Workplace unions and workplace industrial relations: the Italian experience

An examination of the Italian system of workplace trade unionism and industrial relations reveals an interaction of legal protection and union and managerial behaviour that has contributed to the rapid development of local bargaining. Both this and the recent problems of union representativeness have implications for British students.     

Prosperity without industrial democracy? Developments in industrial relations in Hong Kong since 1968

Hong Kong is often viewed as having achieved an advanced level of economic development without substantial movement towards industrial democracy. We argue that some progress towards democratisation of employment relations has been taking place although unevenly and attempt to explain why this is the case.     

Workplace democracy in the lab

While intuition suggests that empowering workers to have some say in the control of the firm is likely to have beneficial effects, empirical evidence of such effects is hard to come by because of numerous confounding factors in the naturally occurring data. We report evidence from a real‐effort experiment confirming that worker performance is sensitive to the process used to select the compensation contract. Groups of workers that voted to determine their compensation scheme provided significantly more effort than groups that had no say in how they would be compensated. This effect is robust to controls for the compensation scheme implemented, worker characteristics such as ability and gender, and possible sorting.     

Workplace industrial relations in Britain, 1980–2004

The Workplace Industrial Relations Surveys marked a radical departure in the study of industrial relations (IR) by ‘mapping’ IR in Britain with nationally representative large‐scale surveys of workplace managers, thus permitting investigation of the incidence of practices and changes over time. This article reflects on some of what we have learned in the five surveys over the quarter century since 1980, focusing selectively on the demise of collective IR, pay determination, the IR climate, and union effects on wages and employment growth.     

Workplace industrial relations in British Rail: change and continuity in the 1980s

This article compares the findings of a recent survey of workplace industrial relations in British Rail with those from one conducted in 1980. It is suggested that the changes observed may be unintended consequences of management policies rather than the planned outcome of explicit industrial relations strategies.     

Brigade organisation and industrial relations strategy in Bulgaria, 1978–83

This article aims to show how the brigade form of work organisation has become an integral part of industrial relations strategy in Bulgaria; how the brigade system operates; and how it relates to other aspects of industrial relations strategy.     

Shop-floor attitudes to industrial relations change

Whilst the shop-floor workers interviewed showed a high degree of interest in, and knowledge of, the Industrial Relations Bill, there were deep divisions over the necessity of introducing the law into the industrial relations system and of the results of doing so.     

Trends and developments in industrial relations and industrial relations law: Trade union discipline and non-strikers

Perhaps the most controversial change introduced in the 1988 Employment Act was the statutory right given to union members not to be disciplined by their unions for continuing to work during lawful industrial action approved by a majority in a secret ballot. Here the authors examine the legal contexts, implications for trade unions and the wider industrial relations and political significance of this important new right.     

The enterprise response to industrial relations legislation

The authors report a study into the impact of the former Labour Government's industrial relations legislation, much of which remains on the statute book. They focus on joint health and safety committees and provide a useful starting point for further research concerned to develop a model of firm response to industrial relations legislation in any particular subject area.     

Power in industrial relations research

Power is a concept which is much discussed but seldom properly understood, not least in industrial relations theorising. Here the author outlines the role of power in the context of several recent studies which have focused explicitly on the concept of power in industrial relations.     

On parole: prison service industrial relations

The voluntary and statutory measures to prevent prison officers from taking industrial action are examined in the context of the measures adopted to prevent industrial action by other groups of public servants. The paper concludes that the government does not have an overall strategy on strikes in essential public services, though it applies the most restrictive provisions to prison officers.     

A modified rules approach to workplace industrial relations

Roger Lumley makes a contribution to defining the scope of study in workplace industrial relations. Here, he examines a model based on a modified rules approach to the subject, following its application in an empirical study of a large industrial construction site.     

European industrial relations in 1999: chronicle of events

This article chronicles industrial relations developments throughout the European Union (EU) during 1999. The information is gleaned from articles published by the European Industrial Relations Observatory (EIRO). The text therefore contains numerical references to records contained in the EIRO database in order to allow the reader easy access to the relevant records. The article is divided into five sections. The first contains an overview of political, economic and legislative events at EU‐level, the second looks at EU‐level developments in employee representation, the third looks at the impact of European economic and monetary union (EMU) on industrial relations and collective bargaining and the fourth and fifth give a more detailed country‐by‐country analysis of main trends in key industrial relations areas—collective bargaining and industrial action; and employment creation, working time and new forms of work.     

Gender: the missing link in industrial relations research

This article extends the critique of how industrial relations research continues to be gender‐blind and argues that it is in part a result of early definitions which relegated ‘personal’ relations as outside the boundaries of the field and in part a result of a simultaneous strategy of acknowledgement and abdication, acknowledging that gender is important while at the same time arguing that gender does not need to be addressed. In order to demonstrate how gender is central to industrial relations, the article uses Antonio Gramsci’s concepts of ‘hegemony’, ‘ideology’, ‘good sense’ and ‘common sense’ to illustrate how patriarchal common sense is drawn on by both managers and trade unionists in negotiations over hours of work in a manufacturing firm in the North ‐west of England. It is argued that in order to include gender as a central feature of industrial relations research, it is necessary to analyse how the interests of capital, labour and patriarchy are embedded in negotiations on the shopfloor.