Documents Molina, Oscar 20 results

"Traditional approaches in the wide field of employment relations focused on a small and clearly delineated set of actors, such as trade unions and employers' organizations, operating within the constraints given by formal, nationally confined institutions. It is becoming increasingly clear that traditional approaches are insufficiently able to account for employment relations processes and outcomes in a world wherein formal institutions are being rapidly transformed and partially dissolved, national boundaries become porous, and the sheer number of actors involved is increasing substantially. A shift in perspective is necessary, past the nationally bounded actor-institution dichotomy, towards an understanding of employment relations as fundamentally mediated by complex and emergent networks that connect a multitude of actors within and between countries.
This volume provides a seminal starting point for such a paradigm shift by applying theories and methodologies from social network analysis to the study of employment relations. It develops a theoretical toolkit of mechanisms that operate within networks and shape employment relations processes and outcomes, such as wages, labour market policies and labour conflicts. It brings together insights from various projects that investigate the structure, functioning and impact of networks in employment relations through quantitative and qualitative methods. It will be of particular interest to students and scholars of employment relations across business and management, economics, political science, and sociology disciplines, as well as those interested in social networks. Managers, trade unions, employers' organizations and state authorities at national and international levels will find it helpful in understanding how networks shape their world."

"This study examines how digital platforms transform traditional patterns of grassroots labor mobilisation through a comparative analysis of two cases: the 2021 formation of Foreningen af Danske Sygeplejersker by nurses in Denmark and Las Kellys, an association of Spanish hotel chambermaids. While both organisations emerged from female-dominated sectors, their divergent trajectories show how institutional contexts and professional identities shape digital organising outcomes. Through analysis of social media data and interviews, we show how these groups used digital platforms to simultaneously maintain multiple forms of engagement: building collective identity among dispersed workers, challenging union leadership, and gaining public visibility.
In Denmark, FDS's targeted social media approach harnessed nurses' professional cohesion to successfully pressure their union into adapting wage demands, eventually leading to accommodation within existing structures. In Spain, Las Kellys' broader community-building strategy helped overcome worker isolation but resulted in organisational fragmentation, with some chapters becoming formal unions while others remained associations.
The comparison reveals how similar digital tools can produce different organisational outcomes depending on workers' structural position and unions' capacity for democratic renewal. Our findings contribute to understanding how digital platforms enable sustained grassroots engagement while highlighting the continued importance of institutional contexts and union democratic practices in shaping labor movement trajectories."

This work is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

"La actual crisis económica ha comportado un deterioro del mercado de trabajo en muchos países europeos, lo que ha estimulado la extensión de actitudes anti-inmigrantes entre la población. Estas actitudes anti-inmigratorias se localizan fundamentalmente en los segmentos bajos del mercado de trabajo, aquellos de baja cualificación y de bajos salarios. En este artículo exploramos las actitudes de los ciudadanos europeos hacia los trabajadores inmigrantes. En particular tratamos de analizar que papel juega la incertidumbre socioeconómica en la conformación de las actitudes. Para ello comparamos los datos de las encuestas de los años 2002, 2008 y 2010 proporcionados por la Encuesta Social Europea para 17 países. Los resultados ponen de relieve la existencia de un cierto cambio de las actitudes entre ambos periodos. Las actitudes hacia la inmigración están condicionadas por tres tipos de variables: socio-económicas, ideológico-políticas y contextuales. El análisis de regresión logística pone de relieve el fuerte papel que juega la ideología izquierda versus derecha como predictor de las actitudes. Finalmente, el análisis de correspondencias múltiples nos ha permitido clasificar a los países estudiados según sus actitudes hacia la inmigración."

"The paper provides an overview of government and social partner responses. In describing responses, the main goal of this paper is to identify the dimensions that can help explain the variety of responses, but also their commonalities. The paper also aims at understanding the factors that may have promoted the activation of social dialogue over economic and social policies and broaden the role of collective bargaining and industrial relations, as opposed to unilateral interventions designed by national governments. The paper lays out an analytical framework based on the COVID impact in each country, national industrial relations institutions and the nature of the government in office. In this general framework, we observe how national industrial relations institutions play a key role in explaining the responses in terms of the level and quality of social dialogue and the role of collective bargaining. Particularly important has been the role of strong sectoral collective bargaining institutions, allowing sectoral actors to negotiate specific responses considering the impact and the needs of the sector."

"This report analyses artificial intelligence-based worker management (AIWM) systems in relation to workers' psychosocial risks and the role of worker representation structures in preventing such risks. It draws on existing literature to examine the consequences stemming from AIWM and investigates how workers' representatives can prevent and mitigate unwanted outcomes. However, worker representation can face obstacles due to the powerful yet enigmatic nature of AIWM as well as the power balance between employers and employees per sector, where further research would be required to find solutions."

"This special issue analyses governments' and social partners' responses to the cost-of-living crisis of 2021–2023, and dynamics of coordination and conflict underlying them. The study of inflation responses needs updating. First, because compared to the 1970s–1980s, the recent inflation crisis was hardly intensified by high wage demands. Secondly, because industrial relations and collective bargaining institutions have over the last three decades undergone liberalisation reforms that have eroded coordination capacities. Contributions to this special issue show cross-country variation in real wage dynamics, inflation's distributional impacts and governments' policies to tackle them. The interaction between government policies, collective bargaining institutions and social partners' strategies largely accounts for this variation. In most cases, governments no longer coordinate with social partners nor use them to enforce wage restraint to internalise inflation shocks. Rather, governments actively manage inflation through direct intervention, framing policies and steering them to either shield competitiveness, support domestic demand or reduce inequalities."

"Increases in national minimum wages can have various knock-on effects – they can, for instance, lead to wage rises more generally and can influence the social partners' latitude in collective bargaining. This report examines how changes to national minimum wages affect collectively agreed and actual wages in selected low-paid jobs and sectors. A quantitative analysis uses the Eurofound database on minimum wages for low-paid workers in collective agreements to analyse the impact of national minimum wages on collectively agreed minimum wages. Data from European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions are used to analyse the impact of national minimum wages on actual wages.

A qualitative analysis is based on national case studies of the residential and social care and the manufacture of food and beverages sectors in six Member States: France, Germany, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia and Spain. These Member States were selected because they differ in terms of the interaction between national minimum wages and collectively agreed wages. The analysis finds that, generally, there is a positive association between national minimum wage uprates and changes to both actual and negotiated wages in low-paid sectors, although there are differences among the countries."

"Social dialogue between government, employers' and workers' organizations is a powerful tool for correcting labour market imbalances and promoting jobs-rich economic recovery. During and since the economic and financial crisis which started in 2008, national social dialogue institutions in countries of the European Union (EU) have been tested but, in many cases, have demonstrated their potential to innovate and contribute to a return to positive growth.

This book brings together country case studies from eleven EU Member States, which document emerging trends in national social dialogue, focusing on developments since 2013. The authors shed light on the many factors that have influenced recent social dialogue and industrial relations developments, including the national economic and political context, the effectiveness of bipartite and tripartite institutions, and the European Semester. An introductory comparative overview chapter analyses overall trends and specific good practices at national level, drawing also on data from other countries of the EU-28.

This book will be a valuable resource for policymakers, employers' and workers' organizations, academics and practitioners who are seeking new ways to confront the profound changes and challenges facing the world of work today. Its findings reinforce the centrality of partnership through social dialogue in the pursuit of decent work and social justice."

" This article analyses union strategies to enhance strike effectiveness in Italy and Spain in the Great Recession. These two countries have traditionally scored very highly in strike activity statistics due to an adversarial industrial relations framework. In both countries, unions have relied upon similar repertoires of industrial action. Even though they are often grouped under the same industrial relations cluster, there are some significant differences, particularly when it comes to union characteristics and power resources. An analysis of trade union strategies regarding industrial conflict and their attempts to enhance strike effectiveness shows how, in spite of similar challenges, the unions in Italy and Spain have followed different paths and fared differently in their attempt to enhance the effectiveness of industrial action."