Documents University of Warwick. Industrial Relations Research Unit 62 results

"The approach to employment poses one of the UK government's biggest post-Brexit challenges. Brexit is accepted as exposing widespread anger and dissatisfaction with wages, living standards and their inequality. The new Prime Minister seems sensitive to the implications. In her maiden speech, she talked about dealing with work-related ‘injustices'. She also touched on people's worries about job security, the cost of living and paying the mortgage. Her mission, she said, was to give people more control over their lives and ‘make Britain a country that works not just for the privileged few, but that works for every one of us'. Her proposals, which include putting workers on the board and developing an industrial strategy, are important in recognising the need for an active as opposed to passive government role in shaping the world of work. They aren't going to be enough on their own, however, to deal with the low pay, low skill and low productivity at the heart of the UK's problems, let alone the challenges digitalisation poses. There needs to be a jobs strategy with a clear focus, appropriate institutional framework and mutually reinforcing policies. This paper makes ten suggestions for what might be involved."

"In the face of continuing European market and economic integration, European industrial relations has become more fractured. This fracturing is occurring in two senses. First, the main institutional pillars of the industrial relations dimension of the European social model (or models) are weakening. Second, common features of industrial relations across countries are no longer so apparent. Further, industrial relations outcomes such as wages and conditions have become more unequal and less solidaristic. The immediate causes of this fracturing are eastern enlargement of the EU, and the nature of the responses to the financial and economic crisis propounded by the European authorities and some national governments. These have sought to accelerate European integration by removing perceived institutional rigidities. At an underlying level, a more fractured industrial relations landscape is the result of asymmetries as between countries in the effects and impact of market and economic integration and the further exacerbation of the imbalance between negative and positive integration measures in favour of the former. The paper concludes with proposals, directed at the EU as well as national level, which could stem or even reverse the decline in the institutional pillars of European industrial relations and result in a less fractured landscape."

"Trade unions face major challenges in developing effective responses to the growing international scope, integration and complexity of multinational companies' operations. There is marked variation in trade unions' responses, which may be local and national or cross-border in nature. Focusing on cross-border union co-operation and action, the paper shows that considerations of both structural and institutional contingency and union agency are important in accounting for the marked variation in union responses. In examining contingency, the paper highlights how a series of institutional and structural factors, relating to the national and regional institutional environments in which MNCs are based, and where they locate their operations; sector of operation; and the business structure and strategy of MNCs, tend to shape the nature of union responses. By exploring the role of agency from two perspectives – bottom up and top down – the multi-level nature of the challenge confronting unions in establishing viable forms of transnational cooperation and action is demonstrated. A perceptible shift is underway towards contexts in which local or national responses are no longer adequate or appropriate, and towards those which call for cross-border initiatives."

"This paper discusses the process of European institutional integration from a political economy perspective, linking the long-standing political debate on the nature of the European project to the recent economic literature on political integration and disintegration. First, we introduce the fundamental trade-off between economies of scale associated with larger political unions and the costs from sharing public goods and policies among more heterogeneous populations, and examine the implications of the trade-off for European integration. Second, we describe the two main political theories of European integration - intergovernmentalism and functionalism - and argue that both theories capture important aspects of European integration, but that neither view provides a complete and realistic interpretation of the process. Finally, we critically discuss the successes and limitations of the actual process of European institutional integration, from its beginnings after World War II to the current crisis."