National Industrial Relations Systems Research Articles

Wage bargaining and industrial relations under the single European currency. The problem of the relationships between EMU and non-EMU countries

It is often pointed out that the creation of the single European market represents in itself a challenge for national European trade unions and industrial relations systems. A challenge for what, from Commons on, is considered the main task of trade union action: that is, to "take wages out of competition" and to offer workers a shelter against "the increased competitive menace" . To these challenges, the process towards the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and the creation of a single European currency, as it has been envisaged by the Maastricht Treaty, will add new, specific effects. Indeed, this is already occurring, as 1999 gets closer and closer, with the certainty that, despite the severe and politically divisive budget policies that all European governments are forced to adopt, only a small group of countries will qualify from the beginning for the third stage, opening up the problem of the relationships between EMU and non-EMU countries. In the following pages I will consider the specific problems implied by EMU for trade union action. They can be divided into two groups: one is related to the process, now underway, conducive to the creation of the single currency itself, and derives from the costs of meeting the Maastricht requirements (section 2); the second is connected with the consequences of EMU once the process has been accomplished and the single currency established, and with the new scenario that will then be open to economic and social actors (section 3 and 4).

Industrial Relations in an Unstable Environment: The Case of Central and Eastern Europe

This article examines the evolution of industrial relations in the states of central and eastern Europe, and in particular in Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic. The main contention is that these countries will be unable to sustain stable and coherent national systems of industrial relations. The reasons are, first, the disaggregation of employer and employee organizations in this region; and, second, the decentralization of economic management from the state to the enterprise. It is argued that these developments are undermining attempts by a number of CEE countries to develop tripartite for a in order to regulate their respective employment systems.

'Europe of the Regions' and the Future of National Systems of Industrial Relations

A popular argument is that deeper European integration along with moves towards productive decentralization will recast existing governance structures for the labour market. In particular, it is suggested that national industrial relations systems may gradually give way to regional employment systems. This paper takes a critical look at this thesis. After outlining in detail the influences that may cause the nation-state to wither as a site for economic management, the paper assesses whether the institutional and economic conditions exist for the emergence of regional forms of industrial relations. The conclusion is that many of the conditions are not in place and as a result any precipitate shift away from present national arrangements could lead to considerable fragmentation and distortions.

Review Article: European Industrial Relations in Global Perspective

In the past year a number of major comparative studies of industrial relations have been published, and five of these are reviewed here. All the texts agree that global economic integration has posed serious challenges to national industrial relations systems, but beyond this their analyses differ sharply. The author examines in detail the themes of trade union decline and human resource management, and considers how far these may be seen as connected elements in a new industrial relations paradigm.

National Diversity, Regime Competition and Institutional Deadlock: Problems in Forming a European Industrial Relations System

ABSTRACTThe neo-corporatist experiments of the 1970s were attempts to preserve the labor-inclusiveness of post-war European political economies in increasingly adverse domestic and international conditions. Since their demise in the early 1980s, industrial relations in Western Europe are characterized by highdivergencebetween national systems combined with risinginterdependenceamong national economies, creating a growth potential forinter-regime competition. Endeavors to provide the Internal Market with a Social Dimension are attempts to make the externalities of national industrial relations systems governable in a supra-national industrial order. The odds against European-level political reconstruction of industrial relations appear overwhelming.

The Contradictions of French Industrial Relations Reform

In 1982-83 the French Socialist government passed a series of laws known collectively as the Auroux Laws, after the then minister of labor, Jean Auroux.' Their purpose was the wholesale reform of the French system of industrial relations. Collectively, the package of legislation aimed to strengthen trade unions, encourage collective bargaining, give new powers to works councils, allow workers to express themselves in their place of work, and regulate the day-to-day functioning of social relations inside the firm. The reforms were directed at both the public and the private sector. The Auroux Laws constituted a remarkably self-conscious and comprehensive effort to mold industrial relations (or what will be termed labor regulation2) in France. The Socialist experiment in industrial relations reform is interesting both for the scale of what was attempted (eventually one-third of the Labor Code was rewritten), and hence what it tells us about the ability of governments to carry out broad projects of social reform, and for its timing. In the period after 1973 the advanced capitalist economies experienced multiple economic shocks and prolonged recession. The initial reaction of most governments was to maintain or even reinforce the industrial relations system and to deal with the economic crisis by a combination of familiar macroeconomic policies. However, by the end of the 1970s there was a widespread perception that the crisis was structural rather than conjunctural and required a profound economic restructuring to rid sclerotic western economies of a wide range of rigidities which inhibited their capacity to respond rapidly and flexibly to a more competitive and quickly changing global economy. One of these rigidities was the industrial relations system itself. As a discourse of flexibility rapidly took hold of business and resurgent conservative parties, trade unions and the fragile postwar class compromise embodied in national industrial relations systems came under attack.3 This economic and social crisis did not spare France. Two oil shocks hit the energy-poor French economy hard, and after 1976 Prime Minister Raymond Barre began a somewhat half-hearted restructuring of an economy which had a widespread reputation for being highly dirigiste and rigid.4 However, in 1981 a Socialist government was elected, and its industrial relations project appeared to run counter to that of other states. In attempting to encourage collective bargaining and strengthen trade unions, the French Socialists were trying to create precisely the form of labor regulation which was being called into question or even dismantled elsewhere. The Socialists had a sophisticated economic rationale for the Auroux reforms, as the next section will demonstrate, and they had at their disposal a notoriously strong state for this ambitious project. The importance of the Auroux Laws in comparative perspective is that they provide an insight into particular national responses to broad economic pressures and the capacity of states to swim against the economic tide. In a period of profound economic restructuring and

Integration and Dealignment in Public Enterprise Industrial Relations: A Study of British Rail

AbstractThis paper considers whether a process of dealignment of workplace organizations from the national union and industrial relations system has occurred in British Rail. As a starting point, it is noted that workplace representatives have traditionally been closely integrated with other actors in the system. Integration has been based on the supply of bargaining resources by the national union and other bargaining institutions. If new management industrial relations policies have cut back the supply of these, it is possible that workplace organizations will dealign themselves from the national union. This hypothesis is considered using data obtained from a survey of train drivers' representatives. It is found that there is no evidence for dealignment and that in a significant minority of cases closer rather than weaker links are being forged.

A Long Cycle in Industrial Relations, or: Regulation Theory and Political Economy

ABSTRACT: The main purpose of this paper is to test the Regulation Theory (la Théorie de la Régulation) ‘ on a subject — the long cycle of rigidity/flexibility in labour markets and industrial relations we have experienced between the late sixties and now — that should be one of the central concerns of such a theory, being linked to one of its basic concepts: the Rapport Salarial. Does the theory of regulation help us (more than rival theoretical frameworks do) in explaining why we underwent a rigidity/flexibility cycle? And in explaining why this cycle took such different forms in different countries?In order to achieve this purpose, the author first distinguishes several meanings, or dimensions, or rigidity/flexibility (money and real wage, numerical, functional, intensive, dualistic, geographical) and goes to some length in analysing why comparisons in this field between national industrial relations systems and labour market arrangements are rather difficult to perform. Having done that, the author argues that regulation theory is of little help in understanding our diachronic question — why we went through a flexibility cycle — because such a theory does not make any strong bet on the causes of change in the institutional arrangements of labour markets and industrial relations. On the synchronic question — why the forms of the cycle have been so different cross‐nationally — the conclusion is that Regulation Theory can be useful as a focusing device, as an ideal‐type, but that a lot of nationally‐specific materials have to be added in order to obtain adequate answers.The paper ends up with a methodological discussion on the statute of regulation theory. It is argued that it is neither theory nor history: it is a series of ideal‐types of system‐integration, connected by ex‐post, historical linkages.