Documents Gautié, Jérôme 23 results

"At the 2008 SASE meeting in San José, Costa Rica, David Marsden organized a session on the prospects for a renewed institutional labour economics. The debate began with introductory remarks by Paul Osterman, who sketched out an argument that at the time was still in its very early stages. The introduction and the subsequent comments were found by the audience to be highly productive. After the session, the editors of Socio-Economic Review asked the participants to share their views with the readers of the journal. We are grateful to Paul Osterman for taking up the challenge and summarizing the state of his thinking in a brief draft of what has yet to be developed into a formal paper. We also thank the discussants who agreed to write up their comments on the basis of Osterman's intermediate draft."

"How do unions respond to the emerging threats and opportunities posed by digitalization in the sphere of employment relations? What factors account for the focus and varying effectiveness of their responses? This paper seeks to address these questions in the case of Italy—a theoretically interesting case that combines significant digitalization-related challenges, historically strong industrial relations institutions under increasing pressure, and diverse union confederations.

From the available evidence, we find that Italian union strategies and demands so far have been primarily focused on interventions at the macro and meso levels, with a view to extending traditional forms of protection—especially sectoral collective bargaining agreements—to deal with the disruptive effects of digitalization. This focus has been coupled with some limited innovation in union agendas and discursive repertoires focused on the micro level of intervention, as well as a shift in union preferences toward inclusion of platform workers and self-employed workers in their constituencies. Whilst highlighting the importance of agential factors, we nonetheless find that the focus and effectiveness of union interventions are crucially shaped by prior institutional legacies and distributions of power resources, as well as by the ideological orientation and strategic capabilities of individual unions themselves.

Overall, Italian unions have to date tended to privilege gradual response strategies based on extension and adaptation of existing and established institutions. It remains to be seen whether such adaptive approaches will be sufficient to effectively govern the digital transformation of work or whether more radical institutional experimentation will become necessary. Either way, in order to build smart industrial relations in Italy, unions will have an active role to play."