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Occupational health has become a major issue in the context of Western economies, marked by the ageing of the labour force. In most European countries, the legal retirement age has been significantly reduced since the beginning of the 2000s. At the same time, the number of early retirements for health reasons is tending to increase. This issue has become particularly sensitive in the UK, where the reforms of 2006-07 resulted in the elimination of most of the early retirement opportunities that existed, particularly in the public sector. In the postal sector, where Royal Mail employees enjoyed one of the most advantageous pension schemes, numerous reforms have been introduced since the end of the 2000s with serious consequences for workers. In particular, changes in calculation methods deprived them of a significant proportion of the amounts they should have received. However, a number of rights were restored at the time of privatisation in 2013, thanks to the signing of the Agenda for Growth agreement. And at the time of our research, the main postal workers' union, the CWU, had just secured a new agreement to maintain the benefits of the Royal Mail's special pension scheme, a reduction in working hours and an increase in pay., La santé au travail est devenue un enjeu majeur dans le contexte des économies occidentales, marquées par le vieillissement de la population active. Dans la plupart des pays européens, l'âge légal de la retraite a été significativement reculé depuis le début des années 2000. Dans le même temps, le nombre de cessations anticipées d'activité pour raisons de santé tend à s'accroître. Cette problématique est devenue particulièrement sensible au Royaume-Uni où les réformes des années 2006-2007 ont abouti à éliminer la plupart des possibilités de départs anticipés à la retraite qui existaient, notamment dans le secteur public. Dans le secteur postal où les employés de Royal Mail bénéficiaient de l'un des régimes de retraite les plus avantageux, de nombreuses réformes ont été introduites depuis la fin des années 2000, aux conséquences lourdes pour les salariés. Notamment, l'évolution des modes de calcul les privait d'une partie significative des montants qu'ils auraient dû percevoir. Un certain nombre de droits ont toutefois pu être rétablis au moment de la privatisation, en 2013, grâce à la signature de l'accord Agenda for Growth. Et au moment où notre recherche s'achevait, le principal syndicat de postiers, le CWU, venait d'obtenir un nouvel accord en faveur du maintien des avantages du régime de retraite spécifique des salariés de Royal Mail, d'une réduction du temps de travail et d'une augmentation des salaires.

This chapter describes and analyses French trade unions’ attitudes and actions towards immigration and migrant workers during the past two decades. In terms of immigration, France is nowadays in median position in Europe, with foreign-born persons accounting for 11.6 per cent of the resident population in 2009–10, but a migrants’ direct offspring that is more numerous – though less visible – than immigrants themselves. Under the influence of the surge of the Front National, an unwelcoming climate and restrictive immigration and integration policies have become dominant characteristics of the context in which trade unions have dealt with migrant workers. While French trade unions had a long tradition in organizing migrant workers, they appear less able to play a key role in the process of migrant workers’ integration in a more competitive, flexible and segmented labour market. The trade unions’ practice of using the principle of equality as their main weapon leads to significant trade union support action for migrant workers, who nonetheless lack or have a weak legal status.

L’internationalisation des collectifs de travail et l’utilisation croissante de l’anglais comme langue unique de communication souleve de nouvelles questions en matiere de conditions de travail et de sante, auxquelles les medecins du travail se trouvent confrontes de maniere croissante. Une enquete menee par la CFE-CGC en 2012 dans le cadre d’un colloque organise sur le sujet et intitule « le tout anglais dans l’entreprise » a, en effet, mis en evidence que le fait de devoir travailler dans une langue differente de sa langue maternelle etait generateur de difficultes de fonctionnement comme l’ont montre les resultats des sondages effectues a cette occasion ainsi que l’echec de fusions mal preparees mais egalement de stress pour les salaries. Or cette situation concernait, au moment de l’enquete, environ 70 % des salaries cadres et agents de maitrise et parmi ces memes personnes 45 % estimaient que cela procurait du stress. A l’occasion d’un sondage realise a la suite de ce colloque on a trouve des chiffres tres voisins avec des reponses a des nouvelles questions : – l’usage de cette langue non maternelle entraine-t-il une fatigue supplementaire la reponse est affirmative pour 51 % des sondes ; – l’usage de cette langue non maternelle entraine-t-il un changement de mode de pensee la reponse est affirmative pour 47 % des sondes. Parmi ces 47 % la question posee a ete : ce changement de mode de pensee a-t-il ete facile ou difficile la reponse a ete assez difficile pour 42 % de ces sondes en question. La communication proposee s’interessera au role que le medecin du travail peut jouer, en cooperation avec les autres acteurs de l’entreprise, en matiere d’ergonomie mentale et de prevention sur cet aspect specifique. Elle s’appuiera notamment sur notre experience de medecin du travail dans le secteur de la construction ou cette thematique ancienne prend une ampleur nouvelle avec l’ouverture des frontieres europeennes et les tentatives de reglement dit « Moliere ». Le secteur de la construction se caracterise par une necessite imperieuse de communication et de fine intercomprehension entre les differentes parties prenantes sous peine de malfacons et de risques importants de securite pour la construction et pour le personnel. Notre analyse s’appuiera notamment sur les reflexions engagees par un collectif de travail mis en place conjointement par la CFE-CGC, l’association Demain Nos Langues et le CNRS en vue de l’elaboration d’un webdocumentaire sur les langues au travail.

The paper compares trends and case studies of individual and collective employment conflicts in France and the UK. Its focus is on the extent to which conciliation, mediation and mediation are used within the two different industrial relations systems. In both, third-party intervention is associated with the legitimacy conveyed by the involvement of both employers and trade unions, or by the presence of an impartial judge. The research finds extensive use of alternative dispute resolution is taking place in both countries, with dispute resolution taking place commonly in the justice system in France, while in the UK there is extensive use made of the arms-length independent government agency, Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service. However, the research concludes that the most effective third-party interventions take place when they are combined with mobilisation, rather than merely being the sole form of dispute resolution.

PurposeThis article aims to examine recent labour struggles against mass redundancies in France. It seeks to understand the well reported incidences of direct action within the terrain of how industrial relations operate and are governed.Design/methodology/approachPrimary and secondary data sources are deployed to build and understand, in a grounded way, a case study of an industrial conflict.FindingsThe weakness of the regulation of employers, when allied to a number of considerations like union presence, has led to radical, direct actions. This highlights that overall the source of stimulus for action is worker weakness vis‐à‐vis the employer and not strength.Social implicationsTo aid social peace in the workplace, further regulation of employer behaviour by the state is needed given the weakness of union regulation.Originality/valueThe article highlights that conflict takes place primarily in contexts where the institutions of the French republic are shown to be incapable of forcing employers to respect employment laws.

European Works Councils (EWCs) were launched as important institutions capable of helping workers coordinate responses to multinational corporations (MNCs). Euro-optimists hoped they might help the transfer of the European social model to Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Euro-pessimists believed they lacked the capacity to be effective and suggested EU enlargement might encourage ‘a race to the bottom’ in Western Europe. This article focuses on the behaviours of eight service sector French-origin multinationals in Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland. It finds that they generally adapt to the host country social model. However, while most keep their subsidiaries in separate compartments, investing little in EWC institution building, some are more ready to invest in stronger EWC institutions and to use them as an integrating tool.

Cet article s’interesse aux strategies developpees par les entreprises multinationales en matiere d’internationalisation de leurs relations professionnelles. Dans quelle mesure et de quelle maniere, par exemple, mobilisent-elles les canaux internationaux de representation du personnel que sont les comites d’entreprise europeens et les accords cadres internationaux ? La reflexion s’appuie sur une enquete menee aupres de huit entreprises multinationales francaises operant principalement dans des secteurs de service et en cours d’implantation dans les pays d’Europe centrale et de l’Est. Elle met en evidence l’existence de deux dynamiques correspondant chacune a des strategies de management. La premiere consiste en la systematisation d’une gestion tres cloisonnee de chaque filiale. Elle a ete observee dans le secteur des banques, de la grande distribution et de l’hotellerie. La seconde consiste dans le developpement de procedures internationales de gestion des ressources humaines et des relations professionnelles. Nous l’avons observee dans le secteur de l’energie et de l’assurance. Ces deux strategies ont des impacts tres differents sur la capacite qu’ont les organisations professionnelles a developper elles-memes une approche internationale de la representation du personnel.

Works councils have been an important vehicle of collective representation in most Western European countries. They have facilitated trade union involvement in employment relations at enterprise level, even when membership levels are relatively low. However, there have been recent doubts about the resilience of the institution, particularly given its lower coverage in expanding areas of employment such as private services and small firms. This article presents qualitative data on the `start-up' of works councils in France, Germany and Spain, with an emphasis on these sectors. The extension of works councils to difficult sectors depends on establishing clarity about their role, strengthening legislative support, deepening the engagement of external trade unions in their development and ensuring that enterprise actors have realistic expectations.

International audience; Une même question a été posée à une équipe de chercheurs spécialisés dans les relations du travail dans les principales économies post-industrielles de ce début du 21e siècle : comment a évolué la régulation sociale dans les entreprises depuis une trentaine d’années ? Leurs réponses montrent que les restructurations économiques, l’européanisation et la mondialisation ont conduit à d’importants changements, rarement volontaires, dans les relations entre les « partenaires sociaux » : organisations syndicales et patronales, sans oublier l’État, qui joue souvent un rôle d’arbitre. Ainsi, les modèles nationaux hérités du 20e siècle ont été remis en cause. Les particularismes se sont effacés pour laisser place à des cadres plus fragiles et plus fluctuants. Ce livre dresse un état des lieux précis des principaux changements qui ont affecté les syndicats et le dialogue social dans les entreprises en Europe et Amérique du Nord. Il permet de dépasser les idées reçues concernant les modèles anglo-saxon, scandinave, rhénan et latin.

Cet article s’intéresse à la place des femmes dans les organisations syndicales et, plus largement, dans les sphères de la représentation sociale, en France.L’article propose d’abord un état des lieux de la situation actuelle. Ce faisant, il montre que le récent mouvement en faveur de la parité et les mesures législatives qui en ont résulté ont eu des effets tout à fait probants sur l’élargissement de la participation des femmes au mouvement syndical et aux différentes instances de représentation sociale. Les résultats restent, toutefois, modestes. Deux séries de raisons, dont une nous semble particulièrement déterminante, peuvent être invoquées.La première tient sans aucun doute à la frilosité des directions en place et au poids de la culture machiste. Les femmes continuent, en effet, à se heurter à des phénomènes discriminatoires, dont elles acceptent d’ailleurs souvent elles-mêmes les fondements. Mais, surtout, la position dominée qu’elles occupent sur le marché du travail constitue, dans un contexte de forte institutionnalisation des relations sociales, un facteur déterminant de leur exclusion des processus de prise de responsabilité., This article deals with the place of women in unions organisations, and more largely, in social representation aeras in France. Despite the existence of a very favourable trend for equality between men and women, this subject is rarely explored and the datas are singularly rares, even though women makes up almost half of the french working population.This article aims first to draw up a statement of the situation. It shows that the recent favorable trend for equality between men and women and the outcome measures had some clear effects on the extension of women participation in the unions and in the differents workers representation authorities. However, the results are modests. Two sets of reasons, among which one seems to be decisive could be evokatedThe first one is linked to the overcautiousness of the currents leaderships and to the still great reasonance of chauvinist culture. Women still comes up against discrimination phenomena, of which they accept themselves the foundations. But, more, their dominated position in the labour market constitutes, in the context of the very institutionnalised social relations, a decisive factor for their exclusion from the positions of responsability. Gathered in a very few number of occupations, organized with a strong level of individualization, they experiences great difficulties in their unionisation. Sometimes, they are simply excluded from the legal measures in social representation.From this point of view, the evolution in the place that women takes in the union movement and in their access to the social representation depends of the evolution in their place on the labour market.

French young people are massively present in social movements. However they are surprisingly less likely to join trade unions than older people and are even less likely to be active members (Beroud, 2004; Becquet, 2014). According to a number of experts, this paradox is relatively recent and suggests that trade unions are no longer the best vehicle to represent young people’s interests (Muxel, 2001). Different reasons are cited: individualism of the younger generations; the distrust towards organisations that appear too centralised; inadequate modes of trade union actions; and the uncertainty caused by job insecurity. Reading the literature of the past decades, however, we can see that the theme of youth disaffection towards trade unions is as old as the trade unions themselves and is recurrent (Leroy, 1913; Andrieux and Lignon, 1960; Mouriaux et al., 1974; Linhart and Malan, 1988). From the 1960s it became a part of a broader reflexion on the evolution of the blue-collar working class and culminated in the recent idea that this class was disappearing. In an ethnographic study conducted around the Peugeot plant in the Sochaux–Montbeliard region, Beaud and Pialoux (1999) showed how secondary education takes working-class children away from their original milieu. At the same time, some studies indicated that trade union membership was higher amongst the highest qualified workforce (Amosse and Pignoni, 2006).

Trade unionism in western Europe is facing the growing challenge of the relocation of work to other parts of the world. This article focuses on the major banking trade unions in France and the UK. It discusses the unions' responses to globalisation in a sector where information technology has exposed firms to intense competitive pressures and has encouraged not just relocation but also business mergers and concentration combined with widespread outsourcing. The authors find that there is often a tension between the day-to-day defence of the workers and broader trade union aspirations to develop alternatives to the arbitrariness of an economic system where labour power is reduced to a commodity to be bought and sold. The article concludes that the dual purposes of union activity, the defence and improvement of workers' immediate working conditions, and the projection of alternative people-friendly forms of social and economic organisation, are being made more difficult by globalisation.

Review Symposium; International audience; à venir

This book set out to raise questions about the impact of deindustrialisation in several regions of Europe. Our objectives were to look at the effects of economic restructuring central to the remaking of distinct areas characterised by work patterns that had been formed from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution up to the late twentieth century and had constituted distinctive cultures, communities and identities. The implications of these altered conditions would prove profound, playing a significant role in transforming many European landscapes and spaces.

The Corbeil-Essonnes-Evry area is located about 30 kilometres to the south-east of Paris in the County (Department) of Essonne.1 It is composed of two adjacent conurbations (communautes d’aglomerations2), Corbeil-Essonnes and Evry. The first consists of five districts, bringing together 58,849 inhabitants, and covers an area of about 48 square kilometres. Created in 2002, the Corbeil-Essonnes conurbation is a recent alliance between towns with no real history of working together. Corbeil-Essonnes, at its core is a former industrial town, a regional economic and administrative centre that today is in decline. The conurbation of Evry was established, by contrast, on the basis of a strong synergy created between four of its five member towns. These four towns are at the origin of the huge new town of Evry, built at the end of the 1960s near the old village of Evry, which had fewer than 1000 inhabitants. Finally created in 2001 with the addition of a fifth town, the Evry urban area has 104,162 inhabitants and covers an area of about 39 square kilometres.

The European banking sector has experienced radical restructuring in the 1990s. This article compares the experiences and opinions of French and British trade union activists in two banks. It argues that while trade union organization in each country remains distinct, activists' perceptions of restructuring and industrial relations or HRM changes have much in common: there is a growing convergence in working practices and workers' experiences. Job losses, the reorganization of work and segmentation of the labour force have weakened the power of unions to make a collective response. However, despite some signs of growing individualism, there is little to suggest that `commitment' to the employer has increased; and unions continue to rely on collective organization to restrain managerial unitarism.

The world over, it seems, citizens of France are seen as having a strong tradition of radical class struggle. Paradoxically, it is seen as being very alive but also being very out of date. The recent radicalization of a number of local and national conflicts within France, as well as some other spectacular actions largely covered by French and international media, were taken as vestiges of the direct action strategy developed at the beginning of the twentieth century. For example, Ancelovici (2011: 132) observed: ‘Social movement scholars often associate radicalism with the use of particular modes of action. For example, Sidney Tarrow and Hanspeter Kriesi treat, respectively, the diffusion and intensification of disruption and the increasing use of violence as an indicator of radicalization. Following this logic, the growth of certain forms of labour contention since the 1990s in France could be interpreted as the sign of a renewal of labour radicalism. The “boss–nappings” of 2009 and 2010 and the blockage of oil refineries during the protests in the fall of 2010 were presented as such by the media.’ More recently action has been taken that was successfully aimed at attracting media attention, such as small farmers bringing sheep to town, or workers brandishing Lejaby lingerie during their demonstrations against redundancy – a giant patriotic brassiere in the national tricolour of red, white and blue which they had made.

Over the last 15 years two huge economic events have shaken Central and Eastern Europe: the shift from a command to a market economy in the mid-1990s, and the global financial crisis at the end of the 2000s. Within a very brief period of time, most working people in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) were first exposed to liberalization or privatization and in many cases began to work directly for companies based outside their own countries. Then they were subjected to the consequences of the collapse of the world financial bubble.

Employee representation is becoming increasingly integrated into company internationalization strategies, especially where the mother company is based within the European Union. This tendency shows itself principally in the development of European Works Councils (EWCs) and more widely through the multiplication of international framework agreements (IFAs). The spread of these new tools, however, remains limited and their achievements uncertain. Thus the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC, 2009) found that only 34 per cent of companies covered by the EWC Directive 94/45/CE adopted on 22 September 1994 had set up an EWC.1 Its report comments: ‘Although the number of EWCs is growing every year, doubling since 1996, the rate of progress is too slow, and constitutes a major challenge for the development of European information and consultation procedures. At present, there are few if any penalties for companies that defy the directive.’

Since the 1970s, the spread of neo-liberalism across the world has radically reconfigured the relationship between unions, employers and the state. The contributors highlight that this is the major cause and effect of union decline and if there is to be any union revitalisation and return to former levels of influence, then unions need to respond in appropriate political and practical ways. Written in a clear and accessible style, the Handbook examines unions’ efforts to date in many of the major economies of the world, providing foundations for understanding each country.