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.     

Union‐division: on the paradoxes of purpose and membership scope in union mergers

Union mergers raise central questions about a union's raison d'être and the range of constituents it can serve effectively. Whereas the challenges posed by union purpose and scope of membership have long engaged researchers, few studies have fleshed out the contradictory issues that engage committed members and leaders during a merger. We argue that in mergers, fundamental themes in unionism intersect in paradoxical ways. We analyse a merger of tertiary education unions in New Zealand and situate its debates within a changing context for industrial relations. The case provides insight into the tensions inherent in union mergers by addressing the drivers for integration and differentiation as well as the role of leaders in shaping these. The findings elucidate paradoxical dynamics inherent in mergers: the paradox of purpose confronts the tension between industrial and craft unionism and the paradox of membership scope considers critical mass and communities of interest. The conclusion reflects on identity, leadership and context during mergers and poses contributions to research and practice.     

Barriers to cross‐border trade union cooperation in Europe: the case of the graphical workers

This paper is concerned with exploring the barriers to cross‐border trade union cooperation among graphical workers in Europe. Highlighting the increasing globalisation of graphical multinationals, the paper illustrates that graphical unions cannot restrict their activities to developments within national boundaries. As such it highlights some of the obstacles that unions face in attempting to instigate transnational cooperation strategies. These obstacles include: the role of employers, the prevailing practices of the unions, employee reticence, the role of the law and resource constraints. It concludes by stressing the continuing need to strengthen cross‐border trade union networks with the ability to impose effective sanctions against the unbridled growth of multinational power.     

Reconsidering union membership in Spain, 1977-1994: halting decline in a context of democratic consolidation

Examining newly available figures, this article argues that in spite of Spanish high unemployment and economic re-structuring, union membership in Spain increased significantly from 1986 to 1993. The effect of democratic consolidation, as well as complex union dynamics in the labour market, generate this recovery that challenges, to some extent, the pessimistic union decline thesis.     

Forecasting the resurgence of the U.S. economy in 2010: An expert judgment approach

This paper describes a forecast, performed in December 2008, of the time of the recovery of the U.S. economy from the contraction that began in December 2007. As in two earlier papers, the forecast uses an expert judgment approach, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), within the framework of decision theory, as well as its generalization to dependence and feedback in the form of the Analytic Network Process (ANP). The findings of this paper are that the economy would begin its recovery in July-August, 2010. While forecasting is always hazardous, our 2001 paper successfully forecast the date the recovery began. Since 1920 the validating authority for the turnaround dates has traditionally been the widely recognized National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). The Bureau usually releases an official statement with their finding many months after the event (and of course after the forecasts had been done). Our results on the month in which the recovery began in 2001 were confirmed by the NBER in July 2003. We will again await the NBER determination of the time of recovery from the current recession.     

Pursuing centralised bargaining in an era of decentralisation? A progressive union goal in Korea from a comparative perspective

During the last decade, progressive Korean unions have attempted to transform the organisation and bargaining of enterprise unionism into an industrial unionism. This vitalised development in collective bargaining contrasts with trends prevailing in many advanced nations. This paper, on the basis of case studies, examines factors shaping bargaining structures in the context of Korean industrial relations. A theoretical framework regarding factors shaping bargaining structures, one formed in comparative industrial relations studies of advanced nations, proves useful in examining the subject. This finding implies that the attempt of progressive unions will face formidable obstacles.     

Unravelling the complexities of high commitment: an employee‐level analysis

Research within HRM has faced criticism for failing to focus adequately on employee experiences of HR practice. In particular, the ‘high‐commitment’ models fail to recognise employee perspectives on HRM, the complexities of the commitment construct and the possibility that organisations configure HR systems in various ways. This paper explores the impact of employee attitudes towards HR practices on affective, continuance and normative commitment, and intention to leave in three organisational contexts. The findings suggest that different HR systems can yield different attitudes towards HR practices, which in turn can impact on different forms of commitment and levels of intention to leave. The findings provide insights into the ways in which organisations manage the commitment process through HR practices and the response by employees to these interventions.     

My Family Memories of Marjorie Grice‐Hutchinson in Malaga,Southern Spain

Abstract . Marjorie Grice‐Hutchinson is well‐known for her contributions to economic science. However, very few people outside Malaga (the city in the south of Spain where she lived most of her life) are aware of the philanthropic activities that she and her father undertook in the years that preceded and followed the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). Thanks to the efforts of Marjorie and her father, many survived political murder during the Spanish Civil War, tuberculosis, or starvation. Besides, thanks to the charity school that Marjorie and her father opened, many girls of the area received some education, overcoming the secular analphabetism and misery lasting generations. These lines are meant to honor the memory of a prestigious economist from a different perspective and with the purpose that future generations know the way she helped other human beings (including my own family) in a totally unselfish way.     

Reject and renegotiate: The Shapley value in multilateral bargaining

This paper investigates three distinctive and intuitive renegotiation bargaining protocols that all yield the Shapley value as the unique subgame perfect equilibrium outcome. These protocols, built on the multi-bidding procedure of Pérez-Castrillo and Wettstein (2001), allow more freedom in multilateral bargaining where rejected players can further negotiate and form coalitions. The self-duality of the Shapley value plays a key role in the second and third results. Moreover, these renegotiation protocols allow an actual play along the equilibrium path to restore the Shapley value in case of a ‘mistake’ made before.     

Facing ‘fairness at work’: union perception of employer opposition and response to union recognition

The introduction of statutory mechanisms by which unions can gain union recognition in Britain has stimulated employer activity to avoid and subvert union recognition campaigns. This article examines the nature and extent of such employer activities and how unions have responded.     

The rate of learning‐by‐doing: estimates from a search‐matching model

We construct and estimate by maximum likelihood a job search model where wages are set by Nash bargaining and idiosyncratic productivity follows a geometric Brownian motion. The proposed framework enables us to endogenize job destruction and to estimate the rate of learning‐by‐doing. Although the range of the observations is not independent of the parameters, we establish that the estimators satisfy asymptotic normality. The structural model is estimated using Current Population Survey data on accepted wages and employment durations. We show that it accurately captures the joint distribution of wages and job spells. We find that the rate of learning‐by‐doing has an important positive effect on aggregate output and a small impact on employment. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The reform of collective bargaining: a managerial revolution?

The company-based reform of collective bargaining has been frequently advocated as a way towards dramatic improvements in industrial relations. In this article the author tests this view against the available evidence, including a case study in a multi-plant manufacturing company.     

Knowledge transformation in project networks: A speech act level cross‐boundary analysis

Researchers stress the importance of understanding knowledge transformation in projects. To explore how knowledge is transformed across organizational and specialization boundaries in project networks, we observed 22 knowledge transformation cases in two project networks. We found that new knowledge was created across specialization boundaries and that knowledge was altered across organizational boundaries. When both organizational and specialization boundaries were crossed, new knowledge was created. From these findings, we developed a set of propositions and formulated these into a model of knowledge transformation in project networks. This research contributes to a better understanding of knowledge transformation processes and outcomes in project networks.     

Corporate governance,industrial relations and trends in company‐level restructuring in Europe: convergence towards the Anglo‐American model?

This article addresses the issue of how patterns of corporate restructuring are shaped by national systems of corporate governance and industrial relations. Using case studies of three multinationals, it sheds light on the question of whether the way in which restructuring takes place is converging towards the norms characteristic of the Anglo‐American model. It is argued that considerable changes are evident among national systems, but that these changes are not all occurring at the same pace, nor are all countries moving in the same direction. Consequently, the way that multinational companies restructure their activities varies markedly according to both the business system in their country of origin and the various host systems in which they are located.     

The New York transit strike: Misconcptions about bargaining power

Collective bargaining is successful when each party realistically appraises the other's relative strength. The N.Y. Transit strike illustrates how politics and personalities can blur such appraisals.     

The reform of collective bargaining and strike activity in BL cars 1976–1982

Changes at BL after the Ryder Report were intended to assist the company's economic recovery and to help solve the perceived ‘strike problem’. This article argues that one consequence of reform was to change the pattern of conflict at BL into one which more closely resembles that of the industry as a whole.     

Iterative Project Processes Within Temporary Multi‐Organizations in Construction: The Self‐, Eco‐, Re‐Organizing Projects

Theory‐based studies claim that informal processes interfere with the formal mechanisms and structures of projects in the construction sector. These processes structure and transform multi‐organizations. This four‐year case study reveals empirical evidence about how processes effectively evolve over time and affect formal mechanisms and structures. The results show: (1) the significant differences between what is planned and what actually unfolds in project processes; (2) how iterative processes overshadow linear ones; (3) how informality and “iterativity” eventually end up as self‐, eco‐, and re‐organizing projects and organizations, confirming that projects (re)create the very processes and structures that initiate them.