Documents Greer, Ian 17 results

"While welfare reform matters for workers and workplaces, it is peripheral in English-language sociology of work and industrial relations research. This article's core proposition is that active labour market policies (ALMPs) are altering the institutional constitution of the labour market by intensifying market discipline within the workforce. This re-commodification effect is specified drawing on Marxism, comparative institutionalism, German-language sociology and English-language social policy analysis. Because of administrative failure and employer discrimination, however, ALMPs may worsen precarity without achieving the stated goal of increasing labour market participation."

"The authors examine management whipsawing practices in the European auto industry based on more than 200 interviews and a comparison of three automakers. They identify four distinct ways in which managers stage competition between plants to extract labor concessions: informal, hegemonic, coercive, and rule-based whipsawing. Practices at the three auto firms differed from one another and changed over time because of two factors: structural whipsawing capacity and management labor relations strategy. In the context of economic globalization, whipsawing is an effective means for managers to extract concessions, to loosen national institutional constraints, and to diffuse employment practices internationally."

"The introduction of market mechanisms matters for industrial relations. In the German hospital sector, national liberalization policies have put immense pressure on local management and worker representatives and led to the growth of a low-wage sector. In case studies of eight hospitals, we find some locales where market making has led to union revitalization and mobilization, but this effect varies. Using an eight-way comparison, we infer a configuration of three aspects of the local political economy — labour markets, politics and co-determination rules — that together provide a well-fitting explanation for both variation and change."

"Despite the rapid increase in cross-national labour migration since EU enlargement in 2004, there has been little research on transnational union efforts to organize migrant workers. This article examines the European Migrant Workers Union, created by the German union IG BAU in a shift away from national protectionism towards transnational organizing. The initiative largely failed, primarily because of decisions by other unions to reject the transnational approach and instead to defend existing institutional arrangements. We argue that this inaction constitutes a setback for union reassertion of control over markets and for bringing industrial citizenship to Europe's hyper-mobile workers."

"Drawing on case studies from the telecommunications and auto industries, the authors argue that the vertical disintegration of major German employers is contributing to the disorganization of Germany's dual system of in-plant and sectoral negotiations. Subcontractors, subsidiaries and temporary agencies often have no collective bargaining institutions or are covered by different firm-level and sectoral agreements. As core employers move jobs to these firms, they introduce new organizational boundaries across the production chain and disrupt traditional bargaining structures. Worker representatives are developing new campaign approaches and using residual power at large firms to establish representation in new firms and sectors, but these have not been successful at rebuilding co-ordinated bargaining."

"This article compares forms of labour transnationalism in three industrial sectors: motor manufacturing, maritime shipping and clothing and textile manufacturing. In each case, unions engage in very different transnational activities to reassert control over labour markets and competition. As institutions of transnational cooperation deepen, unions continue to struggle with competitive tensions (worker to worker and union to union) which vary from one industry to another."

"Der Artikel untersucht erste Umsetzungen eines bewegungsgewerkschaftlichen Ansatzes (Social Movement Unionism, SMU) in Deutschlands Gesundheitssektor, die durch politische und institutionelle Veränderungsprozesse ausgelöst wurden. Auf den Plan die städtischen Kliniken zu privatisieren, reagierten Gewerkschaftsvertreter in Hamburg mit der Mobilisierung der Arbeitnehmer, indem sie Bündnisse mit anderen zivilgesellschaftlichen Gruppen eingingen und sich auf gesellschaftliche Werte wie Demokratie und die Versorgungspflicht des Staates bezogen. Diese Aktionsweise als soziale Bewegung hat dazu beigetragen, dass in der Tarifauseinandersetzung nach der Teilprivatisierung eine Verdopplung des gewerkschaftlichen Organisationsgrades in Hamburger Krankenhäusern erreicht wurde und die Beschäftigungsstandards des öffentlichen Dienstes in den privatisierten Krankenhäusern beibehalten wurden. Das beschriebene Verhalten von Landesregierung, Arbeitgebern und Personalräten, so die Schlussfolgerungen dieses Artikels, ist kein Hamburger Einzelfall, sondern Teil der grundlegenden Problematik neoliberaler Politikgestaltung. Gegen sie kann auch mit bewegungsgewerkschaftlichen Ansätzen nur dann letztlich erfolgreich angegangen werden, wenn auch nationale und transnationale Arenen der Politik miteinbezogen werden."

"This article examines labour transnationalism within four multinational automakers. In our sample, we find different forms of labour transnationalism, including transnational collective bargaining, mobilization, information exchange and social codes of conduct. We explain the differences through the interaction between management and labour in the context of the company structure; of particular importance are transnational coercive comparisons by management and the orientations of worker representatives as political entrepreneurs or co-managers. We conclude that, although intensified worker-side cross-border co-operation has not prevented wage-based competition in general (due to the lack of between-firm co-ordination), it has reshaped employment relations within these multinational corporations."