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Rapidly changing markets in the context of globalization call for increasingly frequent restructuring to sustain the competitiveness of individual firms. To meet this need while minimizing consequent job loss, the social partners in major European countries have devised a variety of decentralization mechanisms that enhance local-level flexibility without fundamentally calling into question the traditional national models of collective bargaining. Analysing the use of “opening clauses” in German industry agreements, France's firm-level “derogation agreements” and mandatory bargaining on “workforce planning”, and Italy's tripartite “territorial agreements”, the author concludes with a plea for a supranational framework to support socially sensitive restructuring across Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobilization by the unemployed has traditionally been considered a highly improbable phenomenon. However, recent observations challenge such a supposition. Our article compares protest waves in France, Germany, and Italy, where the unemployed successfully organized themselves and acted on their own behalf for several months. We argue that mobilization of the unemployed- although it empirically proved to be a possibility-remains very fragile, particularly depending on beneficial "windows of opportunities. Our analysis is above all interested in deciphering macrostructural conditions and opportunity structures, arguing that the unemployed benefited from external developments causing changes in potential mobilizing resources, and brought about new allies and political entrepreneurs. At the same time, however, these opportunity structures were actively exploited and, at the same time, their opening was fostered by the mobilization itself [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While Article 128 of the Treaty of Rome very clearly states that a common policy for vocational training should be developed, this policy has never come to fruition. This is largely due to resistance from Germany and France, which already possessed highly developed vocational training systems. But the failure can also be attributed to the clash between the centralising forces of European development, revealed by the Commission's attempts to take the lead in financing common policies, and the opposing government forces that seek to limit the Commission's ambitions and defend theft sovereignty. As a result, attempts to formulate a common policy for vocational training have been abandoned; France and Germany are not at all keen to take on the costs of retraining the southern Italian labour force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the patterns of male nonagricultural self-employment in France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom. It is argued that the development of self-employment in these four countries is based on specific institutional and economic frameworks resulting in different opportunities and incentives for taking up self-employment These differences affect the relevance of individual resources like education and work experience. The empirical analyses are based on national Labor Force Surveys. Although we find a remarkable number of common general patterns in self-employment in all four countries, the findings also indicate that educational requirements and the relevance of age-related experience differ fundamentally among the four countries and along industrial branches. Specific regulations and general settings in single branches and countries result in distinct opportunities for self employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How will countries handle idiosyncratic macroeconomic shocks under the single currency? Since the regional adjustment patterns currently prevailing within European currency unions are likely to prevail at the national level under the single currency, looking at the ways in which European countries react to internally asymmetric shocks today provides a good preview for the answer to that question. In this paper, we compare the USA with Germany, Italy and the UK, and with Canada, which is closer to Europe than the USA in its labour market and fiscal institutions. Europe's (and to some extent Canada's) model of regional response differs from that of the USA. Changes in regional real exchange rates are small in all countries. Outside of the USA, however, there is more reliance on interregional transfer payments, less on labour migration, and the pace of regional adjustment appears to be slower. If EMU aims at the same degree of economic and social cohesion that its constituent nations enjoy today, this suggests that its members may find it hard to resist the eventual extension of existing EU mechanisms of income redistribution -- a transfer union. We propose an alternative strategy based on a relaxed Stability Pact, further strictures against central EU borrowing, labour market and fiscal reform, and the issuance by individual member states of debt indexed to nominal GDP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the reduced population of several industrialized countries including Germany, Italy, and Japan due to low fertility rate. It states that low fertility rate results to fewer babies, smaller workforce, and higher per capita costs. It mentions that the relationship between human development index (HDI) and fertility was examined, and the relationship between gender development index (GDI) and total fertility rate (TFR) was measured. It also notes that the social and political considerations can help maintain the population in the said nations.

The article discusses a report from the British Labour Ministry on English workers' mobility, involving the relocation of some 2.9% of the workforce in 1966. By comparison, work-related relocation was measured in the early 1960's at 3% in the U.S., .5% in Italy, 1.8% in Germany, and 1% in France. Other worker mobility statistics are presented related to workers' gender, age, and educational attainment.