Trade union recruitment strategies: facing the 1990s

Despite a high level of initiatives few unions have developed systematic recruitment strategies, in particular when measured against three key criteria-the employment of a ‘dedicated’ national official; a specific budget; and a comprehensive monitoring system. This reflects an organisational ‘culture’ restricting recruitment potential.     

Tackling age discrimination in employment in Singapore

In a country with an ageing work-force, a decline in the number of new entrants to the labour market and an acute labour shortage, it would be reasonable to assume that employers would encourage older workers to remain in employment for as long as possible. In the case of Singapore, however, private sector employers often retired employees at age 55 and hired younger workers in their place. In many cases older workers re-hired had to accept lower pay and lower grade jobs. In an attempt to tackle this sort of age discrimination in employment, the government passed the Retirement Age Act in 1993. Prior to its enactment, the government urged employers to raise the retirement age voluntarily, but the response was poor, especially in the non-unionized sector. This paper argues that employers resisted the extension of the retirement age because they perceived older workers in stereotypical terms. The main issues which gave rise to the Retirement Age legislation are discussed. So also is the possible impact of the legislation on some HRM practices. The paper also proposes some future directions for research on older workers in Singapore.     

Law commentary case report

A dispute between an individual union member and his trade union which has been going on for over seven years and which resulted in the member's expulsion because of the application of the Bridlington principles has finally been heard by the House of Lords.     

Law commentary case report

Two recent cases have shown that legislative provisions operating in the context of trade union membership rights do not give as extensive a protection as was thought to exist.     

Claims of employment discrimination and worker voice

Using the U.S. National Study of the Changing Workforce survey, we show that claims of racial and gender discrimination emerge less frequently in workplaces with established worker voice mechanisms. This result accords with the hypothesis that participation enhances perceptions of workplace fairness. We show that while having a supervisor of the same race or gender is associated with reduced discrimination claims, the role of voice tends to be larger when the race or gender of the supervisor is different from that of the worker. This suggests that voice may be particularly important in heterogeneous workplaces.     

Do members' services packages influence trade union recruitment?

This article details a study of selected new members who joined a white collar professional trade union between 1st January and 30th September, 1988. The study examined the factors which motivated applications to join, especially with reference to a Members' Services Package.     

Organising non‐standard workers: union recruitment in the Irish care sector

In 2004, Ireland's largest union initiated its most comprehensive organising campaign to date, resulting in 12,000 care workers being organised. This article explores how unions can sustain campaigns among a dispersed workforce, and how public support and worker commitment can be leveraged to achieve structural changes in an emerging sector.     

The interaction of residential segregation and employment discrimination

This paper seeks to disentangle the impact of residential segregation from that of employment discrimination in determining black employment share. The major finding is that distance of a workplace from the main ghetto is one of the strongest and most significant determinants of both changes over time and levels of the racial composition of the workforce. This paper presents evidence of more heterogeneous micro labor supply within SMSAs than has usually been recognized for policy purposes. Comparing Chicago with Los Angeles, we find that distance from the ghetto has a stronger impact in Chicago, and that this effect increased during the late 1970s. By contrast, residential segregation is relatively less important in determining workplace demographics in Los Angeles, despite its rudimentary public transit system and prototypical job dispersion. In both cities, residential segregation strongly influences black employment patterns and limits the efficacy of efforts to integrate the workplace.     

Behavioural responses to employment discrimination: a study of Hong Kong workers

This study examines the behavioural responses of Hong Kong workers to employment discrimination. Based on the exit-voice framework proposed by Hirschman, five possible responses (i.e. neglect, quit, internal voice, external voice and litigation) are identified. The effects of certain personal attributes and work-related factors on these responses are evaluated. Two different data sets, focusing on gender discrimination and family status discrimination, are analysed. The results of logistic regression indicate that workers with higher levels of education and sensitivity to discrimination are more likely to complain and less likely to neglect their work or resign. Additionally, men and women respond differently to sex-based discrimination. Work-related factors such as employment sector, job tenure and employer size are also found to exert significant effects. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Law of dismissal and employment practices in Japan

In this article the author discusses the extent of Japanese legal protection against dismissal available to employees covered by the lifetime employment policies of the large corporations…He argues that the policies do not offer a total guarantee and they are in any case in long-term decline-a development with important implications for the role of the law.     

Law commentary: Unjust dismissal laws in other countries: some cautionary notes*

In this article the author provides a view from the USA on the workings of unfair dismissal legislation in a number of countries.     

Transforming union women: the role of women trade union officials in union renewal

The article investigates the nature of the increasing involvement of women in the decision-making structures of the fifth largest UK union through a study of senior women union officials. It is argued that senior union women, operating within a feminist paradigm, balance both transformational and status quo objectives in working towards union survival and renewal.     

刍议大学生就业歧视现状及解决途径

文章从大学生就业歧视的现状入手,就性别歧视从传统观念影响、现实生理差异、劳动力市场、教育引导、法律法规以及政府监管等方面,分析了问题产生的客观与主观因素,并对缓解大学生就业性别歧视提出了具体建议和改进措施,对就业歧视的解决具有一定的教育指导意义。     

Believing in employment discrimination: The case of Forrest Mims,Scientific American,and title VII protection

This article reviews the law regarding Title VII employment discrimination protection from religious discrimination. The issues surrounding the principal legal protection in this regard are explored in the context of a recent controversial case in which an author, Forrest Mims, was not hired as a regular contributor forScientific American magazine, ostensibly because of his belief in the theory of creation over the theory of evolution. The definition of what constitutes a protected religious belief or practice is seen to have expanded over time. However, a belief in creationism is not necessarily seen as being tantamount to a religious belief under present legal interpretation of Title VII. The implications of this finding for future needed Title VII revision are discussed.     

An event history approach to the evaluation of training,recruitment and employment programmes

In this paper I evaluate a number of training, recruitment and employment programmes. The evaluation method is a combination of a quasi-experimental design (a simple pre-treatment-post-treatment design) and a stochastic process model to describe the response variables. I conclude that the programmes have no effect on older workers. Female and minority workers benefit most from the programmes. The training programmes are less effective than the recruitment programmes, which are in turn less effective than the employment programmes.     

Law commentary: Three faces of democracy and three missing persons: the Trade Union Act 1984

The Conservative government described the 1984 Trade Union Act as a piece of legislation to ‘give the unions back to their members'. This article examines the concept of democracy present in the Act and analyses its implications for trade unions and industrial relations.     

调整劳动合同期限规则建立稳定就业灵活用工机制

劳动合同期限规则(以下简称“合同期限规则”)是指国家对劳动合同期限的种类、相互关系和实施所作的法律规定,是劳动法律的重要内容之一。1994年7月我国颁布的《劳动法》规定了合同期限规则,它的实施对推动我国用工制度改革、建立劳动合同制度发挥了重要作用。随着市场经济的迅速发展,我国经济正在融入全球经济一体化,现行合同期限规则显现出一定的局限性。完善合同期限规则,适应我国     

Exploring the interaction of firm-level change and national institutional environments in shaping employment and union relations: a comparative case study of four European airlines

Drawing on the example of the airline industry, this paper explores in a longitudinal comparative case study the question of how firm-level changes and national institutional environments interact in shaping employee and union relations. Adding to previous research in comparative institutional analysis and comparative employment relations, we illustrate that the way in which industry pressures and national-level effects play out to influence employee and union relations depends on firm-level changes, mainly in the form of firm growth, acquisitions and the foundation of new subsidiaries. We show in particular that depending on firm-level changes, the very same firm might engage differently with a given institutional context at different points in time. Hence, our work illustrates the importance of firm growth, acquisitions and the foundation of new subsidiaries in explaining the shifting interaction between the firm and its institutional environment, and its implications for changing employee and union relations within firms.     

The changing union and bargaining landscape: union concentration and collective bargaining trends

Unions in Western Europe have tended to merge in larger organisations, straddling across traditional bargaining demarcations. Despite the trend towards union concentration, cross‐national differences remain in the degree of fragmentation and the balance across private and public sectors. In the past years, wage moderation was common to nearly all bargaining systems, partly as a result of coordinated incomes policies or pattern‐setting wage settlements. Tripartite concertation has proven more difficult because of increased dissatisfaction with modest pay increases and insufficient employment effects.