Union Density in Israel 1995–2010: The Hybridization of Industrial Relations

In the past the Israeli industrial relations system was corporatist, characterized by high levels of membership in trade unions and employers' associations, as well as broad coverage of collective agreements. The corporatist system gradually eroded from the mid‐1980s, but its major transformation came with the removal of the Ghent‐like system in 1995. The article observes data collected since the transformation, distinguishing between membership and coverage trends. These distinctions aid in revealing that a hybrid of two distinct industrial relations subsystems has developed. The notion of hybridization suggests that unlike past accounts, which described the substitution of the corporatist industrial relations system by a liberal‐pluralist system, what actually emerges is their coexistence. Despite the path‐determined nature of the Israeli hybrid, the interaction between coverage and membership is instructive for understanding strategic choices made in other European countries in which a similar gap emerged. The article notes the potential for synergy between the two subsystems and notes the actual development of rivalry and friction.     

The various faces of scientific productivity: a contingency analysis

We argue that the meaning of “scientific productivity” takes on various forms under different conditions. The methodology offered in this paper demonstrates that fluctuations in reliability coefficients (and possibly the validity of the construct) are associated with work context (academic vs. non-academic), individual attributes (young vs. veteran researchers), professional affiliation (scientists vs. engineers) and research characteristics (theoretical vs. experimental, externally vs. internally funded research). These results are of critical importance for the evaluation of scientific work, especially since they imply the existence of contexts in which several productivity indicators are invalid. The conceptual and the methodological implications of the results are discussed.     

Unpacking Union Density: Membership and Coverage in the Transformation of the Israeli IR System

To understand the transformation of the industrial relations (IR) system in Israel, we propose a four-group typology according to workers' membership in unions and coverage of collective agreements. Using this typology, and relying on various data sources, we estimate that in 2000 membership was 40 to 45 percent, and coverage was about 56 percent, down from 80 to 85 percent for both measures in 1981. The data also reveal the emerging differences among the four groups, including income differentials. Moreover, comparing workers' actual membership and coverage with their preferences suggests that the system has not yet reached equilibrium. The study demonstrates that only a four-group typology succeeds in surfacing the complex nature of union decline.