以科学发展观谈企业工会工作的开展

随着社会的发展,企业改革不断深入,企业工会工作也面临着新情况、新问题。文章简要概括当前企业工会工作开展过程中遇到的主要问题,并从科学发展观的角度分析和寻求解决办法。     

以科学发展观谈企业工会工作的开展

随着社会的发展,企业改革不断深入,企业工会工作也面临着新情况、新问题。文章简要概括当前企业工会工作开展过程中遇到的主要问题,并从科学发展观的角度分析和寻求解决办法。     

Monetary unions—a superior alternative to full dollarization in the long run☆

The paper extends the debate about the exchange rate system that is appropriate in view of the pressures for currency consolidation in open international financial markets to the issue of full dollarization versus (multilateral) monetary union. Unilateral dollarization may not be sustainable politically in the long run because fully dollarized countries may not be willing to keep on paying a seignorage tribute to the United States once they have built a record of internal stability. Even in the short and medium term, fulfillment of the fiscal and regulatory adjustments and reforms required for multilateral monetary union is preferable to embarking on unilateral dollarization without assurance that needed reforms will be supported by the country’s main constituencies.     

Labour Law, Tebbit Style

Norman Tebbit's proposals for minor reforms of the trade unions are the first steps of a 'softly softly' approach to drag the reluctant trade union movement into a framework of law that recognises and harnessed its power.     

Union democracy and the labor-management reporting and disclosure act: An alternative reform proposal

The Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA) of 1959 gives union members certain democratic rights, including a decision-making role in various matters affecting their organizations’ finances. The informed exercise of these rights requires access to meaningful financial data, and the LMRDA mandates disclosure of such information. Recently, the Department of Labor has revised disclosure requirements in order to promote these union democracy objectives. This article provides an analytical framework for examining the adequacy of existing and future disclosure requirements. The analysis reveals weaknesses in the disclosure formats, and proposes a set of alternative reforms. In addition, the article attempts to facilitate the financial analysis of unions by applying standard accounting measures to a selected set of unions’ finances. In so doing, it shows the potential utility of suggested reforms.     

Trade liberalization,labor reforms and formal–informal employment dynamics

This paper studies gross worker flows to explain the rise in informality in Brazilian metropolitan labor markets from 1983 to 2002. In particular, we examine the impact of trade and constitutional reforms (that include increased firing costs, tighter restrictions on overtime work, and fewer restrictions on union activity) occurring during the period. We find aggregate sectoral movements to be driven largely by changes in the hiring rates which, in turn are driven largely by the constitutional reforms. Trade liberalization accounts for roughly 1–2.5% of the increase in informality, while the constitutional reforms account for 30–40%.     

浅谈中学新课程改革对教师专业悟性的升华

从国家新课程改革的主导思想出发,结合中学教师在专业发展上的新要求,简要阐述了基于新课程理念,教师面对新课程需要更加敏锐的专业悟性的现实意义和培养教师专业悟性的基本思路。     

No passage to India? Initial responses of UK trade unions to call centre offshoring

This article focuses on the first wave of call centre offshoring from the UK to India (2002–04). Trade union responses in five case‐study companies are documented. Drawing upon theories of union power resources, including international action, the relative efficacy of these union responses is analysed.     

龙北农场困难职工帮扶长效机制建设的探讨

国有农场工会是农场切实解决困难职工生产生活问题,建立困难职工帮扶长效机制的载体。农场工会要不断适应社会变革,主动融入新型的社会救助体系之中,切实解决好国有企业职工的生产生活问题。     

Industrial relations law,employment security and collective bargaining in India: myths,realities and hopes

This article examines the debate on reforms in industrial relations law in India, needed to support its economic liberalisation programme. Analysing a distinctively Indian experience of state intervention in industrial relations, it concludes that the thrust of the reform should be towards entrusting union recognition and promotion of dispute settlement to an authority that is independent of the state executive.     

Assessing the impact of liberalisation policies on the Greek labour market: an insider–experts' view from the perspective of the varieties of liberalisation

During the recent Great Recession (2008–2018), Greece has become the prototype example of the implementation of austerity policies in Europe. Contrary to public discourse, these austerity policies were complemented by substantial labour market reforms that promoted employment and wage flexibility. This article aims to present a theory-driven understanding of the implementation and the effects of these reforms. For this purpose, we employ a qualitative study consisting of semi-structured interviews with 50 labour market experts—government officials and labour lawyers, academics, labour union representatives and employer association representatives. Using Thelen's framework on the Varieties of Liberalization, we conclude that, contrary to the initial aims of the reforms, Greece followed a trajectory of direct deregulation, reducing considerably the level of both coordination between employers and workers, and coverage of employment protection. The interviews show that the dismantling of collective bargaining system was the most decisive move in this path.     

Employer responses to union organising: patterns and effects

This article presents original research on employer responses to trade union organising campaigns in the United Kingdom. The evidence indicates that there is no single response, with employers in some cases seeking to block and in others support union activity. These different patterns are strongly path dependent and reflect the prior degree of exposure to trade unionism of workplaces targeted for organising. Another finding is that employer responses co-vary with union approaches to organising, such that when the employer adopts adversarial tactics so does the union. The militancy of both parties, it seems, is mutually reinforcing. Finally, the evidence points to substantial influence of employer responses over the outcomes of organising. When employers are supportive then campaigns tend to be more successful, measured on a range of criteria. When the employer is hostile unions find it difficult to make progress and encounter particular difficulties in securing recognition.     

Public service restructuring in the UK: the case of the English National Health Service

This article overviews welfare state retrenchment in the UK under the Conservative‐led coalition government that formed in May 2010 and has centred its response to economic crisis on rapid public deficit reduction through public expenditure austerity targeted increasingly on the welfare benefits budget. It locates the coalition's reforms of public services and public sector employment relations in the long trajectory of public sector restructuring in the UK: the policies of New Right governments in the 1980s and New Labour from 1997 to 2010 that installed marketisation and privatisation in a permutation of forms, intensifying challenges for trade union organising. Focusing on the English NHS, the article identifies the respects in which the coalition's reforms continue and depart from New Labour's.     

The trade union response to agency labour in Sweden

This article explores the possibilities for temporary agency workers to gain union representation at workplace level. Using Heery's classification of four different union responses to agency work—Exclusion, Regulation, Replacement and Engagement—we found that, even though the union wishes to represent agency workers, there are institutional conditions obstructing them from succeeding.     

深入学习实践科学发展观推动高职院校团学工作上水平

深入学习实践科学发展观，是解放思想、深化改革、解决新时期学院团学工作所面临问题的必然要求，是推动学院团学工作上水平的重大举措。文章就开展学习实践科学发展观活动的重大意义、现实紧迫性以及如何结合实际努力践行科学发展观进行探讨。     

The resurgence of national‐level bargaining: union strategies in Spain

Spain has witnessed an oscillating pattern of bargaining in which national‐level agreements were first present, then declined, and have since resurfaced. While economic pressures may have motivated changing union responses, the specifics of the bargaining patterns can be better understood if domestic institutions are included in an explanation of union strategies.     

In-work policies in Europe: Killing two birds with one stone?

Generous social assistance has been held responsible for inactivity traps and social exclusion in several European countries, hence the recent trend of promoting employment through in-work transfers. Yet, the relative consensus on the need for ‘making work pay’ policies is muddied by a number of concerns relative to the design of the reforms and the treatment of the family dimension. Relying on EUROMOD, a EU-15 integrated tax-benefit microsimulation software, we simulate two types of in-work benefits. The first one is means-tested on family income, in the fashion of the British Working Family Tax Credit, while the second is a purely individualized policy. Both reforms are built on the same cost basis (after behavioral responses) and simulated in three European countries suspected to experience large poverty traps, namely Finland, France and Germany. The potential labor supply responses to the reforms and the subsequent redistributive impacts are assessed for each country using a structural discrete-choice model. We compare how both reforms achieve poverty reduction and social inclusion (measured as the number of transitions into activity). All three countries present different initial conditions, including existing tax-benefit systems and distribution of incomes and wages. These sources of heterogeneity are exploited together with different labor supply elasticities to explain the cross-country differences in the impact of the reforms.     

Unions and restructuring in the Mexican automobile industry: a comparative assessment

This article examines the variation in union responses to restructuring initiatives in the Mexican automobile industry. The research indicates that militant responses were more likely to occur in unions characterised by internal democracy and autonomy from Mexico's state-corporatist labour confederations.     

Union wage setting and progressive income taxation with heterogeneous labor: theory and evidence from the German income tax reforms 1986–1990

This paper analyzes the effects of tax shifting in a model with union wage setting and progressive income taxation. The setup allows for different skill levels of the workforce and accounts for the union's distributional objective of income equality. The theoretical predictions of the model are empirically tested with a panel of German micro-data covering the period of the income tax reforms 1986–1990. It is shown that average taxes raise wages, whereas increasing the progressivity of the tax system reduces wages. The effect of progressivity on high-skilled labor tends to be less significant and smaller. Stronger preferences for equality compress the (pre-tax) wage distribution.     

The impact of welfare reform on labour supply behaviour in New Zealand

New Zealand recently implemented sweeping reforms to its social welfare programmes by cutting benefits and tightening eligibility criteria. Regression analysis is used in this paper to isolate the effects of these reforms on several dimensions of labour supply behaviour. Overseas research in this area has often been hindered by the difficulty of boiling complex work disincentives down to a manageable set of regressors, or the lack of true variation in programme parameters. The structure of the benefit system and the nature of the reforms in New Zealand provide a unique opportunity to identify these behavioural responses. Quarterly random samples of individuals between 1985:4 and 1995:4 are used to isolate the effects of these policies, while controlling for a wide variety of other influences. This study finds compelling evidence that these reforms increased aggregate labour supply in this country.