Collective Consultation and Industrial Relations in China

Economic reform in China has seen the replacement of the administrative regulation of labour relations by their contractual regulation, with an increasing emphasis on the role of the collective contract system. Studies of the introduction of the system emphasized the determining role of the state. In this paper we examine the more recent development of the collective contract system and conclude that it is primarily the continued integration of the trade union into management at the workplace that prevents collective consultation from providing an adequate framework for the regulation of labour relations.     

International Political Economy and Industrial Relations

The field of international political economy offers valuable insights into global economic integration, trade liberalization, global governance and the nature and activities of international organizations and regimes. Despite their impact on industrial relations, industrial relations theory has not wholeheartedly engaged with these phenomena or this sister field. This paper argues that the field of international political economy offers much to industrial relations, particularly in terms of understanding the nature and impact of internationalization and emerging global governance. The potential in a closer relationship between the two fields is illustrated by the example of the international labour standards regime and its principal organization, the International Labour Organisation.     

British Managers' Attitudes and Behaviour in Industrial Relations: A Twenty-Year Study

A unique longitudinal study of Britain's managers conducted in 1980, 1990 and 2000 permits comparisons of managerial attitudes and behaviour in industrial relations over twenty years. We find clear evidence of the relationship between macro‐level political and economic movements of the period from 1980 up until the late 1990s on managerial attitudes, the impact of changes in power relations and the ‘lag effect’ of institutions. The most unexpected findings are the modest rise of managerial unionism in the 1990s and the limited evidence of the replacement of collective bargaining by either individual or group involvement or by employee financial participation.     

British Manufacturing Organization and Workplace Industrial Relations: Some Attributes of the New Flexible Firm

The characteristics of the largest British manufacturing firms are analysed in order to argue that the form of organization adopted at corporate and plant level by such firms is distinctive. The first part of the paper looks at the characteristic kinds and types of productive activities that the largest British firms undertake. It is then suggested that there is a distinctive pattern of organization for production at plant level, described as the 'new flexible firm', the features of which are formally set out. The new flexible firm have some key features which help to make sense of an emerging pattern of workplace industrial relations in manufacturing. The way this new form of organization at plant level utilizes labour contradicts rather than supports the expectations of some analysts about the importance of human resource management.     

Integration and Dealignment in Public Enterprise Industrial Relations: A Study of British Rail

This paper considers whether a process of dealignment of workplace organizations from the national union and industrial relations system has occurred in British Rail. As a starting point, it is noted that workplace representatives have traditionally been closely integrated with other actors in the system. Integration has been based on the supply of bargaining resources by the national union and other bargaining institutions. If new management industrial relations policies have cut back the supply of these, it is possible that workplace organizations will dealign themselves from the national union. This hypothesis is considered using data obtained from a survey of train drivers' representatives. It is found that there is no evidence for dealignment and that in a significant minority of cases closer rather than weaker links are being forged.     

Collective Bargaining and the Evolution of Wage Inequality in Italy

Italian male wage inequality has increased at a relatively fast pace from the mid‐1980s until the early 2000s, while it has been persistently flat since then. We analyse this trend, focusing on the period of most rapid growth in pay dispersion. By accounting for worker and firm fixed effects, it is shown that workers' heterogeneity has been a major determinant of increased wage inequalities, while variability in firm wage policies has declined over time. We also show that the growth in pay dispersion has entirely occurred between livelli di inquadramento, that is, job titles defined by national industry‐wide collective bargaining institutions, for which specific minimum wages apply. We conclude that the underlying market forces determining wage inequality have been largely channelled into the tight tracks set by the centralized system of industrial relations.     

Contesting Local Pay: The Decentralization of Collective Bargaining in the NHS

Local pay determination formed a key plank in the Conservative government's attempt to restructure industrial relations in the NHS, and to 'reassert managerial control' of the paybill at local (trust) level. This paper reports the findings of a national survey of Unison lead negotiators, complemented by case study interviews and documentary research, on the processes and outcomes of local pay determination, and its impact on industrial relations at both national and local levels. The paper strongly refutes recent suggestions that local pay leads to 'improved' industrial relations and greater pay equity. Moreover, and contrary to claims that Staff Side organizations are 'too weak' to challenge 'new managerial strategies', the study's findings show that the search for managerial control remains, as always, a contested terrain.     

Canadian Strike Replacement Legislation and Collective Bargaining: Lessons for the United States

Opponents of U.S. and Canadian strike replacement legislation contend that restricting the use of strike replacements significantly alters bargaining power and increases strike activity. This article uses data on Canadian manufacturing collective-bargaining agreements to investigate these hypotheses. Although a general ban on strike replacements is found to be associated with longer strikes, little evidence is found to suggest that banning permanent strike replacements significantly influences strike incidence, strike duration, or negotiated wages.     

Political Activism and Workplace Industrial Relations in a UK 'Failing' School

The paper draws on a qualitative case study of workplace industrial relations in an inner–city secondary school identified as 'failing' and subsequently closed. It considers the way unionized teachers and their representatives interpret, influence and resist the impact of centralized managerial and educational change. The local implementation of such change leads to an engagement with the debates on union renewal. In particular, the paper explores the dynamic interrelationship between political and trade union activism and the tension between workplace relations and formal union organization.     

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.     

Collective Bargaining Coverage of Union Members and Nonmembers in the Public Sector

Arguably, models of union status and union wage effects in the public sector should' consider workers in three categories: not covered, covered nonmember, and covered member. Estimates show that stronger union security laws are associated with higher percentages of covered members and nonmembers, that right-to-work laws do not affect union coverage or membership relative to where no union security law exists, and that the wages of covered members are higher than those for covered non-members.     

Research Note: Identifying the Invisible Colleges of the British Journal of Industrial Relations: A Bibliometric and Social Network Approach

The academic field of industrial relations has gone through much change in the last 20 years. On account of the rapid decline in union membership in the USA and the UK, industrial relations, which historically has focused on the employment relationship, has been searching for a new intellectual base. By conducting a bibliometric analysis of the journal British Journal of Industrial Relations (BJIR), we uncover the intellectual bases for that publication outlet for two time periods, 1986–1995 and 1996–2005. From the late 1980s to the mid‐1990s, BJIR's articles relied on the economics literature, while in the later period, it moved to the human resource and management journals, authors and articles. The possible explanations and implications of these findings are discussed.