Documents Köhler, Holm-Detlev 28 results

"The article reconstructs the re-birth of Industrial Sociology in Germany after the Second World War in a comparative perspective. Although sharing the main context conditions and maintaining a constant and fluent exchange with their colleagues in other countries, the German intellectual traditions and specific institutional context motivated several particular interests and perspectives that shape a distinct German Industrial Sociology until today. The dominance of qualitative in-depth research, the focus on the emancipative potentials in high-skill-based work organization, the cooperative industrial relations tradition and the constant attempts to link employment studies with general social theory on modern capitalist society and social change characterize German Industrial Sociology. The richness of distinct national institutional settings for comparative social research on employment regimes may be another lesson to be learned from critical reconstruction of labour sociology."

"Employee and employer relations and their regulatory mechanisms and institutions are undergoing profound change in contemporary capitalist societies. Globalization has created instability in the form of wage competition, the decentralization of collective bargaining and the deregulation of labour standards, thereby undermining relationships between employers, trade unions and the state at both sector and national levels. On the other hand, by opening up space for trans-nationalisation, Europeanisation has increased the complexity of the industrial relations map. The recent financial crisis has revealed deep ‘economic' fissures within the complex European project, with profound dis-integrative implications for employment relations in Europe. New levels, actors and institutions, new relationships and interdependences among company, sectoral, national and transnational public and private stakeholders have been created.

The edited volume focuses on the dynamics and strategies of the social partners (unions and their representatives and employers and management) involved and affected by these transformations. In particular, it provides a wide-ranging empirical evidence illustrating that a multi-level approach is today potentially the most suitable way to understand the current transformations as well as to examine their social effects. The edited volume also examines the difficulties facing social partners, particularly labour unions, in developing multi-level strategies while at the same time coping with the current economic and political changes."

"Our goal is to analyze strategies of union revitalization that have been successful elsewhere and have the potential to become so in Spain. Within these practices, Social Movement Unionism focuses on alliances with other groups to improve unions' social efficiency. In this article, we address the applicability of the principles of Social Movement Unionism in the specific case of Spain. Given the transformations in the Spanish economy and labour laws tending towards further deregulation, Spanish unions have had to react. The emergence of new social movements such as the Indignados or Mareas Ciudadanas (civic tides) and the declining confidence in unions among the Spanish population, make this approach timely and appropriate.For this article, we will take certain aspects from the trade union revitalization debate and combine them with the main theories on New Social Movements. We will apply these approaches to a specific case study: The viability of cooperation between the largest Spanish trade unions and the recent social movements arising from the Indignados movement. For this purpose, we will primarily use data from secondary sources and transcripts of interviews conducted with unionists and social movement activists. With all these elements taken into consideration, we will conclude by showing the inhibiting and facilitating conditions for the development of a Social Movement Unionism strategy for the referred actors."

"Spanien gehört mit seinen südeuropäischen Nachbarn Portugal und Griechenland zu den am härtesten von der Dauerkrise betroffenen Ländern. Seit 2010 spitzt die ungebrochene Austeritätspolitik die wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Probleme weiter zu. Gewerkschaften und soziale Bewegungen versuchen seit Jahren erfolglos, gegen die unsoziale Sparpolitik und die Beschneidung der Arbeitnehmerrechte zu mobilisieren. Trotzdem führt das Scheitern der Austeritätspolitik zu keinerlei politischen Konsequenzen. Die durchaus massiv befolgten Streik- und Protestaktionen drohen zu ermüden und ihre Erfolglosigkeit schwächt zunehmend die Gewerkschaften und zivilen Protestgruppen. Gleichzeitig verfolgt die Regierung seit 2013 eine bislang ungekannte neokonservative Gegenoffensive. Die spanischen Gewerkschaften stehen vor einer strategischen Entscheidung: Die anhaltende wirtschaftliche Strukturkrise und die Folgen der Austeritätspolitik haben ihre klassischen strukturellen, organisatorischen und institutionellen Machtressourcen ausgehöhlt. Sollen sie nun ihre nach wie vor weitreichenden institutionellen Beteiligungsrechte und betrieblichen Vertretungsrechte verteidigen, um sie in zukünftigen besseren Konjunkturen auszubauen, oder sollen sie die Bündnisse mit den sozialen Protestgruppen stärken und eine Führungsrolle als außerparlamentarische Opposition übernehmen?"

"In this article we examine the industrial relations practices of three large European food retailers when they transfer the hypermarket format to other countries. We ask, first, how industrial relations in hypermarkets differ from those in other food retailing outlets. Second, we examine how far the approach characteristic of each company's country-of-origin (Germany, France and the UK) shapes the practices adopted elsewhere. Third, we ask how they respond to the specific industrial relations systems of each host country (Turkey, Poland, Ireland and Spain)."