Documents Veersma, Ulke 4 results

"The decision to establish a European Company (SE) is determined not only by the company but also by institutional factors outside the company. Employers' organisations and trade unions, with their long history of interaction within national systems of industrial relations, influence basic attitudes towards European integration, international business and related issues, such as board-level participation. This paper looks at the attitudes of social partners towards the SE and employee participation in three EU Member States: Germany, the UK and Spain. While Germany has a well-established system of co-determination, Spain and the UK had, until recently, hardly any form of employee participation. These two countries, and certainly their employers' organisations, were at least hesitant towards, and sometimes opposed to, all forms of regulation on employee participation. This attitude has long hampered policymaking on the SE and employee participation and may also determine future prospects for legislation. The authors conclude that employee participation in an SE will need to be the subject of the same learning process as has been the case with respect to European Works Councils. "

"The state of European integration is a contested issue raising many important questions: what is the impact of enlargement on the social standards in old and new EU Member States? Will public sector employment relations suffer from governments' attempts to make their national economies more competitive? What are the prospects for a European Social Model? What influence can governments, employers and trade unions have on industrial relations that are changing with the European integration process? These are the issues that this book addresses on the basis of solid empirical evidence. The authors are expert researchers from Western and Eastern Europe, and their work comes at a timely moment for scientific and political audiences.

This book presents an evidence-based assessment of the impact of EU enlargement on industrial relations and social standards in old and new EU Member States. It combines chapters which give an overview of the process of enlargement/integration and comparative socio-economic data at EU and national level, with chapters that present an in-depth analysis of the impact of European integration on national industrial relations. These in-depth analyses cover both a number of old EU Member States in Western Europe and new Member States in Central and Eastern Europe. The book combines supranational European, Western and Eastern perspectives on the impact of European integration.

A combination of solid empirical data and critical theoretically informed analyses, Industrial Relations in the New Europe will be of great interest to researchers and students in various fields, including industrial relations, public sector employment relations, European Studies, socio-economic studies and political science."