Role Of Industrial Relations Research Articles

Digitalization and work organization in Italian banks: The role of industrial relations

In the last years, several impacts took place in the organization of the banking sector especially pushed also by institutional context. One specific case is the role of the MiFID II Directive in the adoption of new technologies, work organization models, and implementation of reskilling processes. The article looks at the Italian context after the introduction of the Directive together with the turbulent environment from the economic, socio-cultural and technological point of view of the years after the recession. And in particular focuses on how industrial relations, through collective agreements at the national and especially at the firm level helped the governance of these challenges. To do this the paper wants to analyze this phenomenon starting from a deepening of impacts of MiFID II on work or-ganization and through a focus on the actual scenario of industrial relations in the sector in Italy before showing two different case studies, Unicredit and Banca Eti-ca, through which analyze how social partners through collective agreements acted after MiFID II. It emerges how the institutional context of industrial relations in the sector helped in enforcing collective agreements at the company level and at the same time the presence of bilateral institutions helped in reducing redundancies due to restructuring processes.

Productivity and industrial relations in the Australian construction industry

The global construction industry has a poor productivity record compared with other industries. While there have been many studies into the factors that influence construction productivity, the role of industrial relations (IR) in construction productivity has been neglected. This is despite countries with highly unionised workforces, such as Australia and Canada, often attributing the industry’s relatively low productivity to its confrontational IR environment. This paper explores how construction project managers and operatives in Australia interpret what has become a highly divisive IR debate and how this influences their IR behaviour. A survey of 92 construction project managers and operatives reveals multi-theoretical perceptions influenced by both pluralist and radical IR theories. While unions are seen as beneficial to project safety and work hours, they are perceived as detrimental to productivity, although there is uncertainty about how this relationship works. It is concluded that improvements in construction project productivity are unlikely to be achieved by IR legislation alone but through a more complex multidimensional bargaining lens where project managers and operatives develop mutually beneficial shared solutions.

Industrial relations and inequality: the many conditions of a crucial relationship

This article develops an analytical framework for exploring the complex (and sometimes contradictory) relationship between industrial relations and inequality. It discusses whether, under what conditions and to what extent the often-made claim that industrial relations can contribute to reducing inequality is warranted, by focusing on the two dimensions of intra- and inter-class inequality. Following the main lines of the proposed analytical framework, the article then presents a selective review of the empirical literature and how the contributions in this issue can help to refine and integrate the proposed analytical framework. The conclusions present some reflections on how the role of industrial relations in addressing inequality can be enhanced.

Unions, Industrial Relations and Market Income Inequality in Canada’s Provinces

While decades of scholarship point to the broad consensus that unions compress the distribution of wages and incomes, recent empirical contributions suggest that unions’ within-country egalitarian effect is dwindling, as unions decline and membership composition changes. What is more, unions now operate in an increasingly difficult political economy transformed by, among other forces, globalization, financialization and fiscal austerity. At the same time, there is an increased demand for unions to play a broader role in a movement for distributive justice.Transposing these debates to the Canadian provincial context, this article asks whether unions still matter for reducing inequality. Considering the role of industrial relations more broadly by taking into account strike activity and collective labour statutes, the article explores the relationship between union power and market income inequality over a period ranging from 1984 to 2012. This empirical contribution is framed in theories from comparative capitalism, economics, and sociology.Descriptive longitudinal statistics support the well-documented union decline narrative. On average, union density and strike activity have declined in the provinces. As for the quality of collective labour rights, it is argued that the relative apparent stability of statutes conceals more substantive issues with Wagnerism as an organizing model. Linking unions to inequality, results from multivariate regressions using panel data suggest that union power still matters for limiting market income inequality. While estimates for strike action are not statistically significant, those for union density and the quality of collective labour statutes suggest that unions still exert an inequality-reducing effect. However, the rarity of significant estimates across models using different measures of inequality indicates that this effect is by no means comprehensive.

Rookes v. Barnard and the trade union question in British politics

AbstractIn the 1950s, given the scope of the Trade Disputes Act 1906 that had granted immunity against specific torts (civil wrongs) to organisers of industrial action, the courts had little role in industrial relations. Hence, the importance of the House of Lords decision in 1964 that, in threatening to strike to secure Douglas Rookes's removal from the Heathrow design office of the British Overseas Aircraft Corporation after his resignation from the union, Alfred Barnard and others had used unlawful means because a threat to break a contract of employment came within the tort of intimidation that was unprotected by the Trade Disputes Act's statutory immunities, and thus, they were liable to pay damages to Rookes. The legal arguments deployed are analysed within growing unease in the Conservative Party and among employers at the emergence of workplace union organisation and national strikes. Despite being partially neutralised by the Trade Disputes Act 1965, Rookes was a harbinger of a new judicial activism that outflanked trade unions' tort immunities by creating novel common law liabilities. This in turn laid the political basis for subsequent Conservative legislation to restrict and regulate trade unions and industrial action, a project that is ongoing.

The Law behind the Law: Rookes v. Barnard [1964], the Common Law and the Right to Strike

By the 1950s, given the scope of the Trade Disputes Act (TDA) 1906, the courts had little role in industrial relations. Hence the importance of the House of Lords decision in 1964 for Douglas Rookes that Alfred Barnard, John Fistal and Reginald Silverthorne had used unlawful means in threatening to strike to secure Rookes’s removal from the Heathrow design office of the British Overseas Aircraft Corporation (BOAC) after his resignation from the Association of Engineering and Shipbuilding Draughtsmen (AESD), because a threat to break a contract of employment came within the tort of intimidation which was unprotected by the TDA’s statutory immunities. Rookes illustrated the relevance of Laski’s view that in labour law the common law is ‘a law behind the law’. It was a harbinger of a new judicial activism that outflanked the TDA’s tort immunities by creating novel common law liabilities, and which in turn strengthened calls for statutory restriction and regulation of industrial action.

Influence of Industrial Relations on the Management of Industrial Dispute (A Study of Selected Private Enterprises in Delta State)

This study on “The Effects of Industrial Relations on the Management of Industrial Dispute” was to: determine the association between dispute management style and dispute resolution; ascertain the relationship between industrial dispute settlement machinery and industrial conflict resolution; find out the relationship between industrial democracy and industrial harmony; and determine the association between employee-employer relationships on curbing conflict. This study adopts the descriptive research design. The population of study consists of 465 employees of selected aluminum companies in Asaba Delta State. Structured questionnaires built on four point scale was used to obtain information from the respondents. The results show that: there is a significant association between dispute management style and industrial dispute resolution; there is significant association between dispute settlement machinery and industrial conflict resolution; that there is a significant relationship between industrial democracy and industrial harmony; and there is a significant relationship between employee-employer relation and curbing of industrial conflict. The study therefore recommends among other things further studies to determine the role of industrial relations in preventing industrial conflicts, as the best way of solving any problem is a proactive approach.

Who Killed the Australian Automotive Industry: The Employers, Government or Trade Unions?

The decision by the three multinational automotive manufacturers – Ford, General Motors and Toyota – to cease production in Australia followed a long period of decline in the local industry. This paper examines the factors potentially contributing to these decisions including reductions in government assistance to the industry, the volatility in exchange rates, global strategic decisions by the parent companies to shift production to expanding markets in Asia, and the role of industrial relations and trade unions. Despite the attention given in public discourse to industrial relations arrangements in supposedly hastening the demise of local automotive manufacturing, we find that this factor made no identifiable difference to the final decisions of the parent companies in Tokyo and Detroit to cease production in Australia, which can be attributed to an unfavourable conjuncture of factors. The paper concludes by considering possible options for retaining some aspects of automotive manufacturing in Australia in the future.

Wage and workforce adjustments in the economic crisis in Germany and the Netherlands

This study uses data from a continuous employee web-survey to investigate the trade-off between wage and workforce adjustments and the role of industrial relations in firm-level responses to the economic crisis in Germany and the Netherlands. Workforce adjustments seemed to be a continuous organizational strategy, but wage adjustments were less often reported. We found no large-scale evidence of wage concessions being traded-off for job protection in the two countries. Collective bargaining ensured that wage-setting was more robust than employment protection: employees covered by collective agreements reported workforce adjustments more often than wage adjustments. Low-educated and low-wage employees reported basic wage reductions more often: the economic crisis increased wage inequality. Labour hoarding was reported predominantly by young, male employees with a permanent, full-time contract.

Teamwork within the Nordic model

PurposeThe purpose of this editorial is to introduce the special issue from the IWOT conferences in 2012, focusing on teamwork within the Nordic model.Design/methodology/approachThe paper identifies the content of the Nordic model and discusses how it is relevant for high performing autonomous teams, especially connected to teams with a high level of autonomy.FindingsShared leadership is positive for team performance when team autonomy is high. The paper identifies eight important variables for creating high performing cross‐functional teams, the role of trust between workers and supervisors in order to unlock standards, and emphasizes the role of industrial relations as an important support system for team work.Originality/valueThis editorial provides an overview of the Nordic perspective of autonomous teams contained in the special issue which comprises four original articles that are examples of latest developments in this research area. Each of these articles contains a brief introduction on how they contribute to filling in gaps in the literature.

An Industrial Relations Framework for the Euro Area: Efficient, Converging and Equitable

The excessive high public debt of almost all member states of the euro area, resulting from diverging tendencies of economic development, requires appropriate adjustment mechanisms. The crucial role of industrial relations is strengthened by the introduction of the economic policy instruments of investment wages and collective capital formation. The European labour movement is thereby empowered, together with the European and national macro-economic policy institutions, to engage in the macro-economic control of the euro area. The trade unions, using their control over Wage-Earner Investment Funds, increase labour productivity in the regions and sectors of the euro area such that the imbalances of intra-euro-area trade are balanced out by direct foreign investment. An ecologically sustainable and inclusive economic development of the whole euro area is achieved. The introduction of investment wages should not only re-establish full-employment in the whole of the European Union, together with the co-determination of the enterprises it is also a key instrument to further economic democracy.

Outsourcing, delocalization and firm organization: Transaction costs versus industrial relations in a local production system of Emilia Romagna

This article investigates the firms’ decisions to outsource, taking into account the impact of their embeddedness in a specific regional context on the relative entrepreneurial decision. It focuses on the role of industrial relations, as a factor that could interfere with the entrepreneurs’ decision of resorting to market relationships in discovering and exploiting new business opportunities. We study a local production system in Emilia Romagna (Northern Italy), i.e. the province of Reggio Emilia (RE), whose firms are characterized by a district kind of environment and where entrepreneurship develops in the presence of ‘thick’ industrial relations. The empirical part of the study shows that the role of transaction costs in explaining the outsourcing is blurred, while industrial relations have a stronger explanatory power. Furthermore, it seems that RE firms generally use outsourcing and international delocalization in complementary ways; however, the correlation depends on the activity and the nature of the delocalization channel. Outsourcing strategies appear to be affected by the pattern of socio-economic development in the region where the firms are located. In particular, the entrepreneurial decision to externalize a part of the production process seems to be related to the specific participatory, formal and informal mechanisms involved in regional development.

Corporate Governance and Industrial Relations for a Sustainable Growth of the Corporate Sector

This article offers a focused and complex interpretation of the Indian experience by comparing and contrasting the implications of various government regulatory changes in the Corporate Governance and Industrial Relations. The corporate Governance and Industrial Relations are interrelated and they go together in making an effective Organisation. The principal role of Industrial relations is the harmonization and reconciliation of conflicting interests. The corporate governance is a multi faceted subject. It is the set of processes, customs, policies and institutions through which the corporate are directed, administered or controlled. An important theme of the Corporate Governance and Industrial Relations are to ensure the accountability of certain individuals in an organization and foster the sustainable growth of the corporate sector. The guidelines of Indian Corporate Governance are comprehensive. These cover Board member criteria and directors', lead directors' responsibilities, management succession planning, selection and evaluation of CEO, CFO, director's compensation, assessment of board performance and more. This article also focuses on other internal aspects such as the interactions of industrial relations and the corporate governance of which has a direct bearing on the performance of the Board as a whole, who are ultimately answerable to the share holders and the stake holders. (This paper is based on the Ph.D. thesis under preparation by the Author)

한국과 영국의 노사관계 비교

In this research, I tried to make a comparative study of ideological characteristics of Industrial Relations between Korea and U.K., based on the presupposition that ideologies of Industrial Relations` Actors played an important role in Industrial Relations. U.K. have a voluntary and pluralistic ideological tradition of Industrial Relations, therefore U.K. is very rational to adjust and integrate different ideologies of actors. Meanwhile Korea have unrealistic, exclusive and rigid ideologies, therefore these have played a important role in worsening labor-management conflicts. For example strikes frequencies and workers involved in strikes are relatively few, but Workdays Lost due to strikes are very severe because of long strike durations, compared to U.K. Consequently national economic loss due to strikes has been severe. Korea trade unions are various and poor, but at the same time not mutual understanding in ideologies. Therefore from the viewpoint that strength in U.K.`s Industrial Relations stands on the power of adjusting different ideologies, we have to diminish the disparities between ideologies and realities of Industrial Relations through public discussion.

Wage Cyclicality Under Different Regimes of Industrial Relations

Since there is scant evidence on the role of industrial relations in wage cyclicality, this paper analyzes the effect of collective wage contracts and of works councils on real wage growth. Using linked employer-employee data for western Germany, we find that works councils affect wage growth only in combination with collective bargaining. Wage adjustments to positive and negative economic shocks are not always symmetric. Only under sectoral bargaining there is a (nearly symmetric) reaction to rising and falling unemployment. In contrast, wage growth in establishments without collective bargaining adjusts only to falling unemployment and is unaffected by rising unemployment.

James D. Rose,Duquesne and the Rise of Steel Unionism. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001. xi + 284 pp. $42.50.

Back to the shop floor! This book is a welcome addition to the literature of American labor in the mid-twentieth century. Through meticulous analysis of steel workers at the workplace in Duquesne, Pennsylvania, James D. Rose explains the emergence and eventual victory of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC), a part of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), in all its complexity. In doing so, he reveals the inadequacy of Lizabeth Cohen's culture of unity as well as Staughton Lynd's militant alternative unionism to explain the labor history of the 1930s. In addition, he reintroduces the idea that the federal government's role in industrial relations was crucial to the success of the CIO.

William Millikan, A Union Against Unions: The Minneapolis Citizens Alliance and Its Fight Against Organized Labor, 1903–1947. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2001. 526 pp. $34.95 cloth.

While there are many histories of unions in the United States, there are relatively few studies of employer associations and their role in industrial relations. Howell John Harris's recent study of the Metal Manufacturers Association of Philadelphia, Bloodless Victories: The Rise and Fall of the Open Shop in the Philadelphia Metal Trades, 1890–1940 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), stresses the importance of values in shaping employer behavior. William Millikan's meticulous history of the Minneapolis Citizens Alliance likewise demonstrates the importance of ideas as well as interests in business approaches toward industrial relations. The Minneapolis employers, however, embraced a tougher brand of anti-unionism than Harris found in Philadelphia.

Strategies of Union Revitalization in Spain: Negotiating Change and Fragmentation

Spanish unions have pursued various strategies in their attempt to revitalize. Political action has been of particular importance, but collective bargaining and cooperation between the two major union confederations have also been significant factors. We argue that the broader political context and historical legacies are crucial in explaining unions' strategic choices. In particular, we look at the tensions between the unions' institutional role in industrial relations and a fragmented civil society and labour market. Further, the search for a new union identity needs to be understood in the context of the interests of employers. While the unions have been innovative in devising new strategies, the measures of success are still inconclusive.

Industrial Relations and Protection of the Environment: Research Findings from a New Policy Field

Since 1991 a research group has investigated the relationship between environmental policies and the industrial relations systems in 10 European countries. It might be expected that the growing importance of the environment as a policy issue would prompt an enlargement of the traditional agenda of industrial relations systems, leading to stronger inclusion of the social partners in environmental action; but in the main, evidence of such enlargement has been sparse. The Netherlands, where works councils legislation has been used to extend collective rights for greater environmental involvement, stood out as the exception. Elsewhere, initiatives have been mostly confined to company-level voluntary agreements, with certain sectors playing a prominent role. Very few attempts have been made to develop the environmental role of industrial relations actors through legislation. A number of explanations for this relatively slow progress are explored, as are the prospects for developments in the future.

Repression and Struggle: the State, the Chaebol and Independent Trade Unions in South Korea

The paper examines the interactions between the state, the chaebol and independent trade unions in South Korea from 1945 to 1999 within a political economy framework. It explores four propositions. First, that a more contingent approach is needed to understand the diversity and dynamic nature of environmental forces affecting South Korean industrial relations than the conventional emphasis on rapid industrialisation, Confucian values and anti-communist ideology. Second, that the role of the state has altered since 1987 from one of repression of labour militancy to one of playing a less interventionist role in industrial relations, although the state remains more supportive of the interests of employers. Tbird, that employers, especially family- owned conglomerates or chaebol, play an increasingly central role in industrial rela tions. Fourth, that economic, social structural and political factors aided the re-emergence of independent trade unions, in particular the development of large-scale heavy and chemical industries in regional industrial estates as part of the process of rapid industrialisation and the movement towards democratic political rule in 1987.