Twin Tracks—Employee Representation at Eurotunnel Revisited

The introduction of the European Directive on Information and Consultation and the recent implementation of the Information and Consultation of Employees (ICE) Regulations into United Kingdom (UK) law have increased the focus on workplace representation arrangements. This paper examines the interplay between nonunion and union representative arrangements at Eurotunnel (UK) and assesses their effectiveness in representing the needs of employees over a 5‐year period. Importantly, the paper also examines the opportunities and challenges of both nonunion representation (NER) and union voice arrangements. The findings show that the effectiveness of nonunion structures as bodies representing the interests of employees in filling the lack of representation is questionable. However, union recognition through an employer–union partnership agreement has also raised important issues regarding the effectiveness, impact, and legitimacy of unions at Eurotunnel. The main implication of this research is that the existence of a mechanism—union or nonunion—for communication between management and employees at the workplace may not be a sufficient condition for effective representation of employee interests. In addition, while trade unions may provide greater voice than nonunion arrangements (thus the reluctance of management to accept such voice arrangements), the strength of voice is dependent on the legitimacy and effectiveness of trade unions in representing employees’ interests at the workplace. And that in turn depends on the union being perceived by the workforce as both representative and able to act independently. If the union cannot, it will not meet the needs of either employees or management—and could run the risk of being supplanted under the provisions of the new EU Directive on Information and Consultation with tougher requirements for compliance in terms of procedures for consultation and information disclosure.     

Global Collective Bargaining on Flag of Convenience Shipping

The most significant case of transnational union bargaining co‐ordination in existence is in the maritime shipping industry. A global union association, the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), and a global employers’ federation, the International Maritime Employers’ Committee (IMEC), now negotiate over pay scales for seafarers on Flag of Convenience (FOC) ships. These negotiations set the pattern for pay and working conditions for a signifi‐cant portion of the global seafaring work‐force. The ITF brought about global wage bargaining by building and enforcing a global inter‐union consensus between developed and developing countries around a uniform wage rate.     

The Prevalence and Effects of Occupational Licensing

Our study provides the first national analysis of the labour market implications of workers who are licensed by any agency of the government in the USA. Using a specially designed Gallup survey of a nationally representative sample of Americans, we provide an analysis of the influence of this form of occupational regulation. We find that 29 per cent of the workforce is required to hold a licence, which is a higher percentage than that found in other studies that rely on state‐level occupational licensing data or single states. Workers who have higher levels of education are more likely to work in jobs that require a licence. Union workers and government employees are more likely to have a licence requirement than are non‐union or private sector employees. Our multivariate estimates suggest that licensing has about the same quantitative impact on wages as do unions — that is about 15 per cent — and that being both licensed and in a union can increase wages by more than 24 per cent. However, unlike unions which reduce variance in wages, licensing does not significantly reduce wage dispersion for individuals in licensed jobs.     

The Impact of Acquiring EU Status on the Earnings of East European Migrants in the UK: Evidence from a Quasi‐Natural Experiment

On 1 May 2004, 10 new states — including the ‘A8’ countries in Central and Eastern Europe — joined the European Union (EU). This article explores the impact of EU enlargement on A8 workers who were already working in the UK before 1 May 2004 — legally or illegally. More specifically, the article analyses the impact of the change in the legal (immigration) status that A8 workers experienced on 1 May 2004 on their earnings in the UK. The empirical analysis employs difference‐in‐difference estimation using data obtained from a relatively small but unique survey of migrant workers from four of the A8 countries (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Lithuania) and two other East European countries (Ukraine and Bulgaria), carried out one month before and six to eight months after EU enlargement in May 2004. The results of this exploratory analysis suggest a statistically significant and positive impact of acquiring EU status on earnings. The data further indicate that, in part, this effect was brought about by A8 workers gaining the right to freely change jobs after EU enlargement. There is no evidence of a ‘legalization effect’ on earnings.     

Subcontracting,Posted Migrants and Labour Market Segmentation in Finland

Using evidence from the shipbuilding and construction industries in Finland, this article shows how trade union responses to the introduction of migrant workers can be conditioned by product markets. Growing numbers of ‘posted workers’, or intra‐European Union work migrants employed via transnational subcontractors, are segmenting the labour market, by competing with domestically domiciled workers whose employment is more tightly regulated. In Finland, the construction worker's union has had a far more assertive and successful approach to enforcing wage norms than the union in shipbuilding. This appears to be related to the greater exposure of shipbuilding to international product market competition.     

Union Strategies,National Institutions and the Use of Temporary Labour in Italian and US Plants

This article analyses variation in the use of temporary labour based on a comparison of two plants of the same US automotive multinational corporation, one in Italy and the other in the United States. We argue that differences in the use of temporary labour are explained by union capacities to make trade‐offs between alternative forms of flexibility as well as trade‐offs in the protection of internal and external groups of workers. Union capacity is dependent on the availability of power resources within different national institutional environments. These resources are shown to influence not only the ways in which temporary workers are used but also bargaining outcomes — including employment conditions — benefiting them.     

Behind the European Works Councils Directive: The European Commission's Legislative Strategy

The aim of the draft European works councils Directive is to bridge the gap between increasingly transnational corporate decision-making and employees' nationally-defined information and consultation rights. The proposal seeks to accommodate existing national systems of employee representation, but in the UK auxiliary measures would be needed to designate employee representatives in the absence of voluntary trade union recognition by employers. Although the Directive is strongly opposed by the UK government, the Maastricht social policy protocol has boosted its prospects of being adopted by the other 11 EC countries, with important repercussions for UK-based multinationals.     

Strength in Networks: Employment Rights Organizations and the Problem of Co‐Ordination

In recent decades, alternative organizations and movements —‘quasi‐unions’— have emerged to fill gaps in the US system of representation caused by union decline. We examine the record of quasi‐unions and find that although they have sometimes helped workers who lack other means of representation, they have significant limitations and are unlikely to replace unions as the primary means of representation. But networks, consisting of sets of diverse actors including unions and quasi‐unions, are more promising. They have already shown power in specific campaigns, but they have yet to do so for more sustained strategies. By looking at analogous cases, we identify institutional bases for sustained networks, including shared information platforms, behavioural norms, common mission and governance mechanisms that go well beyond what now exists in labour alliances and campaigns. There are substantial resistances to these network institutions because of the history of fragmentation and autonomy among both unions and quasi‐unions; yet we also identify positive potential for network formation.     

Legitimizing Illegal Protest: The Permissive Ideational Environment and ‘Bossnappings’ in France

In France, in 2009–2010, on several occasions, managers announcing redundancies were held hostage by workers. Public opinion polls show widespread support for the ‘bossnappers’, while the State did not taken action against them. Employing the insights of new institutionalism and social movement theory, this article explains the legitimization of such radical, illegal action through the notion of a permissive ideational environment resulting from a tradition of trade union militancy, pre‐existing concerns over globalization and more recent fears of, and government and trade union responses to, globalization and the current economic crisis.     

Legacies,Conflict and ‘Path Dependence’ in the Former Soviet Union

This article analyses management–union–worker relations in a foreign‐owned Moldovan clothing factory. Studies of post‐socialist industrial relations have focused on explaining labour quiescence, advancing ‘path dependence’ and ‘Soviet legacy’ arguments. These draw attention to strong links between management and unions, and weak relations between the latter and workers. We show how the union has, in one case, drawn creatively on Soviet legacies to develop strong articulation between itself and women workers. This was part of a wider adaptive strategy within which the union transformed the meaning of previous functions and developed novel ones. The outcome is a well‐organized representative union capable of challenging management at the negotiating table, as well as on the shop floor. This seems unlikely to be universal but equally unlikely to be unique.     

The Effects of the EU Equal‐Treatment Directive for Fixed‐Term Workers: Evidence From the UK

In 2002, the UK implemented the EU Directive mandating equal treatment of fixed‐term and permanent workers. This article uses 11 years of data from the Labour Force Survey to assess whether the new legislation has led to a decrease in the average wage gap between fixed‐term and permanent workers. For women, there is no evidence of that. For men, the wage gap appears to have closed after 2002. However, this gap was falling even before 2002, and some evidence of changes in the selection of workers after the implementation of the Directive casts doubts on the extent to which the closing of the gap can be ascribed to the new legislation.     

Explaining the Younger– Older Worker Union Density Gap: Evidence from New Zealand

This paper uses two recent large‐scale surveys in New Zealand to test the various reasons given for lower rates of union membership among younger workers. Younger workers’ disproportionate location in smaller workplaces and those industries where union reach is lowest accounts for a substantial part of their lower union density. Along with the tendency of younger workers to explore their options through labour turnover, this factor offers a much better explanation for the younger‐older worker union density gap than do assertions about a growth in individualism in Generations X and Y.     

Beyond the Union‐Centred Approach: A Critical Evaluation of Recent Trade Union Elections in China

Many Western scholars have regarded union democracy and elections as affairs that are internal to trade unions and unconnected with outside forces. Going beyond the mainstream union‐centred approach, this study critically assesses one significant type of union election that has been emerging in China since 2010 and that has been driven by different forces from previous elections. Previous workplace union elections had been ‘top‐down’ — initiated by the party‐state or its apparatuses, or else transnational corporation‐induced — but this newer type of election has been driven by workers' strikes. This study illustrates how the dynamics among the quadripartite actors — party‐state, higher‐level trade unions, capital and labour — have shaped these strike‐driven elections. Contrary to the claim that these elections have been ‘direct’ and ‘democratic’, our case studies show that they have been indirect and quasi‐democratic in nature.     

Unions and Collective Bargaining in the Wake of the Great Recession: Evidence from Portugal

Against the backdrop of its industrial relations architecture, characteristic of the ‘southern European group’ and intimately linked to the recommendations of the Troika, this paper examines four key aspects of Portuguese collective bargaining. First, it provides definitive estimates of private sector union density for that nation. Second, it models the determinants of union density at firm level. Third, it yields estimates of the union wage gap for different ranges of union density. The final issue examined is contract coverage. The received notion that the pronounced reduction in the number of industry‐wide agreements and extension ordinances of late is to be equated with a fall in coverage is shown to be a chimera, the number of workers covered by new and existing agreements remaining largely unaffected by the economic crisis. The reduced frequency of new agreements and extensions is instead attributed to downward nominal wage rigidity in low‐inflation regimes.     

The Duration of Union Membership in Italy: A Research Note

Thanks to direct access to union databases, this note can answer two new questions in industrial relations: how long union membership lasts and what are the determinants of its duration within an open‐shop context. This also allows for conceptualizing union membership as a much more dynamic phenomenon than in previous studies, where it was considered a static condition whose causes or effects were to be investigated. Regression analysis applied to a sample of 29,035 Italian workers highlights that union membership duration is a positive but declining function of age. Furthermore, women, flexible workers, foreign ones, and those working in cities tend to show less attachment to union membership than the other workers.     

Union Membership and Job‐Related Training: Incidence,Transferability, and Efficacy

This study examines the relationship between union membership and (i) the incidence of training, (ii) the degree to which training is transferable to firms other than the one providing the training and (iii) the degree to which workers perceive that training improves job performance. Using data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, I find that union members are more likely to receive employer‐sponsored training than their non‐union counterparts. I also find that male union members are more likely than non‐members to report that training improved job performance. Union membership was not related to transferability of skills between employers.     

From Coping Strategies to Tactics: London's Low‐Pay Economy and Migrant Labour

This article examines the means by which low‐paid migrant workers survive in a rapidly changing and increasingly unequal labour market. In a departure from the coping strategies literature, it is argued that the difficulties migrant workers face in the London labour market reduces their ability to ‘strategize’. Instead, workers adopt a range of ‘tactics’ that enable them to ‘get by’, if only just, on a day‐to‐day basis. The article explores these tactics with reference to the connections between different workers’ experiences of the workplace, home and community, and demonstrates the role of national, ethnic and gender relations in shaping migrant workers’ experiences of the London labour market and of the city more widely.     

The Role of Digital Communities in Organizing Gig Workers

Using survey data from 450 ridehail drivers, this article examines how social networking sites (SNS) influence workers’ views on union instrumentality and unionization. This article finds that more frequent interaction with other workers in online communities is associated with improved views of union instrumentality and interest in joining a ridehail drivers' association. These findings link together the fields of information sciences and industrial relations and suggest a new institutional actor in modern industrial systems, the online worker network.     

Social Capital and Union Revitalization: A Study of Worker Networks in the UK Audio‐Visual Industries

This article examines Jarley's contention that trade union revitalization is conditional upon the generation of social capital through the systematic creation of networks. It draws on a qualitative study of freelance workers in the UK audio‐visual industry to consider two propositions. The first, that ‘social capital within networks is forged on “bonds” that are conducive to trade union identity’ was not sustained by the data, which instead suggested that social capital is more likely to be generated by networks outside trade union structures. However, the data did support the second proposition that ‘trade unions can harness social capital in order to achieve concrete industrial relations outcomes’ by linking networks to reservoirs of expertise and influence.     

Collective Bargaining and Wage Dispersion in Europe

The level at which collective bargaining takes place is usually considered important in determining wage levels and wage inequalities. Two different situations are considered: a first in which bargaining is only ‘multi‐employer’, and a second in which it is ‘multi‐level’, in the sense that workers can be covered by both a ‘multi‐employer’ and a ‘single‐employer’ contract at the same time. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of these different institutional settings on pay dispersion. The study is carried out using the European Structure of Earnings Survey, which is a large dataset containing detailed matched employer–employee information for the year 1995. The countries analysed are Italy, Belgium and Spain. The empirical results generally show that wages of workers covered by only a ‘multi‐employer’ contract are no more compressed than those of workers covered by both ‘multi‐employer’ and ‘single‐employer’ contracts. This implies that where workers are not covered by single‐employer bargaining, they receive wage supplements paid unilaterally by their employers.