Stefano Gasparri’s research while affiliated with University of the West of England, Bristol and other places

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Publications (10)


Trade Unions and Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion in Italy: Bread and Butter, Bread and Roses, or Just Breadcrumbs?
  • Chapter

May 2025

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2 Reads

Stefano Gasparri

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Sara Fanti

Seeking to clarify what trade unions brought to the promotion of EDI in Italy with the support of three metaphors drawn from the employment relations literature—‘bread and butter’, ‘bread and roses’, and ‘just breadcrumbs’—this chapter provides a historical overview of initiatives in three areas: gender, immigration, and LGBTQ+. First it examines the role of trade unions in the support and implementation of early equality legislation and the ways in which feminism influenced their agenda and praxis. Then this chapter considers recent developments, looking at gender issues—this time in relation to social partnership, policies for working parents, flexible employment, productivity bonuses and employee benefits—as well as at two emerging EDI areas for the Italian context, that is, immigrant workers and LGBTQ+ rights. Overall, the analysis illustrates a variety of trade union initiatives, with some common themes that stand out: the relationship between legislation, collective bargaining, and grassroots activism; the tension between formal and substantive equality; the complex factors affecting trade union decisions, including external constraints; and the dilemmas in the definition and representation of workers’ interests. This chapter concludes with insights into the intricated relationship between trade unions and EDI, in Italy as elsewhere.


Digitalization and employment relations in the retail sector. Examining the role of trade unions in Italy and Spain

November 2023

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68 Reads

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2 Citations

European Journal of Industrial Relations

This article investigates trade union responses to in-store digitalization in retail in Italy and Spain. It considers critical issues often associated with the digital transformation of work including excessive work flexibility, high levels of monitoring and skills mismatch. It goes on to discuss two alternative employment relations developments: a ‘low road’, along which digitalization enhances market regulation and employers’ ability to control the workforce unilaterally; or a ‘high road’, where digitalization allows for better working conditions as well as business productivity. Drawing on documentary analysis, semi-structured interviews with trade union leaders, and content analysis of collective agreements signed at the sector, territorial and company level, findings report how Italian and Spanish trade unions attempt to use in-store digitalization to increase their leverage and aim for the high road. Overall, this work confirms the challenges of deterring the retail sector from pursuing the low road while highlighting some institutional factors and trade union strategies that can make the difference.


Marcolin A. and Gasparri S. ‘New realities of labour in the Pan-European region: remote work challenge and its regulations. A Toolkit for Trade Unions’, FES & ITUC-PERC
  • Research
  • File available

November 2021

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28 Reads

Download

Balancing frames on company welfare (CW) in Italy.
Framing work and welfare: Insights from the growing relevance of company welfare in Italy

December 2020

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118 Reads

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7 Citations

Journal of Industrial Relations

This article applies the concept of frames of reference to contemporary work and welfare dynamics by focusing on the growing relevance of company welfare in Italy after the 2008 crisis. The analysis considers how this occurred along three phases: in the first, a path-breaking case, Luxottica, demonstrates the potential of company welfare; then, Renzi’s government promotes company welfare through tax breaks; finally, trade unions try to affect the diffusion of company welfare, displaying contrasting ideologies as well as pragmatic joint solutions in the process. Overall, two contiguous sub-frames – consultative unitarism and collaborative pluralism – offer the mainstream justification to the events and the policy debate around them, a debate in which the industrial relations scholarship played a key role. However, a critical interpretation is present too, suggesting that the relevance of company welfare is driven by the mobilisation of a political and economic elite and results in few cases of positive employment relations alongside broad social and economic imbalances.


‘Smart’ Industrial Relations in the Making? Insights from Analysis of Union Responses to Digitalization in ItalyDe meilleures relations de travail en construction? Aperçu de l’analyse des réponses des syndicats à l’avènement du numérique en Italie

January 2020

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10 Reads

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15 Citations

Relations Industrielles / Industrial Relations

How do unions respond to the emerging threats and opportunities posed by digitalization in the sphere of employment relations? What factors account for the focus and varying effectiveness of their responses? This paper seeks to address these questions in the case of Italy—a theoretically interesting case that combines significant digitalization-related challenges, historically strong industrial relations institutions under increasing pressure, and diverse union confederations. From the available evidence, we find that Italian union strategies and demands so far have been primarily focused on interventions at the macro and meso levels, with a view to extending traditional forms of protection—especially sectoral collective bargaining agreements—to deal with the disruptive effects of digitalization. This focus has been coupled with some limited innovation in union agendas and discursive repertoires focused on the micro level of intervention, as well as a shift in union preferences toward inclusion of platform workers and self-employed workers in their constituencies. Whilst highlighting the importance of agential factors, we nonetheless find that the focus and effectiveness of union interventions are crucially shaped by prior institutional legacies and distributions of power resources, as well as by the ideological orientation and strategic capabilities of individual unions themselves. Overall, Italian unions have to date tended to privilege gradual response strategies based on extension and adaptation of existing and established institutions. It remains to be seen whether such adaptive approaches will be sufficient to effectively govern the digital transformation of work or whether more radical institutional experimentation will become necessary. Either way, in order to build smart industrial relations in Italy, unions will have an active role to play.


Figure 1. Union revitalization strategies and union identity
Trade union strategy in fashion retail in Italy and the USA: Converging divergence between institutions and mobilization?

December 2018

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292 Reads

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16 Citations

European Journal of Industrial Relations

We investigate trade union strategies in fashion retail, a sector with endemic low wages, precarity and a representation gap. Unions in Milan organized ‘zero-hours contract’ workers, while their counterparts in New York established an alternative channel of representation, the Retail Action Project. We argue, first, that the dynamics of both cases are counterintuitive, displaying institution-building in the USA and grassroots mobilization in Italy; second, union identity stands out as a key revitalizing factor, since only those unions with a broad working-class orientation could provide an effective representation for fashion retail workers.



Shaping industrial relations in a digitalising service industry: regional report for Southern Europe

December 2017

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79 Reads

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4 Citations

The UNI Europa project „Shaping Industrial Relations in a Digitalising Services Industry - Challenges and Opportunities for Social Partners“, in cooperation with “ZSI – Zentrum für Soziale Innovation” and promoted by the European Commission, aims to identify and analyse change factors and explore new approaches for social partners on the challenges of maintaining effective industrial relations systems in a digitalising services industry. The project strives to provide policy advice for trade unions, social partners and policymakers on necessary adaptations of institutional frameworks for industrial relations, collective bargaining, social dialogue and capacity building for social partners. Challenges and opportunities are identified and analysed in particular with regard to workers’ representation at company level and collective bargaining as well as the work and organisation of trade unions in general. Across the project, we are dividing the investigation into three aspects of services that are clearly interrelated. Under the heading of “Service markets” we look at changes in service production and delivery through digitalisation (for example, online services and self-service) and also on the impact of these changes on customers and society at large. It is one of the dimensions where rapid changes, disruptive innovations (for example platforms) need to be addressed. Here, we also address the status of services in “industrial” or economic policy in the context of your respective sector and country.  “Service labour markets” addresses the development of service jobs, their quality and quantity. We focus on jobs with intermediate skill levels, and will also address atypical and precarious employment (including self-employment) in your sector/country, the development of skills and re-skilling and policies of addressing them.  “Company strategies and work organisation” looks at the company level and your union’s information and experience with companies in your sector/country: We will address transnationalisation of service companies at large, outsourcing and offshoring, working conditions and ways of influencing them, interest representation and participation. The present report covers the above topics in four Southern European countries: Italy, Greece, Portugal and Spain.


Studying work in theory and practice: insights for a globalising academia from the IR trajectory in Italy: Studying work in theory and practice

September 2017

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20 Reads

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13 Citations

This article investigates the relevance of context to the study of industrial relations by analysing the trajectory of an under-researched case outside the Anglo-Saxon hotspots, Italy. Three phases are put under the spotlight revealing a trajectory anchored to the pluralist fulcrum, but with influence first from radical perspectives and then from unitarist ones.


Between institutions and movements: Comparing union strategies in fashion retail in the US and Italy

This paper investigates union strategies in fashion retail, a sector with endemic low-wages, precarity and a worker representation gap. On the basis of interviews, documentary evidence and participant observation, the authors examine how and why retail unions in Milan organized 'zero-hour contract' workers and their counterparts in New York established an innovative channel of representation, the worker center called Retail Action Project. These recent findings contribute to the comparative literature on union revitalization in two original ways. First, the dynamics of both cases are counter-intuitive, displaying institution-building in the US and grass-roots mobilization in Italy, breaking from expected patterns of social movement and social partnership unionism, respectively. Second, the less explored aspect of union identity stands out as a key revitalizing factor, given that only those unions with a broad working class orientation were able to provide some form of representation to fashion retail workers. Key words: fashion retail; union revitalization; zero-hours contract; worker center; union identity; industrial relations institutions

Citations (5)


... These things are often pitched as indulgent bribes to make up for the demanding expectations" (Lieberman, 2019: web). Indeed, both employee's real perception of company investment and its real social impact in terms of effectiveness and equity on the entire system are debated (Gasparri, 2020). These reports, these scenarios and the evidence from the literature highlight the need for a general reflection on individual and organizational wellbeing. ...

Reference:

Generative performance as a wellbeing creator: A humanistic interdisciplinary model for the paradigm shift in human resource management
Framing work and welfare: Insights from the growing relevance of company welfare in Italy

Journal of Industrial Relations

... Under these circumstances, workers may experience 'extended temporalities' (Smith and McBride, 2021: 258), as employers match consumer demand more exactly to requirements for labour supply. To respond to market fluctuations, for example, fashion retailers engage staff on zero-hour contracts (Gasparri et al., 2019 ). In so doing, companies create new organizational forms to fissure workplaces through agency work and outsourcing, and food delivery platforms call up workers in peak hours (Cant, 2020;Weil, 2014). ...

Trade union strategy in fashion retail in Italy and the USA: Converging divergence between institutions and mobilization?

European Journal of Industrial Relations

... In 2012 Portugal adopted a Digital Agenda, which has subsequently been updated through various initiatives, including: According to the available information, there has been no direct social partner involvement in the design or follow up of these programmes (Gasparri and Tassinari 2017). As regards Indústria 4.0, the Portuguese trade union Fiequimetal, the metalworkers' federation of the largest confederation, Confederação Geral dos Trabalhadores Portugueses -Intersindical Nacional (CGTP-IN), has criticized the lack of union involvement (Gasparri and Tassinari 2017). ...

Shaping industrial relations in a digitalising service industry: regional report for Southern Europe

... Job security has shown that work security concerns are not favorable and this is demonstrated by the weak quality of its activity over the past 10 years , as a result of heavy competition in postal services, and interviews have shown that the communications industry (17). In addition to the lack of in-service training programs in the company, the majority of workers in the sector have no necessary qualifications. ...

Shaping Industrial Relations in a Digitalising Services Industry-Challenges and Opportunities for Social Partners. Service Markets Report.

... In industrial relations, the radical frame of reference sees the tensions in the employment relationship as symptomatic of structural contradictions underlying capitalism and considers non-institutional actors, such as social movements and rank-and-fi le labour advocacy organizations, as new sources of both worker identity and action ( Tapia et al, 2015 ; see also Gasparri, 2017 ). In this sense, workers have agentic capacity -all the more so in moments of crisis when their resistance, expressed through social movements, can challenge existing economic arrangements and lead to their transformation ( Heery, 2016 ). ...

Studying work in theory and practice: insights for a globalising academia from the IR trajectory in Italy: Studying work in theory and practice
  • Citing Article
  • September 2017