Documents Hammer, Nikolaus 9 results

"In order to protect minimum wage and social standards in cross-border regions marked by considerable economic disparities, trade unions have built cooperation structures across adjoining (usually sub-national) regions. Since the 1970s more than 40 Interregional Trade Union Councils (IRTUCs) have been established. This article investigates emerging practices of cross-border trade union cooperation in the West Pannonia region between eastern Austria and western Hungary. It argues that IRTUCs can play an important role in fuelling cooperation to preserve wages and labour rights in cross-border regions, particularly in sectors with high precarious employment. While actual practices are contingent on regional union strategies as well as industrial relations and labour market institutions, cross-border cooperation occupies an important place within European industrial relations practices and can support new forms of capacity-building. "

"Im Vergleich zur defensiven Situation Ende der 1980er Jahre haben sich Gewerkschaften - angesichts der Herausforderungen unternehmerischer ‚sozialer Verantwortung', der Verhaltenskodizes sowie dem sozialpolitischen Stillstand auf multilateraler Ebene - auf allen Ebenen der neuen internationalen politischen Ökonomie gestellt. Nicht nur war die Entstehung einer komplexen Steuerungsform sozialer Verantwortung auf mehreren Ebenen zu beobachten,53 bedeutender noch ist die Tatsache, dass die internationale Gewerkschaftsbewegung strategisch besser positioniert ist als noch zu Beginn der 1990er Jahre.54 Dies betrifft einerseits die Erneuerung gewerkschaftlicher Aktivitäten am Arbeitsplatz, d. h. eine Dimension interner Organisierung, in der Form verschiedener Organisations- und Handlungsformen, als auch solidarischer und demokratischer Machtressourcen.55 Andererseits jedoch gab es einen Wandel in der strategischen Ausrichtung, die auf neue Realitäten in der Organisation des Kapitals abstellt und die eigenen Kampagnen dementsprechend konzipiert. Die Implikationen, die Fichter und Sydow (2002) und Bonacich (2003) sehen, zeigen dabei nur das unmittelbare Potenzial von Strategien auf, die sich an globalen Warenketten orientieren.Die gewerkschaftliche Organisation am Arbeitsplatz ist allerdings der entscheidende Anfangspunkt, um die aufgezeigten Möglichkeiten auch nur ansatzweise realisieren zu können. Auch wenn Kampagnen praktisch von unterschiedlichen Ebenen und unterschiedlichen Instrumenten Impulse beziehen, ist es immer noch die Kapazität der Mobilisierung am Arbeitsplatz, die jeder erfolgreichen Vertretung zugrunde liegt.Angesichts der gegenwärtigen Form der Globalisierung sind auch die Gewerkschaften des ‚Nordens' in der Pflicht, wenn es um die Schaffung und Förderung gewerkschaftlichen Mobilisierungspotenzials im ‚Süden' geht. Es wäre jedenfalls plausibel, Hymans Dynamiken internationaler Gewerkschaftsarbeit auch als Zyklus zu verstehen: Wäre es nach der Phase von Bürokratie und Diplomatie wieder an der Zeit, innovative Formen internationaler Agitation und Mobilisierung zu entwickeln?"

"This paper examines the emergence and the main features of International Framework Agreements (IFAs). IFAs originated in the 1980s and proliferated after 2000. They aim to secure core labour rights across multinational corporations' global supply chains. Global Union Federations, as well as other global (World Company and Works Councils), regional (European Works Councils or European Industry Federations) and national trade union structures, are parties to IFAs. Based on various features of international trade union activity, such as World Company Councils, codes of conduct, the trade and labour rights campaign or international social dialogue, IFAs constitute an important and innovative tool of international industrial relations. An analysis of the substantive and procedural provisions of IFAs leads to an analytical distinction between ‘rights' agreements and ‘bargaining' agreements. The article assesses the substantive and procedural aspects of the 38 IFAs concluded before June 2005. Finally, key issues such as the scope of agreements, trade union capacity, and global supply chains are discussed in the context of international labour's campaigning, organising and negotiation activities."

"International trade unionism faces a major challenge. Historically, Global Union Federations have been small and relatively remote international union secretariats with limited capacity to mobilize and speak on behalf of local members. However, with the changing architecture of international capital and nation states, these union bodies have started to renew themselves. The argument is that the emergent political economy provides the base upon which these unions can begin to campaign and represent members in more dynamic ways than in the past. Critical to these developments has been the promulgation of International Framework Agreements which adapt and extend familiar tools of representation. The outcome is the possibility of a multi-faceted form of trade unionism."

"Global value chain (GVC) governance is central to analyses of labour's strategic options. It frames the terrain on which labour campaigns and institutions — such as private social standards and international framework agreements — contribute to the social regulation of value chains. GVC concepts help to emphasize how power in the employment relationship transcends organizational boundaries, as well as how industrial power is shifting from the sphere of production to that of consumption. Based on extensive case studies of the banana and cut flower value chains, we explore the implications of GVC restructuring for the scope and form of labour rights strategies."

" This article focuses on the interlinkages between the labour process and global value chains. It draws on the renewed growth in UK apparel manufacturing, specifically within the fast fashion value chain, and asks how value chain requirements are translated into the labour process as well as how the latter enables quick response manufacturing. The case study shows how buyer-lead firms engender accelerated capital circuits of fast fashion which rely on an increased segmentation of manufacturers and workers, the elimination of unproductive spaces in the labour process, and a further rise in the informalisation and precarity of labour. The article demonstrates a strategic disconnection within the fast fashion value chain: upstream manufacturers are only able to satisfy lead firms' economic and operational standards if they disconnect – informalise – labour from the latter's ‘ethical' standards."

"The article develops an integrated framework that employs a dynamic perspective on interlinked levels of value chain governance in order to explain employment in value chains. It compares two multipolar chains in food and beverage manufacturing, in two different producer and consumer markets, Belgium and Germany. Analysis reveals that varied value capture dynamics in the food and beverage industries underpin distinct employment effects at specific inter‐firm nodes, as well as between labour and product markets. This reveals institutional and product variation explaining firms' value capture trajectories. However, it also illustrates a concomitant transnational trend of deteriorating working conditions, stemming from overall chain governance."

"This article argues that key avenues to improve working conditions – value chain integration, on the one hand, and lead firms' compliance processes, on the other – have not resulted in improvements in the European apparel industry. Evidence is drawn from economic and social up-/downgrading trajectories in major apparel producing countries as well as a case study on social audits and labour market enforcement in the United Kingdom. Both suggest that institutions to prevent labour exploitation in supply chains have largely been ineffective. Institutional experimentation, which has been hybrid in combining hard and soft law as well as public and private governance elements, underlined the role of lead firms but continued to exclude civil society actors. It is argued that human rights due diligence, at the heart of many institutional experiments, draws on a deficient private compliance model, rather than building in worker-driven elements that could lead towards a better alternative."