Documents Marginson, Paul 90 results

"At the 21st SASE Conference in Paris, in July 2009, a group of political economy and industrial relations scholars discussed whether the current legitimation crisis of financial capitalism could be viewed as a turning point for labour internationally. Following are an introduction by the panel organizer, Lucio Baccaro, and revised versions of presentations by Robert Boyer, Colin Crouch, Marino Regini, Paul Marginson, Richard Hyman and Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick, and Ruth Milkman."

"Questo articolo si basa su quattro argomentazioni. In primo luogo la contrattazione collettiva è in grado di mitigare gli effetti negativi generati dalla volatilità del mercato e dal processo di adattamento alle sue regole, attraverso la definizione di intese che garantiscono certezza sostanziale e procedurale sia ai lavoratori sia ai datori di lavoro, e una maggiore sicurezza ai lavoratori. In secondo luogo le intese contrattuali multi-employer sono più idonee a svolgere questa funzione rispetto a quelle single-employer. In terzo luogo vi sono differenze istituzionali fra le intese contrattuali multi-employer relative alla governance della contrattazione aziendale che influenzano in misura notevole la loro capacità di promuovere certezza e sicurezza del lavoro. In quarto luogo la pressione dovuta alla crisi sta accelerando l'adattamento al mercato della contrattazione collettiva multi-employer, con effetti potenzialmente dannosi sulla sua capacità di attenuare le spinte negative."

"Purpose

The paper surveys developments in four aspects of collective employment relations since the mid-1960s: collective representation and organisation; collective bargaining coverage and structure; the collective bargaining agenda; and joint consultation arrangements. It considers the reasons underlying change.



Design/methodology/approach

A range of published sources are drawn on, including quantitative, survey-based and qualitative, case-study and other evidence.



Findings

The landscape of collective employment relations has changed markedly over the past half century. Membership of trade unions has fallen from around half of the workforce to one quarter. Employers who mainly conducted collective bargaining through employers' associations now negotiate, if at all, on a firm-by-firm basis. Collective bargaining coverage has sharply declined and now only extends to a minority of the private sector workforce. The bargaining agenda has been hollowed out. Joint consultation arrangements too are less widespread than they were around 1980.



Originality/value

The paper contends that change has been driven by three underlying processes. ‘Marketization' of collective employment relations entailing a shift from an industrial or occupational to an enterprise frame of reference. The rise of ‘micro-corporatism', reflecting increased emphasis on the common interests of collective actors within an enterprise frame. Finally, the voluntarism, underpinning Britain's collective employment relations became more ‘asymmetric', with employers' preferences increasingly predominant."

"European integration has led to considerable reflection about the trajectory of industrial relations in Europe. In the event, rather than the `two extremes of social union versus a completely deregulated free-for-all', a multi-level system is emerging which is simultaneously prompting both convergent and divergent developments, reflecting the different intensity of pressures for change at sector and company levels. For the foreseeable future, complexity, uncertainty and instability look set to be the defining characteristics, with policy-makers and practitioners seeking to influence directions to their own advantage. Especially uncertain is the impact of enlargement, bearing in mind the accession states' very different industrial relations systems and levels of economic development."

"Since the 1980s, wage regulation in Europe has been marked by decline and decentralization of collective bargaining. Since the turn of the century, this trend has been reinforced by increased mobility of labour and production factors in the wake of EU's eastward enlargement, the economic crisis hitting especially southern Europe hard, and the deregulatory political intervention in labour markets instigated by EU and the Troika in these countries. How have these upheavals affected wage regulation in Northern Europe, which has been considered as the bedrock of coordinated collective bargaining and generally was less affected by the crisis?

This is the issue addressed in this Fafo-paper, analyzing developments in wage coordination, articulation between bargaining levels, and wage floor regulation in six Northern European countries (Germany, the UK, and four Nordic countries). Concentrating on the impact of European cross-border developments and actor responses to them – especially among organized employers – it asks whether changes in northern wage regulation have mainly been driven by spill-over from the changes in southern Europe (South to North contagion); the EU's new economic governance regime (Transnational disruption); strengthened regime competition among the northern, high-cost countries themselves (North-North competition), and/or the surge in East-West mobility after the EU/EEA enlargement (East-West destabilization)."