The union recognition dispute at McDonald's Moscow food‐processing factory

This article reports on the union recognition dispute that took place at the McDonald's food‐processing plant in Moscow. It examines this dispute in the context of McDonald's employment practices worldwide, the interventions made by international and local unions, and Russian government bodies. Despite these interventions it became impossible to either organise the workforce or establish a collective agreement. The case illustrates the difficulties facing both local unions and global union federations when confronted by intransigent multinational companies, especially in low‐skilled sectors in transitional economies.     

Union effects on pay levels in Britain

The contraction of union representation in Britain raises the question of whether or not unions still achieve a wage premium. Analysis of matched employer–employee data from the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey shows that there is now no demonstrable premium for private sector workers in general. However, unions do achieve a wage premium of around 9% for about half of employees covered by collective bargaining arrangements. The effect of union bargaining spills over to other employees in the same workplaces. The paper identifies circumstances where union effects are strongest—employer endorsement of union membership, high collective bargaining coverage and multi-unionism.     

Book Reviews

This article notes some patterns of diversity as well as some moves towards harmonization of industrial relations arrangements and that there are certain parallel trends in European countries. It examines developments affecting unions, employers and the state as well as the changing approaches to collective bargaining. It goes on to discuss the increasing impact of the European Union (formerly European Community) and it concludes that, rather than finding much convergence, there are continuing and significant differences between European countries.     

Employee ‘voice’ and working environment in post‐communist New Member States: an empirical analysis of Estonia,Latvia and Lithuania

This article examines employee ‘voice’ in workplace health and safety in three Baltic New Member States by means of a cross‐national survey. The data point to unresolved problems of voice in the context of rather poor working environments. These present opportunities for collective renewal by trade unions, but paradoxically are more likely to be addressed by employers in the context of significant labour shortages created by a post‐European Union accession labour ‘exit’.     

The making of the German minimum wage: a case study of institutional change

In the more recent dualistic theories, Germany is cited as an example of a less solidaristic equilibrium, in which ‘producer coalitions’ between core workforces supposedly unaffected by deregulation and their employers prevented the introduction of a minimum wage. The present article shows that such an equilibrium never existed. Core workforces are being threatened by the outsourcing of jobs to the low‐wage sector. This threat created the breeding ground for a joint campaign by manufacturing and service unions for a minimum wage, which made it possible to amalgamate the unions' considerable resources at company level, their strength being derived from the German system of codetermination. Under pressure from the manufacturing unions in particular, the arrangements for the minimum wage follow, as far as possible, the traditions of free collective bargaining. As a result, the social partners in Germany have a considerably stronger influence on the minimum wage than those in the UK.     

Decentralised bargaining of working time in the German automotive industry

The article addresses the question whether or not the trend towards the decentralisation of collective bargaining on working time in Germany entails a loss in the binding power of industry‐level agreements. To this end, both working‐time agreements and practices are examined at the firm or establishment level in the automotive industry. Additionally, the article examines the extent to which workplace micro‐level changes are reflected in official statistics. The findings indicate that unions and works councils have taken on new roles preventing a widespread erosion of collective regulations.     

Coordinated employer bargaining and globalisation: a study of the men's clothing industry in Quebec, 1974–2012

This article looks at the political economy of employer coordination of collective bargaining in the clothing or apparel manufacturing industry in Canada over three phases of globalisation: from the Multi‐Fiber Agreement in 1974 to the impact of the entry of China in the WTO. Although prevailing accounts emphasise the force of exogenous change and the likely decentralisation of bargaining structures and demise of bargaining coordination by employers, this case highlights how unions and employers sought to preserve their institutional model. We find that actor strategies and their interrelations are a central part of the explanation of this apparent institutional stability, despite the real force of economic, organisational and public policy factors. However, it is a dynamic stability in which change processes, reflecting shifting power relations, are leading to important shifts in the nature of employer coordination.     

Why is there not more ‘annualised hours’ working in Britain?

Annualised hours (AH) contracts offer employers greater control over working time at lower cost. These efficiency gains may also be shared with workers in terms of pay or time off work. Yet AH remains relatively rare in the UK. Though under‐researched, one explanation is that AH normally requires collective bargaining, which is disappearing across most of the private sector, and often high‐trust employment relations, which is in still shorter supply.     

At the cutting edge of new realism: the engineers’ 35 hour week campaign

British engineering unions’ campaign for a 35 hour week in 1989–90 was a watershed dispute in terms of strike strategy and its impact on collective bargaining institutions. This article examines the dynamics of the dispute and the tensions between the national and local leaderships of the union campaign and compares it to similar ones waged by the German metalworkers’ union, IG Metall.     

Convergent and divergent country trends in coordinated wage setting and collective bargaining in the public hospitals sector

Drawing on the findings of research in the public hospitals sector in five European countries 1 —France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and the UK—this article assesses the character of change in wage setting and collective bargaining. It demonstrates the diversity of national arrangements by comparing key characteristics: (i) the bodies of collective representation (unions, professional associations and employer bodies); (ii) the degree of integration with the wider public sector framework; (iii) coordination (or competition) with the private hospitals sector; and (iv) the practice of à la carte provisions within individual hospitals. Despite national varieties of wage setting and collective bargaining, each country sector faces similar tensions—most notably the opposition between public (labour market) rules and health (product market) rules, and pressures to segment or integrate employment conditions by labour force group. By examining the nature of change in institutions for wage setting and collective bargaining in each country, the article contributes to our understanding of the extent of coordination and change of public sector wage setting and describes three scenarios: fragmentation (Germany); continuity (France and the Netherlands); and reconstruction (the UK and Norway).     

Union recognition and partnership at work: a new legitimacy for Irish trade unions?

In the Irish context of national partnership and the promotion of workplace partnership at firm level, unions might be expected to have achieved, at least, a pragmatic acceptance by employers. Using a survey of full‐time union officials in eight trade unions organising in the private sector, this paper reports their experiences of recent recognition campaigns. Employer opposition appears to have intensified, and in a substantial percentage of cases has involved the victimisation of activists. In facilitating employees to make a free choice regarding union representation, the Codes of Practice and the Industrial Relations Amendment Act 2001 are regarded by the majority of officials as inadequate. A majority of officials favoured the introduction of a statutory right to recognition. Non‐union firms appear as ‘free riders’ that have enjoyed the benefits of national partnership but evaded the compromises and concessions that necessarily characterise such agreements. If left unchecked, the free‐rider phenomenon could undermine the institutional framework on which partnership is based.     

New Technology in Unionized Firms: Advantages of Mandatory Bargaining

U.S. Labor Law currently allows employers whose work forces are unionized to introduce new technologies without bargaining over the decision to do so. This forces unions to adopt inefficient strategies when negotiating collective bargaining agreements in an effort to minimize the impact of technological change on their members. Allowing unions to bargain over the decision to introduce new technologies would obviate their having to resort to these inefficient strategies. In addition, it might increase the likelihood of employees suggesting alterations in production processes that would increase the rate of technological change. For these reasons, this article advocates amending U.S. labor law to require employers to bargain over the introduction of new technologies.     

Ireland's conundrum on union bargaining rights: assessing the Industrial Relations Amendment Act 2015

Anglophone countries address the question of workplace-level union bargaining rights via the mechanism of statutory recognition. Existing literature has evaluated such regimes as underpinned by several weaknesses. In contrast, Ireland presents an unusual case whereby the question of bargaining rights is resolved via collective dispute resolution procedures combining voluntary and statutory provisions. However, employer challenges and civil court rulings resulted in the weakening of these procedures from a trade union perspective. We assess the latest attempts to reform the Irish provisions via the Industrial Relations (Amendment) Act 2015, evaluating the implications for unions and their capacity to represent members' on pay and working conditions in comparison to Anglophone statutory recognition regimes.     

推行工资集体协商机制 促进劳动关系和谐发展

工资集体协商是当前调整劳动关系、深化企业分配制度改革的重要手段。文章为基层工会推行工资集体协商,实现劳资双赢献策,以期促进企业劳动关系和谐发展。     

Problems with partnership at work: lessons from an Irish case study

This article uses a case study of a celebrated enterprise partnership in Ireland that broke down to get an insight into why such arrangements are hard to sustain. The argument of the article is that meaningful enterprise partnerships require trade unions and management to accept agency costs, which in practice involves management modifying their right to manage and unions accepting that issues normally addressed by the collective bargaining process may have to be delegated to the partnership arrangement. The evidence of the case study is that neither management nor unions were prepared to incur such costs. The case study suggests that the following trinity – meaningful partnership, full-blown collective bargaining and management's right to manage is exceptionally difficult to operate at the same time.     

The Arbitration of Labor Disputes in China Today: Definition and Implications

Over the past 12 years China has strongly encouraged the use of a formalized arbitration process to resolve, among other conflict areas, labor disputes. Using a formal resolution process is meant to calm labor unrest by giving employees both individual and collective voices in workplace issues. Ultimately, China recognizes that, as did the United States with passage of the National Labor Relations Act, giving employees voice quells potential social revolution and helps business by making use of employee ideas while attracting the best employees. This paper discusses some history of the Chinese labor dispute resolution process and its specific provisions promulgated in two laws and a set of regulations. Strengths and weaknesses of the process are enumerated and the importance of the process to foreign investors, employers, and employees is laid out.     

The role of employers in collective bargaining in Britain

Phil Beaumont and Mary Gregory seek to provide some substance to Alan Flanders’ long-held view that employers, in certain circumstances, have played a positive role in influencing the extent of collective bargaining arrangements in the UK.     

Representation at Suncorp – what do the employees want?

It is apparent from existing research that little is known about the effectiveness of non‐union employee representation (NER) voice arrangements in Australian firms. This article examines both the non‐union Suncorp‐Metway Employee Council (SMEC) and union voice arrangements at an Australian financial services firm, Suncorp, and assesses their effectiveness in representing the needs of employees. This study is unique because it is one of the few examples of dual representation channels at a single firm. Overall the findings suggest that the effectiveness of union and NER arrangements is dependent on the union and NER voice channels being perceived by the workforce as both representative and able to act effectively or independently. However, while trade unions may provide greater voice than non‐union arrangements, the strength of voice is dependent on the legitimacy and effectiveness of trade unions in representing employees' interests at the workplace. The findings also suggest that the marginalisation strategy used by the union in excluding SMEC from its industrial campaigns, coupled with employees' perception of a lack of effective union voice, could impact negatively on the influence that unions may have on management decision‐making. This could also be perceived by employees as an inappropriate response by the union to management substitution strategies. As a consequence, any changes to industrial relations policy or trade union strategies regarding NER should be considered in the light of these findings.     

Flexible times? recent developments in temporal flexibility

Working time arrangements represent an important source of flexibility. During the recent British engineering dispute, employers stressed the importance of offsetting the cost of reduced hours by agreements on temporal flexibility. Yet subsequent settlements failed to reflect any significant increase in time-related flexibility. Possible reasons for this, and for the generally restricted development of temporal flexibility in Britain, are examined.     

Teacher union responses to education reforms: job regulation and the enforced growth of informality

This article examines the school teacher union responses to education reforms. The removal of formal collective bargaining arrangements is strengthening the significance of the traditional union structures, and the responses reflect both the pressures of the reforms and the traditions of the three main unions