International Employment Relations

"Nel corso degli ultimi vent’anni, sulla scia del processo di crisi e tra- sformazione degli anni ’70, si sono verificati importanti mutamenti nei rapporti di lavoro, che hanno provocato lo scardinamento della centralità del rapporto di lavoro standard, ovvero il lavoro subordinato a tempo determinato. L’intento del libro è quello di analizzare tali mutamenti nel loro contesto storico di riferimento, alla luce della recente diffusione di forme di precarietà lavorativa. A tal fine, viene preso in esame il processo di “flessibilizzazione” che ha interessato i rapporti di lavoro a partire dagli anni ’80. Di esso viene tracciata l’evoluzione sia attraverso la ricostruzione dei principali interventi legislativi e delle politiche del lavoro ad essi legate, sia tramite l’analisi dell’impatto effettivo del- l’introduzione dei cosiddetti lavori “atipici” sull’occupazione e sull’intero mercato del lavoro.
Un’attenzione particolare è riservata all’analisi delle trasformazioni avvenute in seguito ai mutamenti dei rapporti di lavoro nell’occupazio- ne femminile e nelle modalità di partecipazione delle donne al mercato del lavoro.
L’interrogativo di fondo è se la generalizzata diffusione di forme di precarietà lavorativa sia davvero l’esito inevitabile di quel processo di “flessibilizzazione” dei rapporti di lavoro portato avanti negli ultimi due decenni."

This essay is a contribution in the field of Comparative Employment Relations (CER), part of a symposium on the book International and Comparative Employment Relations by Bamber et al. (2016). My remarks in this short essay are essentially theoretical and are aimed at enriching the debate about the study of CER. I argue that the field of international and comparative employment relations must also assess: first, the impact of the global level (i.e. the rise of finance, the growing importance of multinational corporations, and the liberalization of trade); and, second, how local actors (embedded in national and sub-national institutions but also in these global changes) navigate through these dynamics, use different types of power, and affect outcomes in the workplaces through their strategies. I will develop this argument in two sections, the first focusing on the global level, and the second on local actors. I will conclude by arguing that CER studies are most relevant, and have strong heuristic power, when they connect these different levels of analysis.

This article attempts to inquire what industrial relations (IR) is and analyzes the ways in which it has been defined and interpreted since its inception. Various scholars ranging from system theorists, pluralists, Marxists and neo- Marxists to the modern HR and strategic choice perspectives have added, modified or questioned its subject matter. An attempt has been made to propose a model for IR so that it can involve all the addressed as well as unaddressed issues. This model is then tested with what have been the scholarly opinions of how IR should change and respond to the contemporary realities. The article concludes by proposing empirical testing of this model in the service economy of post-industrial age when we have knowledge workers instead of blue-collar workers, flat team-based structures instead of hierarchy and participative control rather than bureaucracy. The possibility of IR, given its experience and time-tested understanding of managing workers of huge strength, to borrow the concepts from contemporary disciplines like HRM and behavioural sciences and develop new theories and frameworks that can add meaning to the new realities is also explored.

This thesis examines the concept of Canadian work experience to explore its origins as an ideological construction whose constituent work practices can be traced. Canadian work experience has no stable inherent meaning; its meaning is relational, contingent upon processes of gender, race, ethnicity, and their interconnections. Employing Dorothy E. Smith‘s (2005) institutional ethnography, I begin with the experiences of immigrants in a school board co-op program and investigate the policies and work practices of people that give shape to the meaning of Canadian work experience. The vibrancy of the participants‘ life stories are conveyed through a Reader‘s Theatre, an arts-informed research tradition. Within the taken-for-granted ideological frame of Canadian work experience, volunteer work is posited by many as a good strategy for immigrants to get established in the labour market. Immigrants often obtain volunteer experience though co-op programs, a large number of which are operated by school boards.

The co-op programs operationalize the absence of Canadian work experience as an individual deficit, and in so doing, position immigrant professionals in precarious employment relations. My research reveals that immigrant professionals with graduate degrees and years of international work experience are put through curriculum designed for adolescents with limited work experience, and, as part of the co-op program, often perform over 400 hours of unpaid work in private manufacturing companies, banks and other for-profit ventures. I argue that the co-op programs contribute to the stratification of the labour market along racial and ethnic lines as many co-op courses explicitly restrict eligibility to immigrants who speak English as a second language, and 75 per cent of immigrants are people of colour (Statistics Canada, 2008). The co-op program is one site where immigrants learn how their differences with respect to language and work experience are made to matter. Their past experience is not considered relevant, their educational achievements are downplayed and the value of their labour is eradicated. This repositioning – treating highly skilled immigrants, specifically non-native speakers of English as inexperienced high school students – is itself a process of racialization, but one that is cloaked behind the ideological construction of Canadian work experience.

ÖZ
Türk iş hukukuna göre toplu işçi çıkarma ülkemiz iş hukukunda uygulama alanı bulmuş bir iş ilişkisidir. Yasaya göre işyerinde çalışan işçi sayısı, 20 ile 100 işçi arasında ise, en az 10 işçinin; 101 ile 300 işçi arasında ise, en az yüzde on oranında işçinin, 301 ve daha fazla ise, en az 30 işçinin işine süreli fesih yoluyla fesih bildirimi süreleri içerisinde yâda bir aylık süre içinde aynı tarihte veya farklı tarihlerde son verilmesi toplu işçi çıkarma sayılır. Toplu işçi çıkarma müessesesi keyfi olarak kullanılamaz, ekonomik, teknolojik, yapısal ve benzeri işletme, işyeri veya işin gereklerine dayanmalıdır. Kanun mevsimlik ve kampanya işleri toplu işçi çıkarma hükümlerinin dışında tutulmuştur. İş barışını tehdit edebilme niteliğinden dolayı özel düzenlemeye tabi tutulan toplu işçi çıkarma düzenlemesine başvurmak isteyen işveren, bu durumu en az otuz gün önceden bir yazı ile, işyeri sendika temsilcilerine ve ilgili Çalışma ve İş Kurumu İl Müdürlüğüne bildirmek zorundadır. Sendika temsilcileri ile yapılacak görüşmede toplu işçi çıkartmanın engellenmesi yada etkilerinin azaltılması amaçlanır. Yargıtay toplu işçi çıkartma prosedürüne aykırılığın fesih bildirimlerini geçersiz kılmayacağı görüşündedir. Öte yandan yüksek yargının, işten çıkarmanın işletme, işyeri ve işin gereklerinden kaynaklanan geçerli bir nedene bağlı olarak yapılması gerektiğine hükmettiği ve toplu işçi çıkarmanın son çare olması ilkesini benimsediği görülmektedir.

This paper examines management whipsawing practices in the European auto industry based on more than 200 interviews and a comparison of three auto makers. We identify four distinct ways in which managers stage competition between plants to extract labor concessions: informal, hegemonic, coercive, and rule-based whipsawing. Practices at the three examined auto firms vary and change, we find, due to two factors: structural whipsawing capacity and management labor relations strategy. In the context of economic globalization whipsawing is an effective means for managers to extract concessions, to loosen national institutional constraints, and to diffuse employment practices internationally.

Command economy carryovers and recently implemented labor relation models mark Vietnam’s engagement with global capitalism. Numerous social and economic entitlements are tied to household registration policies, whereas tripartitism is increasingly the mode through which labor and social protections are accessed.Trade unions have a newfound dual function—they must meet the needs of both party and workers.This structural framing shapes workers’ precariousness, marked by insecure work and changing “traditional” social support institutions, particularly the family and community. Insecure work and changing social protections orbit around one another, yet this precariousness is managed through new, worker-initiated support networks.

This editorial for a special issue of Interface discusses the events at the Lonmin platinum mine at Marikana, South Africa as symbolic of the changing role of trade unions. While official trade unions in particular have been dramatically transformed through neoliberalisation, new labour movements can be found both at the grassroots among rank-and-file workers and at the margins, among the precarious, the unemployed and informal workers. The editorial also discusses articles in the special issue and concludes with a discussion of the rebirth of labour as part of a wider movement for global justice and solidarity

We apply an international relations framework and the notion of multilateral organizations as a means of understanding the nature of trade union internationalism, the conditions under which it operates. We argue that international trade unionism involves an imperfect multilateralism which requires close working relationships between small groups of unions in order to function, that is, a 'minilateral' method of working. By using this framework we attempt to highlight the intrinsic durability and adaptability of the Global Unions and also identify areas of activity that serve to strengthen them as organisations, primarily by building affiliates' engagement and investment in them. ! !

The precariousness of labour is a characteristic of the labour market that is becoming increasingly widespread in the more highly developed capitalist societies. The chapter studies how this phenomenon has been represented in Italian statistical sources in the last thirty years. The aim is to reconstruct a picture of the precariousness of work as it emerges from this particular type of source. For this reason we will be specifying the type of quantitative and qualitative analysis of the phenomenon, the criteria of classifi- cation and the terminology. These are all elements that together constitute the language of the sources examined and thus represent the medium and mode of presentation of the phenomenon in these sources. Italy in the last thirty years is referred to because here, as in other industrially very advanced countries, the phenomenon of precarious work contracts has reached increasingly significant levels. The historical point of view adopted in the chapter enables us to make three clear points. First, the precariousness of labour as studied is not a new occurrence in the history of industrial capitalism. Second, the reasons why this phenomenon has reached an unprecedented level in more recent times have been examined. Third, historical analysis is particularly useful in the critical examination of statistical sources, both in order to question how far they can be trusted to reflect the true extent of the phenomenon and in order to reconstruct the kind of representation they afford of job precariousness.
Gender specifics are also considered and a comparison is made between the trend in Italy and that in other European countries.

This chapter addresses the associational rights of undocumented migrants. The right to organise is highly valuable for this group of workers. It not only helps them access important workplace goods; it also promotes their social integration. However, undocumented workers face at least two types of hurdles in their associational activity: first, in some countries, the state bans their unionization and the employers have the power to dismiss them if they associate. Second, on other occasions, the unions themselves exclude them from membership. Are these obstacles compatible with human rights law? The question is addressed in light of the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. The chapter concludes that banning undocumented workers from forming or joining associations (including trade unions) is incompatible with fundamental liberal values of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The concept of political congruence is introduced as predictor or explanatory factor of trade
union renewal. Strategic change is more likely to succeed when political congruence exists
between the values, expectations and intended outcomes of the three sub-sets of leaders,
activists and members in a union. Political congruence (P/c) is defined as convergence of shared
political values and vision. For P/c to occur a particular chemistry of independent factors needs to
coalesce. The authors note, in particular, that there have been exceptional periods of individual
union growth, measured in terms of membership, density and effectiveness. These episodes of
exceptional growth need to be studied and understood, if one is to make sense of debates on
union ‘renewal’.