Industrial Relations in Transition Economies: Emergent Industrial Relations Institutions in Bulgaria

East European societies currently in transition to market economies are creating new structures for industrial relations. Transition has ambiguous effects upon the relations between industrial relations institutions and the state. On the one hand, economic pluralism implies separation between state and economy and 'depoliticization'. On the other, economic crises and threats to social order require co-operation between state and unions. The influence of the state is greater because of the embryonic form of employer organization and enterprise-level management. This paper examines the political and economic contexts of industrial relations in Bulgaria, as an example of one type of 'constrained' collective bargaining system. The paper emphasizes continuities between the communist and post-communist period, and the central role of trade unions in the transition process.     

Globalization, Financial Crisis, and Industrial Relations: The Case of South Korea

The South Korean case shows that the globalization trend in the 1990s and the 1997–1998 financial crisis had two contrasting effects on labor rights. First, these developments resulted in negative labor market outcomes: increased unemployment, greater use of contingent workers, and widened income inequalities. On the other hand, they led international organizations such as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the International Labor Organization (ILO) to play important roles in improving labor standards in Korea. Also, continued restructuring drives prompted unions to merge into industrial unions and wage strikes with increased frequency and intensity. Contrary to the common belief, the Korean case shows that globalization and intensified competition resulted in stronger and strategic responses from labor by stimulating employees' interest in and reliance on trade unionism.     

Taiwan: An Exploration of Labour Relations in Transition

This paper explores the emerging relations between workers and employers in Taiwan. The lifting of martial law in 1987 and other reforms have set in motion a basic restructuring of the industrial relations system. A union movement dominated by the interests of employers and the ruling political party has given workers little leverage in the employment relationship. Constrained collective bargaining plus consultation with employers offers the best long-term prospect of providing a systematic basis for worker participation in the workplace and broader business and economic decision-making.     

Industrial Relations and Economic Performance

Postwar concern about our industrial relations system has been dominated by three issues: pay; performance at workplace, company and national level; and industrial action. In each case the focus of interest is the link between the institutions, procedures and processes of the system and the outcomes that it generates. This paper evaluates evidence on these three issues for the last quarter-century, since the publication of the Donovan Report in 1968. Special attention is given to information from successive WIRSs. The evidence suggests that (i) industrial action is of minor importance; (ii) the industrial relations system can no longer be held to stymie company performance; (iii) the pay-jobs trade-off is as intractable as ever.     

US Labour Relations in Transition: Emerging Strategies and Company Performance

This report examines strategic labour relations and operational changes pursued by large, highly unionized, US manufacturing companies over the 1975–86 period. Four fairly distinguishable strategies are identified as implemented across a sample of 105 companies. These strategies are characterized by various combinations of activities associated with union avoidance, deunionization and co-operation. In addition to describing these strategies, we examine changes in company performance associated with these strategies for a subsample of 56 companies. It is found that, on the one hand, improvements in company performance are associated with extensive cooperative efforts across unionized facilities, but, on the other hand, they are also associated with the opening of non-union facilities and the simultaneous closing of unionized facilities. In contrast, the closing of unionized facilities (but not non-union facilities) and the decertification of unions are negatively associated with company performance.     

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.     

Industrial Relations in Hotels and Catering: Neglect and Paradox?

Given that hotels and catering comprise an important part of the service sector representing the changing face of the economy, their neglect in industrial relations discourse about the 'new' industrial relations is no longer sustainable. Previously unpublished data from the Workplace Industrial Relations Survey 1990 (WIRS3) have provided the first opportunity for systematic analysis and evaluation of employment relationship issues in the industry and finds them to be different from those observed elsewhere in the economy. Consequently, hotels and catering can be said to manifest a predominance of 'unbridled individualism' associated with 'poor' industrial relations outcomes which, paradoxically, exist alongside an above average presence of personnel specialists.