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We examine job quality effects of new digital technologies, using the European frame of seven job quality domains: Pay, Working Time Quality, Prospects, Skills and Discretion, Work Intensity, Social Environment, and Physical Environment. Theoretical effects are ambivalent across all domains. The analysis of these effects confirms that digital technologies can both improve and harm job quality depending on how they are used. In light of this analysis and to think through the challenge of regulating digital technologies, we review emerging regulations across several European countries. Drawing on the principles of human-centred design, we argue that worker participation is important for securing good job quality outcomes, at both the innovation and adoption stages. We also consider the application of data protection legislation to the regulation of job quality. Overall, the paper extends debate about the future of work beyond employment and pay, on to a consideration of job quality more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migrant inclusion in a society is a process that ultimately succeeds or fails at the local level and cities have increasingly taken a proactive stance in delivering their own policies for integration. The literature on the topic has focused particularly on the cooperation between local political institutions and civil society organizations, underestimating the key role played by social partners. This paper demonstrates the participation of social partners in the local governance of migrant integration in three European cities: Barcelona, Lyon and Gothenburg. Drawing on process tracing analysis and qualitative interviews, the article illustrates the different responses of local unions and employers' organizations to immigration and the variety of approaches to supporting migrant integration into employment and society. The article argues that these approaches, which take place within different institutional and structural contexts, shape different patterns of migrant inclusion and allow us to explain the new and traditional ways in which social partners operate as social and political actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue (SI) brings the industrial relations scholarship on the public sector into dialogue with the comparative political economy (CPE) literature on growth models/regimes. While the former has paid great attention to the public sector, in CPE the public sector has been analysed less, and mostly as subaltern to the export-sector's actors, interests and institutions. We posit that the public sector matters for CPE in its own right for three reasons. First, the state remains today the single largest employer in virtually every European economy, providing incomes to a large segment of the middle class. Second, public employers' wage bill – one of the largest items of governments' current expenditures – is funded by the taxpayers. Hence, public sector wage policy is fiscal policy, ultimately pursued by public/political employers. Third, public employers are simultaneously public managers and political sovereigns acting in the shadow of hierarchy. Case-study contributions to the SI detail how these insights matter within different European growth regimes: (1) the Mediterranean demand-led growth regime (France, Italy, Spain and Portugal), (2) the German export-led growth regime, (3) the Nordic balanced growth regime (Denmark and Sweden) and (4) the FDI-led Eastern European growth regime (Czechia and Slovakia). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we focus on workplace practices aimed at increasing workers' direct voice, and their connection to job quality. After contextualizing historically the various reasons for increasing different types of workers' participation and exploring the muddled role of direct participation in European policy, it reflects on possible indicators for workplace worker involvement (direct and through representatives) and offers a brief review regarding research on the impact of workers' direct participation on job quality in Europe, identifying essentially positive but also some negative outcomes. The interaction of the workers' direct voice with representative participation at the workplace in terms of substitution or complementarity and the mediating role of productive and industrial relations contexts are also reflected upon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Directive on Adequate Minimum Wages represents a watershed initiative adding substance to the EU's social dimension. It contains two ambitious objectives: establishing the minimum level of statutory minimum wages at 60% of the gross median wage, and increasing collective bargaining coverage (CBC) to at least 80% of workers. In this article, we assess how statutory minimum wages and collective bargaining coverage are associated with the likelihood of low pay. Using a time series cross-section of EU-SILC for income years 2004–2019, we identify and assess the absolute and relative size of 'effective wage floors' for full-time employees in 30 countries. We specify multilevel, random effects within-between regression models to assess the individual and joint associations of SMW and collective bargaining coverage with wage floors. Our results indicate that SMWs and CBC both have distinct roles in establishing the effective wage floor. First, higher collective bargaining coverage is on average associated with a lower share of workers earning below 60% gross median wages. Second, higher SMWs are strongly associated with higher effective wage floors. Third, both collective bargaining coverage and union density are strongly associated with higher wage floors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A widespread rhetoric suggests that market-like rules dominate employment relationships, and particularly compensation, but empirical evidence is inconclusive. This research examines organisations' compensation policies in clusters of European capitalist economies to test such a hypothesis. Four fuzzy clusters emerged from data, namely, Standard, Internalised, Competitive and Incentive, which illustrates a division between organisation- and market-based models. Collective pay rules characterise organisation-based model, and this is the predominant model in all countries except for the liberal market economies. Firms from different models of capitalism rely on internal labour market pay rules, suggesting that the scope of the liberal market system is narrow. Differences within clusters of capitalist economies suggest a role for agency and hidden labour market specificities in each grouping. The similarities of pay policies open room to identifying capitalist economies differently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The possibility of convergence of national industrial relations systems has been debated for a long time. However, the predominant approach is to stress the persistence of national variation. This article draws on a number of comparative studies in order to consider whether globalization and European policy developments are important drivers towards increasing convergence. Consequently, the article concludes that a critical review of the prevalent research methods is necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of the recent increase in the inflows of refugees to Europe, governments have made considerable investments in public policies aimed at facilitating the labour market integration of refugees. Despite these efforts, the labour market participation of refugees remains low. This situation raises the question of whether employers actually appreciate these public policies and whether refugees' participation in specific active labour market policies (ALMPs), such as work practice or wage subsidies, increases their likelihood of being hired. In this article, we take a novel approach and combine employers' evaluations of specific ALMPs with their attitudes towards refugees. We argue that these labour market policies can only be successful when employers hold positive attitudes towards refugees in the first place. We investigate this question by means of a factorial survey experiment with employers in Austria, Germany and Sweden. Our results show that, indeed, employers' evaluations of fictional refugee candidates who participated in ALMPs are influenced by their attitudes towards this group. Participation in these policy measures is regarded positively only by those employers who already hold positive attitudes towards refugees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the context of an accelerating climate emergency, the introduction frames the strategies and actions adopted by labour and unions to reduce carbon emissions that are presented in the articles contributing to this special issue. Industrial relations scholarship, which has been slow to address the climate emergency, has focussed on the jobs versus environment dilemma, the role of unions, technical innovation versus social unionism, and just transition approaches. While labour and union approaches in different sectors across Europe are largely confined to variants of ecological modernization, a more proactive transformative strategy opening up an alternative eco-socialist vision for the future is emerging. The issue highlights the contradictions in union strategies, the drivers of change and the way forward in pursuance of a green economy through a focus on the roles of government and the public sector, the organization of labour and the labour process, and education and training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present comparative research on precarious work and trade union strategies in three sectors (construction, industrial cleaning, temporary agency work) across seven European countries. Specific sectors have a profile of precarious work that is remarkably similar across countries, originating from similar employer strategies and work organizations. This results in unions facing comparable challenges concerning precarious work at sectoral level and developing comparable sectoral strategies to combat precarious work. The success of these strategies depends to a large extent on the available power resources. Between sectors within single countries, we observe some similarities but also very substantial differences in their institutional configuration and in actors' constellations, power resources and repertoires of action. National institutional contexts seem much less significant than often assumed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How far, in what ways and on what issues do trade unions in Europe cooperate cross-nationally? Three important structural factors may explain differences in cooperation: national industrial relations contexts, sectoral contexts and unions' organizational resources. We examine transnational union cooperation at sectoral level, and test the explanatory value of these three factors. We address cooperation in five broad sectors, using a Europe-wide questionnaire-based survey of trade union activities. We find that sectoral differences explain more of the variation in levels of transnational cooperation than do industrial relations regimes when controlling for resources, whereas both sectors and regimes influence which issues are seen as important for current and future cooperation. In addition, small trade unions engage in much less transnational cooperation than large ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the Special Issue on industrial relations in Central and Eastern Europe since the financial and economic crisis. Already dependent economically on funding from the west and lacking the robust industrial relations institutions traditional in much of Western Europe, countries in the region were particularly vulnerable. However, there are important cross-national differences, and the strategies of key actors have significantly affected the outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under external pressure, the Greek system of industrial relations has undergone radical regulatory changes since 2010. These have led to a significant contraction of higher level bargaining and a process of disorganized decentralization, bringing the collective bargaining system to a brink of collapse. Emerging demands on the part of both employers and unions to preserve multi-level bargaining, together with greater support on the part of the state, could halt or even reverse some of these trends. But the scope for success of such efforts depends on how far 'regulated austerity' continues to dominate European policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In September 2003 the International Industrial Relations Association held its 13th World Congress at the Freie Universität Berlin. The broad theme was "Beyond Traditional Employment," a reflection of far-reaching change in the nature of work and the status of workers, and the consequential pressures on the institutions and processes of industrial relations. The first two articles focus on employment policy in Europe. Two articles consider issues related to the eastern enlargement of the European Union. Following their accession, employees in the new Member States are covered by the provisions of the directive on European Works Councils (EWC), and some companies anticipated this requirement by enlarging their EWCs in advance.

The viability of coordinated, multi-employer bargaining arrangements as a cornerstone of labour market regulation in Western Europe has come under further threat following the crisis. Already, pressure for decentralization had corroded the capacity of sector agreements to specify universal standards applicable at company level. Procedural mechanisms articulating the two levels had become looser and more open-ended. This process has intensified in Northern European countries, whilst in Southern Europe, under pressure from the European institutions, a frontal assault on multi-employer bargaining arrangements is now underway. Reinforced European economic governance intensifies the need for coordination of bargaining across borders, but the capacity for achieving this is significantly reduced by the erosion of capacities for effective coordination within national bargaining systems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyses European Social Survey data for 22 countries. We assess the relationship between feelings of employment and income insecurity (dual-insecurity) among workers and national flexicurity policies in the areas of lifelong learning, active labour market policy, modern social security systems and flexible and reliable contractual arrangements. We find that dual-insecurity feelings are lower in countries that score better on most flexicurity polices, but these effects are in all cases outweighed by levels of GDP per capita. Thus feelings of insecurity are reduced more by the affluence of a country than by its social policies. However, affluence is strongly correlated with the policy efforts designed to reduce insecurity, especially active labour market policies and lifelong learning, two policy areas that are threatened with cuts as a result of austerity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most studies of flexicurity have focused on formal institutions within distinctive national labour market systems. However, the level and types of flexibility and security in a national labour market are to an important extent influenced by company-level processes, relationships and policies; thus a micro-perspective should be integrated into the study of flexibility and security. This article advances understanding of the influences of decentralized rule-making and its links with the macro level by drawing on case study research in four multinational companies, each with subsidiaries in Germany, Belgium, Italy and the UK. It reveals major differences in terms of flexibility and security between companies operating in the same country, and major similarities between the subsidiaries of the same multinational. Product market characteristics affect local autonomy to define human resource policies; national institutions and local circumstances then affect the capabilities of trade unions and works councils to negotiate local flexibility-security trade-offs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses three theoretical approaches to the study of coordinated collective bargaining, each positing different causal mechanisms: rational choice, rationalist institutionalism and discursive institutionalism. Each approach involves a different view of the exercise of power and distributional consequences. The three approaches are applied to the critical cases of Sweden and Denmark. The conclusion drawn is that coordination is not purely cooperative, and that cooperation is itself conditioned by power relations. Thus power must be placed at the heart of coordination studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do works councils and employee board-level representation affect company performance? Research on employee participation provides mixed and sometimes contradictory findings. This article argues that the performance effects of employee participation depend on the business cycle. Specifically, the conservative impact of employee participation on strategy may be associated with lower company value in good times, but may also provide a buffer against a loss of value in bad times. This argument is supported by data from 726 European firms in the period surrounding the financial crash of 2006–2008. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The explanatory model behind Esping-Andersen’s ‘three-regime’ typology points to the variance in ‘political coalition building in the transition from a rural economy to a middle-class society’, particularly to whether or not farmers and workers were able to form coalitions during this transition. The article reconsiders the relation between party systems and welfare state regimes. It highlights the systematic variation among European party systems with respect to the electoral success of communist parties. The electoral strength of communist parties is argued to be related to the intensity of past conflicts between the nation-state and the Catholic church in the mono-denominational countries of Europe’s south. These conflicts rendered a coalition between pious farmers and the anticlerical worker’s movement unthinkable and furthered the radicalization of the left. The article argues that the split on the left explains much of what is distinctive about southern Europe’s postwar political economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the impact of financialization on European systems on industrial relations. It assesses two aspects: the growing power of bond markets and the increasing tendency for firms to threaten to ‘offshore’ operations. Such processes are rooted in the very logic of financialization and have caustic effects on the integrity of European industrial relations regimes. The article concludes that the threat to European systems of industrial relations is likely to be enduring. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There is a growing debate between mainstream and critical empowerment theorists; the latter criticize empowerment interventions that could be disempowering when the real power continues to reside with management. To draw upon the tension between these dualistic views, this study investigates whether organizations with formal power structures of collective bargaining as represented by union density and employee representation provide a facilitative social environment for empowerment to grow. Based on two combined sets of secondary data collected for the ETUI in 2006 and EWCS in 2005 from 27 European countries, this study found that countries with a stronger union tradition demonstrated higher workplace empowerment and job satisfaction for individual workers than countries with a weaker union tradition. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article revisits one of the established hypotheses in the literature on European industrial relations. Focusing on the context in which wages are set via central coordination, the hypothesis explores why the wage-setting system often collapses and is replaced with sectoral or company-level bargaining. The answer revolves around the issue of wage costs, with the main claim being that the change (that is, de-coordination) occurs when employers are not satisfied with the performance of cost control. This article asserts that the hypothesis has only limited applicability. In particular, it holds only if central coordination remains a potential source of high wage costs. If the system turns to a reliable mechanism for wage moderation, which is true in the Eurozone countries, the hypothesis does not hold. Under this circumstance, employers will no longer consider de-coordination as a means of cost control. Instead, de-coordination can occur as a consequence of intra-union politics, as diverse union actors interact with each other in their response to the wage issue. The article will examine this new hypothesis of de-coordination in the context of three Eurozone countries in the 1990s and 2000s: Finland, Ireland, and Belgium. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyses the role of the state in industrial relations and the development of collective bargaining autonomy in three Southern European countries. The starting point is the impact of contradictory forces on the direction of change. While there are strong pressures towards less state regulation of working conditions and collective bargaining, the macroeconomic framework of monetary union imposed new coordination requirements upon these economies. Social pacts in the 1990s and 2000s provided a mechanism of state-coordinated governance while at the same time helping to enhance negotiated self-regulation. Nonetheless, significant cross-national differences remained in the extent and form of autonomous collective bargaining and in its outcomes. The structural challenges facing social partners in these countries, together with an emphasis on institutional strategies of revitalization, left them in a weak position at both company and national levels to face the challenges brought on by the crisis. Thus recent developments show a clear pattern of increased unilateral state interference, which raises important questions regarding the future of bargaining autonomy and the role of trade unions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘Flexicurity’ has become an influential concept in academic and political discourse, in particular since the European Commission placed it at the core of the European Employment Strategy. However, the concept is underdeveloped and suffers from a number of serious shortcomings. In this article we discuss a number of its problematic features. In particular, we focus on four aspects: its ambiguity and openness to political capture; its failure to problematize the creation of institutional complementarities; its lack of attention to conflicts of interest and to the heterogeneity of the labour market; and its reductionist view of the sources of flexibility and security. We illustrate this discussion with a series of empirical examples. Finally, we conclude that the flexicurity approach should either be abandoned, or be substantially improved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite severe membership losses after the transformation of 1989, trade unions in Central Eastern Europe were slow to develop methods to recruit new members. This article examines how Solidarność in Poland has adopted American organizing approaches, and analyses how an emerging group of young trade union organizers and activists changed the self-understanding of the union. The article ends with a comparative discussion of the conditions which may promote the development of organizing activities in Central Eastern Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the conditions under which trade unions in the car industry in Western and Central-Eastern Europe cooperate with each other. It analyses relations between Polish and German unions at three automotive companies displaying variation in the timing and content of cross-border cooperative ventures. Unions cooperated transnationally when no local negotiation channel was available to the German unionists and the Polish unionists benefited more from the assistance of their Western counterparts than from local solutions. Overall, the evidence suggests that East-West labour transnationalism contains a strong element of reciprocity and is guided primarily by cost&#X2014benefit considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the dynamics of workplace change in European call centres. Survey data and case studies from Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain show large national and sectoral differences in institutional inclusiveness and labour market segmentation. These reflect variation in the institutional constraints and resources available to employers and unions as they adjust to market changes. However, union strategies to organize new groups and close gaps in existing regulations are becoming increasingly important as restructuring undermines traditional forms of bargaining power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the outcomes of EU accession for industrial relations institutions and workers' rights in Eastern Europe, using Romania as an example. It focuses on EU influence on labour law, the development of the social partners and collective bargaining as well as the impact of foreign direct investment and migration. EU enlargement resulted in both opportunities (improvement of statutory rights for workers) and challenges labour shortages and difficulties in implementing labour law). Comparisons between the new member states suggest that the effects of the EU accession process vary across countries, depending on national macro-economic strategies and the strength of trade unions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Measurement of workers' militancy has proved empirically to be a difficult task in Belgium. There are diverse traditional indicators and parameters but the interpretations of their extent and national effects are arguable. This article uses the expenditure of the 'strike fund' in order to elaborate a measure of workers' militancy in Belgium. The strike fund data provided valuable information on the cross-sectoral level of workers' militancy and, thereby, confirmed some evidence with regard to the evolution of workers' combativeness. The case of Belgium is interesting. Since the 1980s, the numbers of strike days have fallen while the level of union membership has remained one of the highest in Europe. Is the decline of strikes in Belgium an irreversible process? Analysis of the national sector-based data on the strike funds suggests caution in predicting the withering away of strikes. Likewise, new forms of 'proletarianization' are developing as the manifestation of a newly emergent industrial conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The general study of institutional arrangements that are designed to impact on managerial prerogatives is typically cast in the genre of forms of industrial democracy. While the last few decades have seen a decline in interest in this area of study, developments in the European Union have enabled an ongoing dialogue specifically on the topic of consultation. Although consultation is generally seen by scholars as a modest form of industrial democracy, formal European Directives have provided the opportunity to assess the representative strength or otherwise of initiatives such as European Works Councils that are explicitly designed to address social policy and inequality in the workplace. Drawing on 41 case studies, we examine the determinants of European Works Councils morphology, activities undertaken and general outcomes. We note that it is important to presumptively inquire as to what is being theorized rather than simply take the implicit position that European Works Councils are the prime institution of influence. This leads us to establish the primacy of management and in particular, the vector of management decision-making as the primary independent variable that predicts much about the operation and robustness of European Works Councils. Accordingly, we find that strong centralized management, rather than the usual suspects of differing national industrial relations systems and cultural differences, typically account for much of what we understand in terms of the role that European Works Councils play. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses three interrelated issues. First, it re-assesses the legacy of Yugoslav self-management and looks at the reasons why this particular historical legacy provided labour in Yugoslavia with certain advantages not in evidence elsewhere in East Europe. Second, it tries to give a theoretically founded explanation as to why the paths of Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia diverged in terms of the strength of trade unions. And finally, it proposes a typology within which to organize the experiences that these countries and their labour movements have gone through in the last decade and a half. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collective bargaining in most European countries takes the form of multi-employer collective agreements. In the three Scandinavian countries, a two-tier model of bargaining has developed in many sectors: sectoral agreements prescribe national standards and nationally agreed wage increases, but they also give procedural and economic guidelines or frameworks for local or firm-level pay arrangement. Dispute resolution procedures at local level are the crucial link between levels, and a variety of such procedures are discussed. Similar examples of two-tier models can be found in other European countries, but they seem to be more fully developed in the Scandinavian countries. Possible explanations are considered, together with a discussion of the different forms of variation in wages opened up by two-tier models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines recent developments in social dialogue over vocational training and lifelong learning. The central concern is how to develop coherent European polices for increasing social partner influence in this domain, given the diversity of national systems of VET and structures of social dialogue across Europe. The study draws on a survey of 13 countries and concludes that despite these disparities, cross-national differences in social partner involvement are less than might be anticipated. Initiatives like the social partners' Framework of Actions are seen as pressures promoting convergence, but this is likely to occur paradoxically as a result of increasing diversity within member states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the role of trade unions in innovative learning partnerships. Formal framework partnerships suffer from implementation problems and a lack of focus on worker needs, in contrast to local learning partnerships that address the specific interests of workers displaced through restructuring. The key challenges facing unions are the types of skills addressed, coordination issues across learning partnerships and building the union skills needed to work in partnership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the heyday of neoliberalism, employment protection was widely believed to be one of the main causes of Europe's poor economic performance and high unemployment. We challenge this view and instead argue that employment protection is crucial to preserving Europe's export success in higher value-added industries. In particular, we explore the relationship between employment protection and skills development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the variations in aggregate union density in fifteen industrialized societies over the period 1960-2000. Drawing critically on a range of literatures, it argues that density is a valuable if imperfect expression of the weight of the infrastructure of joint regulation. Whilst density levels cannot express the character or anatomy of this regulation, they broadly depict the constraints imposed on managerial prerogative by routinized joint regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the characteristics of trade unions in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. Similarities and differences among the trade unions in those regions are viewed on the unions' density, employer recognition of the unions, and tendencies toward decentralization of collective bargaining. In Asia, big differences in the character and size of trade unionism is possible to identify because of the different level of economic development and political systems of the countries in the region.

This article argues that, in order to explore the extent to which cross-national union representatives' cooperation can be achieved within the context of European integration, articulation between the European and the national (local) union levels needs to be examined. Comparative research findings in two European Works Councils (EWCs) reveal that the creation of complementary links of coordination among employee representatives at European level depends on the extent to which European trade union organizations can successfully align their policies to the national and local context. Two combined sets of factors are found to mutually affect the efficacy of such articulation: the 'voluntary' context within which EWC agreements are set up; and the national union orientations towards the common European policy issues. Thus, prospects and concerns are raised regarding the use of Europeanization as an essential factor for supranational trade union cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses gender and employment in 10 central eastern European countries: eight new EU member states and two candidate countries. The context is set with demographic, economic, and labour-market trends, including population, GDP, and gender disaggregated employment, activity, and unemployment rates. Changes in horizontal and vertical gender segregation are then addressed, especially the uneven gender effect on employment patterns of sectoral restructuring during capitalist transformation. Lastly, the gender pay gap is examined, and compared to patterns in western Europe. The article concludes with a discussion of the advances, but also the limits of harmonization through EU gender-equality legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents evidence from interviews in France, Spain and Poland to explore how individual actors make choices about their work-life balance. It shows that choice is a complex, contingent, and relative concept, which is both facilitated and obstructed by public policies and working regulations. Despite differences in national and sub-national policy contexts, institutional and cultural norms and expectations, the article draws the conclusion that family-friendly issues need to be mainstreamed and that the concerns of families should be added to those of the state, trade unions and employers on the agenda for negotiating work-life balance. It is also argued that the focus and scope of industrial relations need to be rethought to take account of the gendered nature of employment relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The framework of the European social dialogue (ESD) has enabled interest organizations at the European level to conclude agreements on a wide range of social policy issues. This applies both at the inter-sectoral level and within the various sectors, and has led in the last few decades to the creation of a large number of joint texts. This article addresses the issue of the added value of these results for the parties concluding them. It is argued that the ESD does not constitute a system of industrial relations at the European level, but serves as an alternative lobbying channel for the social partners involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses the concept of `designing institutions' and a heuristic model of strategic options to address two questions. First, what institutional changes support a social Europe? This question is examined on the basis of recent developments in the European Union regarding macro- economic dialogue and the unions' own policies of European coordination. Second, what is the influence of these changes on national trade unions? The conclusion is that institutional changes are limited, and strong national unions remain the central agents of transnational coordination. The European Trade Union Confederation and the European Industry Federations administer the new coordination procedures, but their status is not enhanced structurally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extension of European Works Councils to central and eastern Europe is a rare attempt to create transnational employee representation covering both low- and high-wage areas. Research carried out in Poland in 2001 provides a quantitative estimate of such enlargement and a qualitative assessment of its effects. The evidence undermines fears of `social dumping' and reveals indirect effects definable as `short circuits'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research reported here begins from the premise that employment relations within the European subsidiaries of American multinationals are influenced critically by the US business system, generating preferences for non-unionism, individualized pay and performance management, and quality management, for example. Further, these can be traced through examination of control systems extended from corporate headquarters. The article complicates this general picture. Despite the case company's leading position within an American-dominated industry, engineering process contracting, we consistently found authority vested in local managers, and host-country orientations to the management of employment relations in the UK subsidiary. Explaining these findings takes us back repeatedly to sectoral characteristics. These directly affect employment systems and influence them indirectly through 'first-order' strategic choices (about where to produce) and second-order ones (about the organizational form to be adopted). The analysis highlights how sectoral factors strengthened the hand of local engineering managers and created circumstances in which they could assert autonomy and extend their 'charter'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Along with accession negotiations, integration into the European Union (EU) has become a central dimension of Estonian politics, creating new institutional practices and shaping domestic political processes. This article explores how the positions of and relations between the Estonian government, civil servants, parliament and civil society have been constructed in the course of preparations for EU member-ship, and discusses the findings from the viewpoint of democratic politics. With the help of different concepts of discursive power, it is highlighted that although parliament and civil society have acquired increasing power in the discourses of integration and there have been attempts to increase their involvement, power over these discourses is still predominantly exercised by civil servants and the government. This reflects the tensions built into the logic of integration that, on the one hand, is dominated by the principles of speed, efficiency, expertise and inevitability, but on the other has placed increasing emphasis on the democratic aspect. Altogether, integration tends to limit democracy to a minimal model, reinforcing some general weaknesses of democracy that are common in the post-communist countries, and intertwining these with the technocratic, elite-centred tradition of the EU that is being adopted by the applicant states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Commission and the ETUC have outlined policies to strengthen the sectoral level of European industrial relations, but the social dialogue has developed in only a limited number of sectors. This article examines some theoretical arguments which may contribute to a better understanding of the motives of industrial relations actors for participation in social dialogue and collective bargaining at the European level. These arguments will be used to explain why no social dialogue has been initiated in the graphical sector, and what this absence implies for the prospects of the Europeanization of collective bargaining in the sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Editorial. Presents a series of articles focused on industrial relations in Central and Eastern Europe. Articles presented during the December 2001 conference at the London School of Economics in England; Assessment of the state of industrial relations regimes; Evidence suggesting that the reinstitutionalization of new industrial relations has not succeeded.

European integration has profound effects on national systems of industrial relations. To date, most empirical research has addressed the role of unions and organized labour; there has been far less attention paid to the impact of Europeanization on the strategic outlook and representational activities of organized business interests. This article draws on a survey of Dutch trade and employers' associations to argue that such organizations are in the process of adjusting their external affiliations to the demands of effective agitation in a multilevel governance system. However, the national level remains the most important focal point in the representational strategies of business associations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This article is concerned with problems of comparative research and analysis in industrial relations, and in particular with cross-national comparison of trade unions. Comparison is of both practical and theoretical importance, but is fraught with difficulties, in part because of the paradox involved in attempting to generalize concerning national instances which are in so many respects unique. The author considers three different approaches to analysis, in terms respectively of institutions, functions and issues. In conclusion, the article emphasizes the iterative nature of research and analysis and insists that even if the goal of satisfactory cross-national comparison may be unattainable, its pursuit is both necessary and valuable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]