Documents Sisson, Keith 46 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."

"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."

"This article draws on the findings of research in metalworking and financial services in Belgium, Germany, Italy and the UK to explore the impact of three challenges to established sector-level bargaining arrangements: further decentralization to company level and a reorientation of the bargaining agenda towards competitiveness and employment; the cross-border dimension to bargaining prompted by the single European market; and the emergence of new business activities. It finds similarity within each sector across countries, and similarity within each country across sectors. Implications are drawn out for the balance between company and sectoral bargaining; the relationship between sector-level bargaining arrangements in different countries; and the capacity of sectoral systems to adapt to new contingencies."