increasingly undermined by the rapid spread of ‘informal’ or ‘precarious’ labour in the global North. It is our contention that the ‘classical’ view of the working class and workers’ collective action is fundamentally biased and takes as a norm or standard what was in fact an historical exception. The real norm or standard in global capitalism is insecurity, informality or precariousness, and the Standard Employment Relationship is an historical phenomenon which had a deep impact in a limited part of the world for a relatively short period of time. If, as we argue, the ‘Rest’ is not now becoming like the ‘West’, but the other way round, then the ‘traditional’ forms of collective action that have developed in the North Atlantic region during the last two centuries are gradually losing much of their impact. New forms of collective action are emerging, though these are often still at an embryonic stage. It is, therefore, high time to rethink the concept of the working class and the ways in which it can further its interests.