Documents Scott, Peter 10 results

"Drawing on a wide range of up-to-date research, Employment Relations under Coalition Government critically examines developments in UK employment relations during the period of Conservative-Liberal Democrat government between 2010 and 2015, against the background of the 2007-08 financial crisis, subsequent economic recession and in the context of the primacy accorded to neo-liberal austerity. Contributions cover a series of important and relevant topics in a rigorous, yet accessible manner: labour market change and the rise of zero-hours contracts and other forms of precarious employment; policy development relating to young people's employment; the coalition's welfare-to-work agenda; its programme of employment law reform and its approach to workplace equality and health and safety; labour migration; the experience of the trade unions under the coalition and their responses; and developments in employment relations in the public services. This book addresses the broader issues relating to the coalition period, such as the implications of political and regulatory change for employment relations, including the greater devolution of powers to Scotland and Wales, and locates UK developments in comparative perspective. The book concludes with an assessment of the prospects for employment relations in the aftermath of the May 2015 Conservatives election victory."

"This article considers the attitudes to the single currency of public service trade unions, illustrating this through a number of nationally based case studies. We examine claims about the impact of EMU on welfare states and public expenditure, and particularly the extent to which the governance of EMU attests a 'neoliberal', marketising approach towards the public sphere. We find that any such tendency has been offset by the recent resurgence of forms of nationallevel bipartite or tripartite economic and social coordination, managing the effects of EMU through social dialogue. The subsequent section of the paper develops a categorisation of four main trends evident in European public service trade unions' response to the single currency: enthusiasm, altruism, scepticism and resistance. The dominant attitude to date has been acceptance. We highlight dangers for democratic legitimacy within public sector unions in cases where leadership support for EMU has exceeded that of the membership, and indicate some potential areas for future public service union influence in the EMU. "

"This article analyses relations between trade unions and the elected regional government in Wales as a hybrid form of `new social partnership' to manage change, using the case study of public service reform. Welsh unions have been able to achieve both improved consultative status and some bargaining aims, partly due to a stronger confluence of formal and informal political linkages than is evident on the wider national scene. Nevertheless, unions face longer-term resource and political threats to their ability to engage with regional government and to maintain their levels of influence within a more heterogeneous network of consultative stakeholders."

"One feature of ‘flexibilisation' concerns the growth of more individualised employment arrangements and career trajectories less connected to employing organisations. Informed by the Varieties of Capitalism approach, which emphasises the embeddedness of employment practices within discrete types of capitalist market economy, and based on rich qualitative data from interviews with 32 self-employed and directly employed ICT professionals in the United Kingdom and Germany, we investigate comparative variation in their experience of flexibilisation. The research findings not only indicate some commonality, particularly in respect of perceptions of independence, but also highlight notable differences with regard to work pressures and insecurity. The paper advances theory by characterising two discrete varieties of flexibilisation, a ‘liberalised' form evident in the United Kingdom and a more ‘regulated' type apparent in Germany, contributing to a better understanding of comparative differences in flexibilisation."