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International Labor Revitalization: Enlarging the Playing Field
Abstract
This survey of international union strategies distinguishes between approaches that add microeconomic value, adjust institutional frameworks, and enlarge the “playing field” on which unions organize and represent worker interests. It considers unions' efforts across advanced capitalist economies to use the latter approach to solve public goods problems while organizing new members. This strategy is limited by difficulties of coordinating multiple social interests but holds revitalizing potential by adding social value in times of socioeconomic instability.
... The purpose of this paper is to analyse these developments, in particular how Sintracarbon was able to make these profound political and organisational changes, given the lack of indigenous experience and evidence for union instrumentality in the case of contract workers. Firstly, we argue that Sintracarbon was able to adopt a 'field-enlarging strategy' (Wever 1998) based on the injustices experienced by both contract workers and the mining community. This was achieved by promoting the social value of organising amongst contract workers and more broadly within the Colombian trade union movement. ...
... Wever's work on organisational strategy is relevant here in that it tries to understand how trade unions come to adopt 'field-enlarging' strategies (Wever 1998: 392) by exploiting the social value of taking on new areas of work or memberships outside of traditional employment relations systems. Looking specifically at organizing in the USA, Wever (1998) examines union responses to profound changes in employment relations, specifically the externalization of the employment relationship and identifies three main strategies. The first two, are more traditional clusters of responses focussed around adding value to the production process and facilitating workplace flexibility, both strategies are characteristic of Western European trade unions. ...
... She argues that this latter strategy involves organizing around broad social issues, in order to attract and recruit new and typically vulnerable groups of workers, such as recent campaigns by the service workers union SEIU and the state, county, and municipal workers union AFSCME. Despite the evident difficulties of taking on new areas of work, Wever (1998) argues that where social value can be identified and used to mobilize support, it can lead to membership gains and increased leverage with employers. ...
... The purpose of this article is to analyse these developments, in particular how Sintracarbon was able to make these profound political and organizational changes, given the lack of indigenous experience and evidence for union instrumentality in the case of contract workers. First, we argue that Sintracarbon was able to adopt a 'field-enlarging strategy' (Wever 1998) based on the injustices experienced by both contract workers and the mining community. This was achieved by promoting the social value of organizing among contract workers and more broadly within the Colombian trade union movement. ...
... Wever's work on organizational strategy is relevant here in that it tries to understand how trade unions come to adopt 'field-enlarging' strategies (Wever 1998: 392) by exploiting the social value of taking on new areas of work or memberships outside of traditional employment relations systems. Looking specifically at organizing in the USA, Wever (1998) examines union responses to profound changes in employment relations, specifically the externalization of the employment relationship and identifies three main strategies. The first two are more traditional clusters of responses focused around adding value to the production process and facilitating workplace flexibility, both strategies are characteristic of Western European trade unions. ...
... She argues that this latter strategy involves organizing around broad social issues, in order to attract and recruit new and typically vulnerable groups of workers, such as recent campaigns by the service workers union SEIU and the state, county and municipal workers union AFSCME. Despite the evident difficulties of taking on new areas of work, Wever (1998) argues that where social value can be identified and used to mobilize support, it can lead to membership gains and increased leverage with employers. ...
This article examines recent organizing successes in the Carbones del Cerrejón coal mine, reversing the organizational crisis of the Colombian mining union, Sintracarbon. Using Wever's concept of ‘field-enlarging strategies’, we argue that these events were facilitated by the dissemination of organising experiences between affiliates of a Global Union Federation, International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), which recently merged to form IndustriALL. Additionally, we argue that this articulation between international and national unions, based on the principle of subsidiarity, was facilitated through sustained ICEM educational project activity, providing multiple entry points for Sintracarbon to operationalize its strategy and re-establish bargaining with multinational employers.
... In developing our analysis of these examples we will draw upon, and seek to explore the connections between, earlier discussions of the relationships between trade unions and social movements , the framing of social movement agendas (Snow and Benford 2000), efforts to 'enlarge the playing field' on which unions organise and represent workers (Wever 1998) and the tensions between 'short' and 'longer' equal opportunity agendas (Cockburn 1991). ...
... Finally, we also draw on a more specific discussion of the recent widening of trade union agendas, namely Wever's (1998) analysis of union efforts to widen their arena of activity within the community and civil society. ...
... Finally it also drew upon expertise from local authorities (Greenwich Council and Domestic Violence Forum, and the Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham) in developing the activity pack. In the terms developed by Wever (1998) we can say that in all these respects UNISON can be seen to be 'enlarging the playing field' of union policy agendas and activities. In particular, these campaigning initiatives seek to augment 'social value' through campaigning alliances, in a way which contrasts with either economistic workplace bargaining or neo-corporatist forms of political exchange. ...
... A particularly influential form of this argument claims that workers are characterised by an increasing diversity of identity and interest and that consequently unions must learn to 'represent diversity' if they are to survive. For instance, Wever (1998: 389) urges a strategy of renewal through 'enlargement', in which unions 'try to organize workers outside the forums of traditional industrial relations and to represent interests that may include but also go beyond the standard subjects of bargaining' (see also Hyman 1999; Murray 1994). A strategy of enlargement of this kind may embrace social identities that express gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age or disability but may also arise from differences based on competing forms of employment relationship. ...
... In the latter, however, there have been instances of a reversal of this trend and there is a strong body of opinion advocating the revival of multi-employer bargaining to cater specifically to the needs of contingent workers (Cobble 1991; 1994; Herzenberg et al.1999; Rogers 1995; Wever 1998; Wial 1994). For these writers multi-employer bargaining can benefit contingent workers by reducing competition on wage levels and establishing minimum wage and employment standards within labour markets. ...
... The key change in collective bargaining that American writers have advocated is a change in structure. Enterprise bargaining, it is argued, fails to meet the need of contingent workers for regulation of the external labour market and consequently they recommend the revival of multi-employer bargaining within regional labour markets (Wever 1998; Wial 1994). Bargaining at this level, it is claimed, will establish a wage floor and can be used to establish portable benefits and industry-specific training. ...
... The opportunities for trade unions are often couched in two different but complementary forms. Firstly, flexible workers are a relatively untapped source of recruitment potential and therefore offer a pragmatic solution to falling memberships due to sectoral decline notably in the manufacturing and primary industries (Croucher and Brewster, 1998; Delsen, 1990; Engberg, 1993; Mangen, 2000; Wever, 1998; Heery and Conley, 2007). This is a largely instrumental view in which trade unions might be expected to recruit non-standard workers but do little to represent their interests. ...
... This is a largely instrumental view in which trade unions might be expected to recruit non-standard workers but do little to represent their interests. The second is a long-term visionary view of union revitalisation based upon the argument that representing a more diverse membership can entail positive restructuring for trade union organisation (Cobble, 1993; Heery and Abbott, 2000; Leisink, 1997; Wever, 1998). Related to the latter position is the argument that flexible work is not gender, ethnicity, or age neutral. ...
... In the academic literature emphasis is placed on the need to foster the participation of non-standard workers in order that they may shape union activity and policy that may not have been developed with their interests in mind (Cobble, 1993; Leisink, 1997; Wever, 1998; Heery and Abbott, 2000; Heery et al., 2004). AUT attempts to stimulate recruitment have relied upon local support and acceptance but have represented a largely " top down " approach. ...
Purpose
Drawing on literature that examines trade union representation of “non‐standard” workers, this paper aims to analyse the attempts of the Association of University Teachers (AUT) to integrate the interests of contract research staff (CRS) employed on fixed‐term contracts between 1974 and 2002. The paper examines the union campaign under five areas identified in the literature as important to the development of representation of non‐standard workers: trade union orientation to non‐standard workers; recruitment; participation; collective bargaining; extending representation beyond collective bargaining.
Design/methodology/approach
The main sources of data are drawn from analyses of union documentation, including internal memoranda and reports dating back to 1974, which chart the antecedents and progress of the AUT campaign against casualisation. This is supported by participant and non‐participant observation of 14 union meetings and events coupled with data from 20 semi‐structured interviews with a range of national officers and local activists conducted between 1999 and 2002.
Findings
The data support previous research that has identified changing union orientations to non‐standard workers. In the AUT, recruitment of CRS was propelled by instrumental needs to build and extend a declining membership base, but active participation of members employed on fixed‐term contracts has influenced union democracy and the collective bargaining agenda. However, the results, in terms of concrete gains in job security for CRS, have been limited.
Research limitations/implications
The paper examines a case study of one union in particular circumstances. Although the findings add to the general knowledge of union representation on non‐standard workers, the outcomes are specific to the case study union. The paper concludes with an evaluation of the effectiveness of the AUT campaign against casualisation whilst highlighting the implications for the development of conceptual and theoretical frameworks on the representation of “non‐standard” workers.
Originality/value
The paper provides unique and detailed historical data on one trade union's attempts to integrate the interests of academics employed on fixed‐term contracts into union structures originally designed to service one of the most secure sectors of the British workforce.
... This means that the traditional limits of IR playfields as we used to consider them tend to become porous or frayed. New territorial spaces, characterized by open, fluid boundaries, that need to be constantly defined according to the situation, tend to emerge (Wever, 1998;Regalia, 1998). ...
... In its place there have developed fluid firm systems in continuous change, varyingly connected with each other in a global scenario, and in which the role of the workforce is also diversified. One such hint concerns the potential of action at local level, where, by "enlarging the playing field" (Wever, 1998), it may be possible for the actors, especially if organized, to derive greater resources than they could on their own account or deal with issues difficult to address within a single firm (Regalia, 1998). Another hint concerns the consequences of changes affecting labour: its use, but also its changing social characteristics. ...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to highlight a series of critical points in the traditional theory (and practice) of ER/IR, in search of a more comprehensive paradigm.
Design/methodology/approach
After an introduction based on a literature review, the paper draws on the results of recent empirical research, and particularly of a survey of employment relations in Italian small firms, in order to explore the extent to which practices conform to traditional expectations on the functioning of collectively mediated IR systems.
Findings
Through the combination of two dimensions – the representation of labour and the degree of workplace welfare – a typology of ER models in small firms is thus delineated unveiling the diffusion of “anomalous” configurations, in which labour organization and workplace welfare are disconnected from one another.
Research limitations/implications
The research results, which are here instrumentally used as an example of a much broader range of facts and behaviours that challenge the traditional wisdom, disclose a number of implications at theoretical level, that still need to be fully appreciated. They include the need to consider: the structure and composition of resources available to ER/IR actors both within and beyond workplaces; and the conditions for good labour relations also in absence of representation.
Originality/value
The paper contributes to the debate on the possibilities of positive and socially acceptable ways of setting the rules of work in the globalized scenario by focussing not on new, fashionable issues, but on an old problem often neglected by classic studies on industrial relations in the golden age.
... This means that the traditional limits of IR playfields as we used to consider them tend to become porous or frayed. New territorial spaces, characterized by open, fluid boundaries, that need to be constantly defined according to the situation, tend to emerge (Wever, 1998;Regalia, 1998). ...
... In its place there have developed fluid firm systems in continuous change, varyingly connected with each other in a global scenario, and in which the role of the workforce is also diversified. One such hint concerns the potential of action at local level, where, by " enlarging the playing field " (Wever, 1998), it may be possible for the actors, especially if organized, to derive greater resources than they could on their own account or deal with issues difficult to address within a single firm (Regalia, 1998). Another hint concerns the consequences of changes affecting labour: its use, but also its changing social characteristics. ...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to report on research on the strategies of inequality at the workplace level of multinational corporations within the context characterized by the weakening of traditional bargaining and representation structures. Through which specific strategies multinational corporations foster inequality across different workplaces across borders and how do trade unions in Europe respond to it?
Design/methodology/approach
This paper is a conceptual one and it is based on existing qualitative comparative research developed by the author.
Findings
The regulatory regime of organized and governed labor markets and employment relationships is undermined by the employment relationships becoming increasingly unstable in most industrialized countries in Europe. The breakdown in the collective structures for employment regulation, particularly collective bargaining, has led to growing insecurity and inequality among working people. At the workplace level of multinationals inequality is fostered by strategies of flexibilization and benchmarking which force trade unions to negotiate concessions regarding the working conditions of different workers. Trade unions are seeking effective responses to increasing labor market instability and inequality. The paper argues that the transnational regulation of employment relationships through the European Framework Agreements (EFAs) can serve the purpose of constraining benchmarking, while containing workplace inequality.
Originality/value
This paper offers an in-depth view that the EFAs can constrain the multinationals’ strategies of benchmarking and workplace inequality. This is because EFAs can potentially spread across countries the positive gains of local negotiations where unions are able to negotiate on employment protection to other local subsidiaries where unions may struggle to do so.
... While 'community unionism' or community-based organising has yet to develop to any great extent in the UK, evidence from the US shows that the model has potential to rebuild trade union membership. Where it has been applied, it has tended to be among BME and migrant worker communities Mann 2001;Milkman 2000;Pastor 2001;Wever 1998). As in the UK, the US has seen an increasing polarisation between the living and working conditions of certain sections of society. ...
... To do this requires embeddedness in the communities unions are trying to organise -something that is missing in large sections of the labour movement. An understanding of language, culture and social experiences of different communities decides whether organisers are seen as insiders or outsiders and this affects the degree of trust afforded to labour organisations and thus the extent of union success (Wells 2000;Wever 1998). ...
... The rediscovery of the movement origins of trade unionism, in turn, implies a series of strategic choices with regard to the constituency, goals, relationships and methods which unions employ (Hyman, 1997b). Advocates are anxious that unions broaden their constituency, draw new or previously neglected categories into membership and extend organisation "downwards" to low wage workers in secondary labour markets (Oxenbridge, 1997;Wever, 1998). There is also a tendency to express union purpose through an explicitly moral discourse. ...
... Secondly, there is direct evidence that use of the organizing model is associated with deliberate learning, with those unions reporting receptiveness to lessons overseas being significantly more likely to report an organizing approach. Thirdly, there is evidence that the organizing model is linked to an "enlargement" strategy (Wever, 1998) and a focus on organizing women, the young, members of ethnic minorities, workers on non-standard contracts and those at lower organisational levels to the bulk of the existing membership. The link between the organizing model and attempts to broaden the constituency of unions, therefore, apparent in studies from other countries, is also apparent in the UK. ...
The concept of an “organizing model” of trade unionism has shaped union strategies for revitalization in a number of countries in recent years. This article examines the transfer of “organizing unionism” to the UK in two ways. It presents findings from a survey of unions to identify the extent to which the organizing model is influencing national recruitment policy and presents case studies of three union campaigns which have drawn upon the organizing model, in an attempt to assess its strengths and weaknesses in a UK context. The survey results indicate only limited take-up of the organizing model, though there is a group of vanguard unions which have embraced it with enthusiasm. The case studies demonstrate some success in applying the model, though identify employer resistance and internal opposition as significant constraints.
... Il primo caso è quello che più assomiglia a un buon modello tradizionale di relazioni industriali, ma in una situazione in cui la possibilità per le imprese di disporre al proprio interno di risorse adeguate da utilizzare nei rapporti con i lavoratori e i loro rappresentanti può essere insufficiente. Esse sembrano però in grado di ricavarne attraverso i rapporti con l'ambiente esterno, secondo dinamiche che in qualche modo tendono ad allargare il campo di gioco (Wever 1998), ovvero i confini efficienti dell'impresa, modificando i calcoli dei reciproci vantaggi, come riprenderemo tra breve. L'altro modello (benessere senza rappresentanza) è il più intrigante rispetto alle modalità tradizionali di relazioni di lavoro mediate collettivamente. ...
Il contributo affronta la regolazione del lavoro nelle piccole imprese (5-49 addetti): tema sottovalutato nel dibattito pubblico e scientifico, ma di notevole rilevanza per il grande peso quantitativo di questa realtà socio-economica e per i risvolti di policy che ne possono derivare. Utilizzando un ampio approccio analitico che allarga lo sguardo alle dinamiche delle relazioni sia all’interno sia all’esterno dell’impresa, vengono individuati quattro diversi modelli di regolazione, la cui logica apre a riflessioni più generali sui modi di concettualizzare oggi le relazioni di impiego.
... In light of what has been said, not only is it misleading to attribute the weak features of a Mediterranean or southern European model to Italian trade unionism, it seems also quite inappropriate to frame discussion of the Italian case within the current debate on union 'revitalization' (Wallerstein et al., 1997;Wever, 1998;Turner et al., 2001;Frege & Kelly, 2004). The main issues are other than how trade unionism can be 'revitalized'. ...
... The union revitalization literature shows that unions try to expand their mantle of representation to non-standard workers as a way to reverse membership decline, avert their waning influence and legitimacy in the economic and political sphere, and energize their organization (Frege & Kelly, 2003;Haiven, 2006;Heery & Adler, 2004;Serrano, 2014;Wever, 1998). Heery (2003) suggested that when a union's organizing activity is focused on "expansion," the union attempts to build membership in hitherto unorganized sectors, including non-standard workers. ...
As elsewhere, the incidence of non-standard employment is increasing in the Philippines amidst declining union density rates for the last 15 years. This twin phenomenon has posed challenges to trade unions’ structures and their understanding of representation. Based on the author’s survey of union strategies on non-standard employment adopted by 93 Metro Manila-based enterprise unions and 13 national federations in four industries—manufacturing, banking and finance, hotels and restaurants, and private education—the article identifies and examines the variety of ways trade unions, both at the enterprise and at the national level, attempt to represent non-standard workers and regulate employers’ use of non-standard forms of employment, and the factors that influence both union actions. The analysis demonstrates the unions’ preference of regulation over representation, and that this can be explained by the higher difficulties and constraints that unions face in pursuing the latter. Nevertheless, this article has established the emergence of a “bricolage of organizational forms” and a plurality of innovative union initiatives aimed at protecting non-standard workers and arresting the spread of precarious non-standard employment.
... É neste contexto que se desenvolvem debates sobre a renovação e revi- talização sindical que, marcados por uma pluralidade de visões e orientações teóricas, sugerem uma nova estratégia de ação que expandia o sindicalismo para fora do seu campo tradicional de atuação, isto é, relações de produção e escala nacional. A orientação de alargamento do campo de intervenção (WEVER, 1998), enfatiza a necessidade de os sindicatos procurarem organizar os trabalhadores excluídos dos tradicionais fóruns das relações industriais, pro- movendo alianças com outras organizações, procurando organizar e repre- sentar novos membros e novos interesses que ultrapassassem os tradicionais temas da negociação coletiva. ...
O artigo pretende desenvolver um balanço preliminar sobre a situação do sindicalismo brasileiro, entre 2003 e 2013 , cuja atuação tem contribuído para a melhoria dos indicadores laborais, mas que se encontra na encruzilhada entre o avanço e fortalecimento da sua pauta corporativa e a necessidade de (re)construir um protagonismo social mais amplo, incorporando as novas demandas colocadas e se aproximando das novas formas de mobilização social. O texto procura fazer um exercício a partir do debate na literatura inter-nacional sobre a revitalização sindical, analisando o sindicalismo a partir de 5 dimensões: institucional/organizativa, filiação/representatividade, econômica, política e societal.
... Tal significa, por um lado, conceber a prática politica de uma forma transescalar, considerando-os como espaços que não são mutuamente exclusivos, nem hierarquizáveis (Munck, 2002:160); e por outro lado, ao nível do alargamento da sua agenda politica, procurando dirigir a sua actividade para outros sectores da população, nomeadamente os mais fragilizados, bem como uma maior abertura a outras temáticas. (Wever, 1998) A dimensão transescalar tem gerado um renovado interesse na cooperação sindical transnacional, decorrente da necessidade de adaptação a estas novas circunstâncias. A promessa de um novo internacionalismo, num contexto de maior integração económica esbarra com alguns obstáculos. ...
O presente artigo procura dar um modesto contributo para colmatar uma lacuna na investigação e reflexão que centra a sua atenção sobre a cooperação transfronteiriça Portugal/Espanha. Embora seja de assinalar o crescente interesse por esta temática, advogando a necessidade do seu aprofundamento com vista a potenciar dinâmicas de desenvolvimento regional, bem como a identificação dos principais instrumentos financeiros que têm permitido esta interacção, é nossa convicção que o enfoque se tem concentrado num número reduzido de intervenientes.
Deter-nos-emos numa modalidade desta que tem sido particularmente ignorada. Trata-se da cooperação sindical transfronteiriça entre Portugal/Espanha, mais especificamente, a que ocorre no quadro dos chamados Conselhos Sindicais Inter-regionais (adiante designados por CSI). Desde a criação do primeiro CSI em 1975, foram constituídos 44 até à actualidade (ETUC, 2008), sob os auspícios da Confederação Europeia de Sindicatos, abrangendo fronteiras internas e externas da União Europeia.
... So, the social background is at the root of both economy and industrial relations, that"s, it"s the independent variable for both. Kaufman (2004: 30) points out that the trade unions emerged as economic entities in all the countries, and Ross and Martin (1999: 3) add that the unions, after proving their micro identities, must find space to act in broader economic and political opportunity structures with a strategic perspective but not with ideological limitation (Waterman, 2001: 316-7;Wever, 1998). In this context, the effectiveness of trade unions as a social organization (Ross and Martin, 1999: 2) depends on the fact that their existence is inspired by the socioeconomic dynamics and, concurrently, they should have a "social vision" (Hyman, 1999: 108;Visser, 1994a: 24). ...
Deunionization has come to the fore in industrial relations since the fourth quarter of the 20th century, and been mostly death within the extent of national context. Considering the fact that the challenge of deunionization has been posed not only by the national de-velopments but also by the transnational ones, this paper attempts to analyze the industrial relations by a theoretical approach, 'Open-System Framework', which integrates the influences of both national and trans-national factors on trade unions. It's concluded that there have appeared several transnational (regional and international) actors which offer pro-or anti-trade union strategies into the national industrial relations sys-tems, and formidability of the current anti-trade union environment is stemming largely from the convergence of the strategies of the transna-tional and national actors in an anti-trade union direction. To counteract this 'real' challenge, trade unions have produced 'rhetorical' strategies and remained marginal in the transnational power relations. Additionally, it's also pointed out that the convergence on deunionization differen-tiates according to the political economy of power relations in the na-tional contexts since the influences of transnational actors on trade un-ions materialize in parallel with the local characteristics of the national systems.
... They believe the conditions are right, and that indeed it will take the power of such a 20 movement to transform the institutions, to re-establish, for example, the right to organize, to overcome the "representation gap" and the general powerlessness so widespread in the economy and society (Bronfenbrenner et al. 1998). And they also believe that in so doing, they will not only reduce America's extraordinary inequality but will push firms toward the high road, adding important "social value," at and beyond the workplace, in a manner compatible with strong economic performance (Wever 1998). ...
In recent years, the long-declining U.S. labor movement has refocused in new and promising ways on rank-and-file mobilization, in organizing drives, collective bargaining conflicts and political campaigns. Such efforts are widely viewed as the best hope for revitalizing the labor movement: breathing new life into tired old unions, winning organizing drives and raising membership levels, increasing political influence, pushing toward the power necessary to reform labor law and ineffective labor institutions. The stakes are high and the goals ambitious: to close the “representation gap” at the workplace, reverse growing economic and social inequality, and build new coalitions for expanded democratic participation in local, national and global politics.
... In this context, trade unions have recently begun to rethink their organisational structures, strategy and activity. The twin models of social partnership and social movementism have come to prominence as solutions across the Anglo-American-Antipodean economies, but each remains largely unproven (Heery 2000;Peetz 1998;Wever 1997Wever , 1998. The partnership agenda formally acknowledges the dependence of unions on corporate competitiveness and argues that mutual (management-labour) gains are possible through employee involvement at work (Kochan and Osterman 1994;Nissen 1997;Towers 1997;TUC 1997a;Weiler 1990;Wever 1995; see also Wills and Lincoln 1999). ...
This contribution explores the ways in which trade unions have sought to organise workers in transnational corporations (TNCs) before looking at the pitfalls and possibilities of European Works Councils in more detail. The EWC directive covers an estimated 1400 companies across Europe, employing at least 15 million workers, and there are now more than 500 EWCs in existence. These new institutions are designed to allow employee representatives from across Europe to meet together for the purposes of information exchange and consultation with the senior managers from the TNC concerned. EWCs thus provide new horizontal networks of employee representatives across Europe and create new opportunities for information exchange, the formulation of transnational trade union responses and strategy and even active solidarity across national divides. This contribution draws upon original empirical evidence that highlights the difficulties of making EWCs work in this way. It is argued that there are at least four areas in which trade union intervention would make a difference to the operation of EWCs: (1) building active networks within and beyond any EWC; (2) sharing corporate intelligence; (3) formulating strategy at the level of the EWC; and (4) fostering identification with colleagues in other parts of the corporate network.
... There are currently about 13 million members in the AFL (American Federation of Labor) unions, including over 5 million women (Clawson and Clawson, 1999). In the U.S., a great deal of union activity has been directed at female and minority ethnic workers in relatively low-paid service industries (Wever, 1998). Contingent workers faced by lower wages, job insecurity and few if any benefits are helped by the labor union as well as by independent labor agencies. ...
The once-dominant organizational culture of Japanese-style management, which has been reserved for a minority of regular male employees from its start, is being gradually eroded. This organizational culture merged between the 'three pillars' of lifetime employment, seniority system and enterprise unionism, and a discourse of paternalism, benevolence and trust. Ethnographic research conducted in Japan during 1996-1997 and 2000-2001 on co-partnership management and the National Union of General Workers shows that while new forms of labor relations have been implemented, they are still informed by the psychological and social discourse characteristic of traditional organizational culture. Two complementary perspectives, contingency theory and internal labor markets, are discussed in order to explain the persistence of the traditional discourse.
... Experiments with innovative strategies for bringing temporary workers into collective representation have been outlined and even implemented in some cases (* Olney, 1996;Pollert, 1996;Wever, 1998;Heery and Abbott, 2000;Conley et al., 2001;Jaarsveld, 2002). In some countries, it is argued that union strategies for recruiting temporary workers need to go 'beyond the workplace'. ...
Trade unions throughout the advanced capitalist societies face significant challenges in the current period. One central challenge is associated with the persistence and growth of temporary work, ie the varied forms of non-permanent waged work such as fixed-term contracts, seasonal employment, casual employment, employment with temporary agencies and certain types of government employment and training schemes. In responding to this challenge, trade unions operate on at least two fronts – design and implementation of regulatory initiatives and effective representation of temporary workers. Regulatory initiatives can be pursued at different levels and usually involve change to one or another of three main mechanisms -restrictions on temporary employment, the level of rights and benefits, and the level of compensation for perceived disadvantages. Both regulation and representation pose dilemmas, including dilemmas of co-ordination with trade union efforts to defend the interests of employee in a continuing ('permanent') contract of employment. This paper briefly reviews union initiatives in varied countries. However, it focuses in particular on Australian trade unions and casual employment. Australian trade unions face a particularly severe challenge in this area, because casual employment constitutes – at least potentially – a highly degraded form of temporary employment and because it already constitutes such a large and rapidly growing proportion of the workforce.
... In doing so, unions could more forcefully make the link between funding issues, poor pay, work intensification and concerns over the quality of service delivery. This would arguably enlarge the 'field of play' (Wever, 1998) of organising issues and align the union movement with social movement groups in the sector, and build broader coalitions in the voluntary sector. ...
This article assesses the prospects for union membership growth in the UK voluntary sector. It examines the efforts of workplace activists to defend terms and conditions and recruit and retain members in two voluntary organisations in the context of the sector's close relationship with external state funding and regulatory bodies. The study confirms the importance of workplace activists in contributing to successful mobilisation. It also finds, however, that differences in inter-organisational relations between the two organisations and state funding bodies that are shaped by product markets and competition are pivotal in explaining the variability in outcomes for union mobilisation efforts. The article has wider significance in telling us more about why union campaigns in areas of the economy characterised by close supply chain relations succeed or fail.
... The Organising Academy 405 There is evidence, therefore, of involvement in the Academy being associated with a union strategy of enlargement (Wever 1998), though with the exception of women workers groups have been targeted in an uneven way reflecting the different priorities and territories of individual unions. Perhaps surprisingly, there is no statistical association between the characteristics of trainees and the nature of organising targets. ...
In 1998 the British Trades Union Congress established an Organising Academy to train a new generation of paid union organisers. This article reviews the first two years of the Academy and offers an initial evaluation. It seeks to gauge whether the initiative has prompted innovation in organision policy in unions and led to successful organising outcomes.
... There is now an extensive literature suggesting that union organizing strategies matter (e.g., Bronfenbrenner and Juravitch 1998; Clawson and Clawson 2000:106–9). There is also a growing literature on the need for a " new " unionism (e.g., Heckscher 1988; Fletcher and Hurd 1998; Turner and Hurd 2001; Bamberger, Bacharach, and Sonnenstuhl 2001) and on broader representation strategies (Wever 1998). These and other alternative " self help " strategies have, to date, done little to reverse density decline in the United States (Rose and Chaison 2001; Katz 2001 ). ...
Under the density decline and convergence thesis, market forces are gradually eroding union density levels, leading to convergence with the U.S. level throughout the developed world. A key implication is that the U.S. decline has been unavoidable and that little, including labor law reforms, can be done to reverse it. Canada appears to refute this thesis, for it has stronger laws, and density is double that of the United States. Yet (1) Canada's higher public-sector density may mask private-sector declines, (2) any private-sector differences simply may reflect a tendency for Canada to lag the United States, and (3) labor law may not explain U.S.–Canada differences. This article explores these possibilities, finding little support for them. It concludes that a strong case can be made for Canadian-style labor law reforms but that such reforms may not be sufficient by themselves to revitalize the U.S. labor movement.
... 1 Hay una correlación notable entre pequeñas empresas y bajos niveles de afiliación sindical (Williams, 1997; Wever, 1998). En España, el 55% de la población activa trabaja en empresas de cien trabajadores o menos. ...
... On the other hand, it is argued that unions should reflect the changing composition of the workforce, including the increasing proportion of women in paid employment T and the growth of forms of work that depart from the male norm of a full-time, open-ended job. The emphasis here is on a shift in substantive policy, such that it accommodates a more diverse workforce through a strategy of 'field enlargement' (Wever, 1998). ...
It is argued widely that if trade unions are to experience renewal then they must invest in organizing the unorganized and align their strategies of interest representation with the needs of women and those in atypical employment. This article examines the groups and factors internal and external to trade unions that encourage representatives to engage in both types of activity. Drawing on a large survey of union paid officers in Britain, it identifies those internal and external pressures that encourage change and uses these data to comment on current theories of change in trade unions.
This article focuses on the changing role of trade unions in relation to ‘the foundational economy’ – the infrastructures and services that provide the basis for everyday life. While such initiatives have sometimes been considered as falling beyond the traditional remit of union action, examples of trade union engagement in and for the foundational economy are historically and currently evident across countries. The article argues that these are important in the realm of trade union strategies with attempts to widen engagement and participation in broader economic issues, particularly in post-2008 economic austerity and after the pandemic and the cost-of-living crises. The article explores these issues based on the intersection between different dimensions and levels of union action.
Summing up the results of the research on the regulation of work in small firms, the concluding chapter prompts reflection on the extent to which they can also apply to larger firms—better, to all firms, more generally. This leads to a reconceptualisation of what we mean by employment relations, which are finally reinterpreted as a field characterised by the combination of two fundamental tensions: that between informality and formality in the definition of rules and practices and that between closure to the inside and openness to the outside in identifying the range of action and acquisition of the resources necessary for regulation. The crucial question becomes the conditions under which recourse to informality is not reduced to a merely unilateral exercise of power.
The article draws attention to the widespread erroneous tendency to consider small enterprises as both a homogeneous and substantially closed world. After having explored strengths and limits, complexity and heterogeneity of this large part of the economy, the author focuses on the specific ways in which labour is here regulated. In particular, through the combination of two dimensions - the representation of labour and the degree of workplace welfare - four different patterns of employment relations are identified, thus going beyond the traditional opposite visions of small enterprises as the domain of managerial autocracy or else of harmonious employment relations. In the end, what is at stake today in the field of work more in general the need for a new imagination of the ways in which labour can be represented and protected.
What exactly do we mean when we speak of a crisis of trade union representation as in the case of Europe which has more systematic and – in general – legalistic systems of worker representation? What are its causes and what are its effects? In particular, is it a straightforward development, given that there are multiple factors and changes? Is it really a crisis of trade union roles or is it more a case of competing pressures and complexities which require an enhancement of trade union representation given that these social changes in fact also challenge the social and organizational roles of management and the state, let alone just trade unions? The intervention argues that questions of change are multi-dimensional, that trade unions have indeed developed innovative strategies in relation to them, and that a much deeper challenge is the question of how worker representatives cope with the breadth of changes within the workplace, labor market and the social context.
The chapter argues that union strength, decline, and revitalization are best understood as multi-faceted processes and furthermore, that these processes are best understood in a comparative context. The chapter offers an overview of existing comparative scholarship on union revitalization and examines the claim that unions continue to have an important function in national economies, societies, and politics. Using empirical data, conventional indicators of union strength and decline are compared in the five cases examined in the book. This chapter then develops a fourdimensional approach to study union revitalization comprising membership density, political power, bargaining power, and institutional vitality. The chapter concludes by pointing to the importance of context in analysing comparative union revitalization since the importance of each of the dimensions is likely to vary across countries given different economic, institutional, and political configurations. Furthermore, the chapter argues that union leaders retain an element of choice in deciding on revitalizing strategies.
This chapter has two foci. In the first place, it develops a framework for analysing union organizing activity in a comparative context. Organizing strategies are distinguished in terms of their centrality to unions, targeting, and methods used, and the utility of the framework is illustrated by reference to patterns of union organizing in the US, UK, Germany, Italy, and Spain. In the second place, the chapter develops an explanation of national patterns. A multi-factor explanation is offered that identifies national industrial relations institutions, the strategies of state and employers, and inherited union identities as causal factors. Once again, the argument is illustrated by reference to the five national cases.
Résumé Les États-Unis connaissent depuis les années 1990 une littérature foisonnante sur la « revitalisation syndicale ». Cet article présente cette littérature en soulignant les relations entre le développement de nouveaux thèmes de recherche et les dynamiques d’échanges entre espaces académique et militant. Il interroge en particulier la construction d’une coupure entre deux types de syndicalismes censément homogènes : un « syndicalisme gestionnaire » et un « syndicalisme renouvelé ».
A few days before Christmas in 2001, shoppers in London’s busy Oxford Street were left wondering if a group of nuns had raided their piggy banks in order to buy their Christmas presents. The nuns wheeled large quantities of small change in shopping trolleys into a high street branch of HSBC bank and proceeded to block the queues as staff were kept busy by counting the coins. However, things were not as they appeared. The nuns were part of The East London Communities Organisation (Telco) and this particular action was part of a protest designed to draw attention to the fact that cleaning and security staff, contracted to work in HSBC’s shiny new building in Canary Wharf, were not paid sufficient to live in an expensive city like London. The intention of the protest was to persuade HSBC’s Chairman, Sir John Bond, to meet with Telco to discuss this issue. These community campaigners wanted HSBC’s subcontracted workers to be paid a ‘living wage’, not merely the statutory minimum wage.’ Telco argued that large multi-national companies like HSBC have a moral duty to ensure their contractors pay a wage that is sufficient for people to live on. Although at first resistant to the campaigner’s demands, HSBC finally agreed in 2004 to ensure all its contractors paid their workers a living wage, which included sick pay, access to a pension scheme and free access to a trade union.
This article provides insight into the experiences of South American low-wage, immigrant care workers who provide care to elders in private homes in Genoa, Italy. An analysis of data collected during fieldwork in 2009-2010 focuses on the larger context of labor unions in Italy, the very intimate context of the home as worksite, and care worker strategies in this work sector. Using Aihwa Ong's concept of “self-engineering” by workers in a neoliberal economy to examine how workers in this context negotiate their work lives demonstrates both the usefulness and limitations of this important concept in home-based labor.
This article distinguishes between two logics of union renewal: accommodation and transformation. It examines the functioning and potential of these logics in two industrial unions in Germany and Canada, exploring factors that influence decisions to give priority to one renewal logic. The findings suggest that the two logics can coexist, and that unions are able to alternate between them. Of particular relevance in comparative perspective are some similarities and differences in the renewal processes and strategies pursued by the two unions.
This article critically assesses the potential for the international regulation of temporary agency work (TAW) through building partnership between the Global Union Federations (GUFs) and major Private Employment Agencies (PrEAs). Given the limits of existing national and international regulation of TAW, particularly in developing countries, and the current deadlock in dialogue through the International Labour Organization, the argument of this article is that Transnational Private Labour Regulation (TPLR) offers a unique opportunity to establish a basis for minimum standards for temporary agency workers. This article goes on to propose three potential TPLR frameworks that, although compromised, are transparent, fair and sufficiently elastic to accommodate the distributive and political risks associated with partnership. They also offer important gains, namely increasing the competitive advantage of the PrEAs involved, minimum standards for agency workers and ‘field enlarging’ strategies for the GUFs and their affiliates.
British trade union renewal has focused on the twin strategies of organising and partnership. Drawing on experience from North America, and fledgling developments in Britain, this paper argues that reciprocal community unionism could provide another weapon in the union movement's armoury for reversing decline. The paper provides a brief historical overview of the intersection between unions and community in Britain before addressing reciprocal community unionism in more detail. The final part of the paper then looks at the work of Battersea and Wandsworth Trade Union Council's Organising Centre in South West London during 2000 and 2001. The case study highlights the ways in which trade unionism can develop when focused on a particular locality, and the advantages of having extra-workplace organisation in any place. The case also illustrates some of the barriers preventing this model of trade unionism being translated to other boroughs, towns and cities in the UK. In the conclusion, the paper then calls for further experimentation in the development of reciprocal community unionism.
This article argues that there is a trend towards enterprise unionism in a number of countries. The authors begin by defining enterprise unionism and developing a framework of analysis in terms of activities, governance, and resources. Utilizing this framework, six countries – Japan, US, France, Germany, UK and Australia – are examined. The trend towards enterprise unionism is best seen in terms of collective bargaining and joint consultation. The authors then consider various explanations for this tendency, including unions and their members, the state, and employers in their market context. This is followed by a discussion of the implications, which may be drawn, and the research gaps, which need to be filled.
Analysis of the reasons for trade union decline in developed economies has pointed to their failure to invest in effective methods of recruitment as a contributory factor. This article presents survey and case research to examine the extent to which union failure in recruitment and organizing has been rectified in the United Kingdom. The evidence indicates a varied but nevertheless substantial re-direction of union effort towards recruitment since the mid-1990s and is used to identify the characteristics of 'recruiting unions' which have invested more heavily and adopted more ambitious recruitment targets. Recruiting unions are found to be those which are receptive to learning new approaches to recruitment from overseas and which have relatively advanced arrangements for the representation of women and minorities in their internal systems of government.
This paper examines the labour-standard-setting institution associated with NAFTA, the North American Agreement on Labour Cooperation (NAALC), sometimes referred to as the Labour Side Accord. The agreement is best described as a tri-national institutional arrangement that grafts formal international procedures onto domestic labour market regimes. This feature ensures that it stands apart from the EU social policy, which is best seen as a supranational deliberative governance arrangement. The manner in which NAALC procedures have been used is documented and the main discernible pattern of action explained. The paper argues that NAALC is cumbersome and convoluted to operate. Yet it also argues that NAALC holds out interesting lessons for other regional trading blocs and other global experiments in labour market standard setting as its decentralised and “horizontal” character is more in keeping with the broad institutional design of such arrangements. The paper concludes by suggesting that NAALC will only reach its full potential when organised labour in the three participating countries adopt a more active approach to transnational collaboration inside NAFTA.
As trade unions have continued to decline in membership and influence across the developed economies, so academic attention has turned to the prospects for renewal and a search for the conditions under which it might plausibly occur (Fairbrother, 2000; Martin & Ross, 1999; Turner, 1999). One leg of this search has been directed towards the changing context which unions face and has resulted in the prescription that unions must change their policies, structures and culture to accommodate a “new workforce” (Cobble, 1994; Heckscher, 1988; Wever, 1998). A second leg has been directed within unions themselves and has been concerned more with the internal processes through which renewal can take place (Fiorito et al., 1995; Hurd, 1998; Pocock, 1998). In the U.K., two distinctive theories of change in trade unions have emerged along this second line of inquiry, one of which, the “rank and file” model, holds that significant change occurs from the bottom-up and requires the mobilisation of members against a conservative leadership (Fairbrother, 1996). The other, the “managerial” model, claims the opposite is true and that renewal is conditional on effective systems of union management and occurs from the top–down (Willman et al., 1993). Both theories are venerable and in Britain their roots can be traced on the one hand to the Webbs and their conviction that effective unions required professional leadership and on the other to the apostles of industrial syndicalism (Fox, 1985, pp. 66, 256–260). They continue to structure debate, however, and the purpose of this article is to provide an empirical examination of each with regard to an issue, which seemingly is critical to the internal renewal of unions, the development of organising activity.
The year 2008 saw the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the British Trades Union Congress (TUC) Organizing Academy which was designed to train a new cadre of union officials. The aim was to develop a culture of organizing that could help to transform the decline in trade union membership by bringing in new members who had been trained to be active within their unions. Through in-depth interviews and a survey of graduates of the Academy we look at the impact this project has had on individuals, their unions, and the wider union movement. We are particularly keen to give voice to the graduates as they have been charged with the difficult task of transforming the British trade union movement. We find evidence that trained organizers continue to be influential within their unions, but that many (although by no means all) get stuck in relatively junior positions because of the lack of a specialist career structure. This inevitably constrains their influence. The division between ‘servicing’ and ‘organizing’ functions is an almost inevitable consequence of the establishment of a separate, specialist organizing role and can also cause tensions and constrain the spread of organizing practices within unions. Despite this, there is evidence of widespread adoption of basic organizing practices, although more strategic organizing is still far less common. More widely, there is strong evidence of organizers developing new and influential networks between unions, and of individual unions implementing specialist organizing training. Despite this mixed evaluation, we argue that the creation of the Academy has had a considerable impact on British unions and has fostered important and innovative organizing approaches that would probably not have emerged otherwise.
The Employment Relations Act 1999 seemingly presented UK unions with an opportunity to reverse their long-term decline in membership. This article examines union responses to this change and uses original survey evidence to investigate union organizing campaigns. It explores the targeting, resourcing, objectives, methods and employer responses to union organizing activity in the UK between 1998 and 2004. The evidence indicates a complex pattern, in which experimentation with new methods and organizing to increase the diversity of union membership are balanced by conservatism in the selection of targets and the allocation of only modest resources to the task of union renewal.
This paper examines the labour standard-setting capacities of the EU and NAFTA. The social dimension to the EU is depicted as being organised along the principles of deliberative supranationalism. The North American Agreement on Labour Cooperation (NAALC), sometimes referred to as the Labour Side Accord, which is the labour standard-setting arrangement for NAFTA, is regarded as a tri-national institutional arrangement which grafts formal international procedures onto domestic labour market regimes. The paper seeks to describe and explain how the different types of activities in which the two social dimensions are engaged can be traced back to their overall institutional design. The paper argues that EU social policy is the stronger of the two arrangements and that NAALC has significant shortcomings. Yet it also argues that NAALC holds out interesting lessons for other regional trading blocs and other global experiments in labour market standard setting as its decentralised and `horizontal' character is more in keeping with the broad institutional design of these arrangements.
This article reviews the literature on community unionism by first outlining the significance of the concept, then reviewing current empirical and conceptual development in the area. The article then advocates for the importance of educational research in the development of more detailed understanding how community unionism initiatives might be initiated, developed and sustained. It details the necessary components of a conceptual model and educational research program which could potentially fill this gap in Canada. Introduction As a basic rationale for the advocacy inherent in this paper below I outline how in Canada and elsewhere leading social economy scholars have demonstrated that sustainable economies with high quality work are closely related to participatory communities and civic engagement. Furthermore, additional scholars have specifically noted that labour unions can play a particularly important role in this relationship by working closely with communities. Thus new questions about labour relations defined by a focus on coalitions between communities and unions – or community unionism – have now emerged. In part these questions recognize the rapidly changing economic as well as cultural contexts of Canada's major urban centers. However, despite the significance of these types of questions, in Canada there is limited empirical research on community unionism. Importantly, no research to date – either in Canada or the elsewhere – has sought to understand how this new form of labour relations is created and sustained from the perspective of adult educational processes. The term community unionism focuses on the deep integration of labour unions and community combining traditional work-based issues with issues of community sustainability, quality of life and civic engagement. One way to frame this issue is that it represents a more expansive model of labour relations: that is, what comes onto the bargaining table to complement traditional quality of worklife issues are broader notions of the quality community life including, for example, attention to public services such as transportation, schools and child-care. This expansive model is unique in requiring more intensive employer, union, governmental and, particularly, community engagement. It's important to note, however, that to date the literature on community unionism has been largely descriptive rather than analytic. As an specifically educationally oriented response to this, in this article I begin by recommending the operationalization of the term community unionism with a focus on two key elements: 1) the changing character, skills and knowledge associated with social roles of community and labour union integration; and 2) the skill and knowledge involved in the formalization of these new roles in alternative policies and practices of new organizational forms. Together these elements refer to the core content of any community unionism initiative.
This paper explores the theory and practice of community unionism. It is now widely argued that if trade unions are to reach employees in small workplaces, those on part-time or temporary contracts, and women, black and ethnic minority workers, they need to sustain alliances beyond the walls of the workplace. Increasing the scale of political mobilization in this way can help secure trade union organization amongst new groups of workers while giving unions the power to raise questions of economic and social justice at a wider scale. After summarizing current developments in North America, the paper focuses on the situation in the UK in more detail. By highlighting the pioneering community unionism of the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation (ISTC) and Battersea and Wandsworth Trades Union Council (BWTUC), the paper explores the implications of community unionism for the future of trade unionism in the UK.
Social partnership and collective organization are dissimilar as regards the explanation of the development of the capitalist system, on the one hand emphasizing cooperation between management and labour and on the other the contrary. I indicate that the two propositions are not real substitutes, and provided that the environmental factors are favourable, can become the component parts of a coordinated design for the revitalization of British trade unions.
Conclusions Although seldom recognized in the flurry of enthusiastic support, information technology has a dark side for unions. The Internet
and the Web, with its power and convenience magnified by wireless communication, will reduce the relevancy of the traditional
workplace-centered appeals of organizing unions. With greater physical distance and less psychological attachment to their
employer and workplace, professional, clerical, technical, and sales workers will believe that collective bargaining does
not fit their situations. Organizing these workers will require that unions not only have to broaden their mode of representation,
perhaps even reviving associate membership, but also compete against advocacy and identity organizations. To make matters
even worse, when unions try to organize any group of workers regardless of whether or not their jobs have been transformed
by information technology, and when unions try to maintain their influence in already organized workplaces, they will have
to compete against employer-controlled intranets.
This paper analyzes the recent growth of janitorial unionism in LA against the background of the previous history of unionism's rise and decline in the city's building service industry, asking how and why the Justice for Janitors campaign succeeded in LA, and whether its success will last. This case study indicates the continuing relevance of questions about how poor immigrant workers are able to build successful and enduring organizations and about the relationship between immigrant workers and the rise and decline of unions. It concludes that , on one hand, the immigrant presence was neither a necessary nor sufficient condition of success. On the other hand, in this specific case, the JfJ campaign was probably better off with the immigrants than without them.
Changes in shop-floor work organization are a central part of broader changes in industrial
relations in many industries around the world. In the automotive industry, the focus of this paper, international competition, new technological capabilities, and production system innovations have prompted many companies to move away from the dominant mass production model and to adopt new, flexible principles for organizing work that have demonstrable advantages in terms of economic performance. It is clear that these principles are often adopted selectively (and incompletely) and modified as they diffuse. What is less clear is how much variation in adoption
occurs (and how extensive the modifications), whether the patterns of diffusion are driven more by
national-level or company-level factors, and how closely work organization changes are related to
the overall industrial relations system, which does vary considerably at the national level.
I will argue in this paper that the emergence of a new set of dominant organizing principles in the auto industry has created the conditions for more convergence across countries and divergence within countries in work organization. These conditions affect the organization of work far more directly than they affect the broader industrial relations system, with the latter
more likely to retain many country-specific characteristics despite the pressures for decentralization and responsiveness to local circumstances (Katz, 1993; Locke, 1992). But whereas national differences in industrial relations were likely, in the past, to dominate changes in work organization and create clear national patterns, I will argue that the forces for convergence across and divergence
within countries are now more likely to overwhelm national differences.
The author reviews evidence that the bargaining structure is becoming more decentralized in Sweden, Australia, the former West Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States, although in somewhat different degrees and ways from country to country. He then examines the various hypotheses that have been offered to explain this significant trend. Shifts in bargaining power, as well as the diversification of corporate and worker interests, have played a part in this change, he concludes, but work reorganization has been more influential still. He also explores how the roles of central unions and corporate industrial relations staffs are challenged by bargaining structure decentralization, and discusses the research gaps on this subject that need to be filled. (Abstract courtesy JSTOR.)
In applications to fuels nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is used mainly for statistical analyses of complex mixtures with high boiling points, such as residues, asphaltenes, pitches or tars, which are difficult to analyze by gas chromatography or mass spectrometry. NMR is capable of distinguishing between the aliphatic and the aromatic parts of a molecule and of detecting double bonds. With the aid of NMR it is possible to obtain the (C/H)//a//r to (C/H)//a//l ratio which reflects the degree of substitution of the average molecule, the percentages of substituted and unsubstituted C//a//r atoms, the number of aromatic rings per average molecule, the degree of condensation of the average molecule, and the average length of the aliphatic chains.
The West German debates on new technology, work organization and restructuring have centred around the work of Kern and Schumann. This article examines the arguments of their influential text ‘The End of the Division of Labour?’ (which is still not available in English); locates the text within the German industrial sociology tradition and considers the recent debates and critiques of their work, including trade union policy issues.
Unionization follows strongly divergent patterns among OECD countries in the postwar period. I propose business cycle, demographic, and political arguments to explain varying unionization over time. Centralized union movements that engage in corporatist bargaining and union disbursement of unemployment benefits suggest explanations of cross-national variability in unionization. Analysis of annual data for 18 OECD countries from 1950 to 1985 indicates strong positive effects of union centralization and union disbursement of unemployment benefits on unionization. Union centralization also shapes the longitudinal effect of strike activity on unionization while union disbursement of unemployment benefits positively influences longitudinal effects of unemployment and employment growth. Results suggest that labor movements flourish when they establish an institutional control over labor market outcomes beyond wage bargaining. When labor's institutional control is weak, worker militancy may encourage working class organization in trade unions.
This paper examines industrial change during the 1980s in two advanced capitalist societies - the Federal Republic of Germany and Britain - and assesses how far the evidence lends support to the Piore and Sabel thesis that a new model of industrial organisation - referred to as `flexible specialisation' - is emerging in advanced societies. The paper concludes that, although some movement towards flexible specialisation is discernible in both societies, the emergent pattern in each case is very different and more complex than suggested by Piore and Sabel. The tendency towards flexible specialisation is found to be more pronounced and more consistent in Germany than in Britain, and the study tries to clarify what aspects of industrial organisation facilitate or impede the adoption of a new manufacturing policy. Lastly, the paper relates the changes in industrial organisation, observed in the two societies, to the debate on the labour process and discusses the different implications in each case for managerial control, costs and benefits to workers, and future economic development.
Few features of economic, social, or political life in industrialized democracies differ as much as the relative size of the trade union movement. The current density of union membership in the labor force ranges over almost the entire spectrum from above 90% in Sweden to under 20% in the United States (Goldfield 1987, 16). The level of unionization varies far more than such other characteristics of the labor force as the sectoral distribution of workers, the share of wages in GNP, rates of unemployment, or even the size of the public sector. Unionization rates vary more than such other forms of popular mobilization as electoral turnout or the share of the vote received by parties bearing communist, socialist, social democratic, or labor labels. The economic effects of high levels of unionization are ambiguous. Unions that are large relative to the economy may simultaneously have more power in the labor market and more of an incentive to moderate their wage demands. A union that covers only a small fraction of an industry’s work force, for example, can gain wage increases partly at the expense of employment among nonunion members, provided that union members have specialized skills not readily available elsewhere. In contrast, an industrial union covering the entire work force would be concerned with employment in all job categories. Bigger unions are not necessarily more militant unions (Cameron 1984; Olson 1982, chap. 4).
The proposition that western industrialised society is subject to fundamental change is hardly controversial. If trade unions are to remain actively involved in the context of this changing society, in the role of an emancipatory social movement, modernisation is imperative. This contribution outlines a number of changes in society and how they affect the position of trade unions. Subsequently, as regards the modernisation of trade unions themselves, the author formulates two priorities: the problem of participation and the concept of labour as used by the trade unions. Finally, he analyses the way in which the trade union movement in the Netherlands has handled these priorities up to now. This analysis will focus primarily on the developments within the federation of Dutch trade unions (Federatie Nederlandse Vakbeweging, FNV). With a membership of over a million, the FNV is the largest trade union in the Netherlands. ¹ He also looks at the developments within the Christian federation (Christelijk Nationaal Vakverbond, CNV), which has about 350,000 members.
At the outset two things should be stressed. Firstly, the author chose a critical approach, but in the firm conviction that a strong, modernised trade union movement is essential. Secondly, the present discussion is limited to outlining developments, which are dominant in the view of the author. Only brief reference will be made to new approaches that occur in concrete trade union practice.
An empirical analysis is presented of union growth in The Netherlands over the past decades. The analysis shows that the effect of changes in the industrial structure is very small. It appears that union growth is influenced by wage growth and by unemployment. If real wages increase more than labour productivity or if unemployment declines union membership increases.
Part-time work is condemned by many as a threat to full-time jobs, a precarious form of employment and a source of unequal treatment of women workers. It is also widely defended as a regular, well-protected way to reconcile the needs and preferences of workers with the operational requirements of enterprises, to create jobs, and to benefit workers with family responsibilities, workers approaching retirement and other special groups. There are now more than 50 million part-time workers in the industrialised market economies alone, and in some countries nearly half of all working women are part-timers. This article examines the reasons for part-time work; the level of legislative protection; national programmes which increase access to part-time employment; and the differing forms of part-time work in practice. -Authors
In western Europe, as in the United States, the 1980s saw major challenges to established institutions of industrial relations. Managements, faced with intensified competitive pressure, have taken the initiative; union have been on the defensive. Deregulation and decentralization have been the recurrent themes of both practitioners and academic analysts. For some commentators, national distinctiveness is giving way to convergence, encouraged in part by moves toward the Single European Market. This article develops a more skeptical perspective on recent trends.
[Excerpt] In 1988 Omar Vasconez, a commercial office janitor in New York City, earned 3.40-an-hour with no benefits. While Mary could be fired at the drop of a hat, Omar had job security and would keep his job even if his employer, a janitorial contractor, lost the cleaning account at that building and was replaced by another contractor. Both worked for large, multinational service contractors with tens of thousands of employees in all major U.S. cities. Omar is a member of Local 32B-32J, Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Mary typifies the nonunion office cleaner.This tale of two cities reveals at a glance some basic features of service contracting. In service industries, labor markets are strongly segmented by geography: janitorial services don't compete in international markets, like cars and computers do. At the same time, cutthroat competition among contractors amplifies the already sharp competition among unskilled labor within the local market. Omar's total compensation is over four times that of Mary for one reason only: his union controls the local labor market.
The concept of human resources management (HRM) has been much debated in the literature. The concept developed initially from work in the U.S.A. in the 1960s and 1970s and since then has been adopted increasingly around the world. This paper argues that in Europe there is only limited acceptance of the organizational autonomy upon which the concept in based, and that, therefore, different approaches to the notion of human resource management are required. External constraints are analysed and a new model of the concept that would encompass EuroHRM is proposed.© 1995 JIBS. Journal of International Business Studies (1995) 26, 1–21
Analyzing survey and interview data gathered in 1990 and 1991, the author assesses the influence of worker gender on the union organizing philosophy and strategies adopted by union organizing directors and field organizers. The results suggest that although most of those sampled did not view worker gender as influential in shaping organizing style, some service sector union organizers and organizers of "pink-collar" workers (who are predominantly female) were using organizing styles different from the conventional style. Further, the approaches of female organizers, particularly those organizing for occupationally targeted divisions of manufacturing unions, appeared to be explicitly gender-conscious. (Abstract courtesy JSTOR.)
Using data collected during field research in Italy on the reorganization of the auto industry, the author analyzes recent changes in Italian industrial relations. Based on this case study, he argues for a new approach to comparative industrial relations research and theory. Instead of treating national systems as the basic unit of analysis and searching for macro-institutional features as the key dimensions to use in constructing comparative typologies of industrial relations systems, the author develops an approach focusing on micro-level developments and the politics of strategic choice to explain variation within nations. Two factors appear to be crucial in explaining this variation: local socioeconomic conditions that shape the strategies of unions and management in firms undergoing adjustment, and the choices unions make in reallocating responsibilities between local and national structures. (Abstract courtesy JSTOR.)
Rethinking Labor and Management: Saturn and the UAW: The Govern-ance and Supervision of High Performance Team Based Work Systems Sozialdemokratische krisenpolitik in Europa
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Organizing Home Workers in the Informal Sector: Australia, Canada, The Neth-erlands
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Restructuring Industrial Process Chains—Case Study Observations from the German and American Automotive and Machine Tool Industry, " pa-per presented at the German-American Project Follow-up Conference
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Jürgens, Ulrich, and Inge Lippert. 1995. " Restructuring Industrial Process Chains—Case Study Observations from the German and American Automotive and Machine Tool Industry, " pa-per presented at the German-American Project Follow-up Conference, Wissenschaftszen-trum, Berlin.
Performance and Welfare Effects of Work Restructuring: Evidence from Telecommunications Services The Great Experiment: Labor-Management Coopera-tion at Eastern Airlines
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