Global Industrial Relations

Breaking new ground and drawing on contributions from the leading academics in the field, this volume in the Global HRM Series specifically focuses on industrial relations.

This book assesses the phenomenon of international framework agreements (IFAs), examining their implementation and impact around the world as well as their promotion of ILO standards. This volume includes contributions from fifteen international specialists to give a comprehensive discussion of the 80-plus IFAs that existed in July 2010.

"Employment Relations" is widely taught in business schools around the world. Increasingly however more emphasis is being placed on the comparative and international dimensions of the relations between employers and workers. It is becoming ever more important to comprehend today’s work and employment issues alongside a knowledge of the dynamics between global financial and product markets, global production chains, national and international employment actors and institutions and the ways in which these relationships play out in different national contexts. This textbook is the first to present a cross-section of country studies, including all four BRIC countries, Brazil, Russia, India and China alongside integrative thematic chapters covering all the important topics needed to excel in this field. The textbook also benefits from the editors' and contributors' experience as leading scholars in Employment Relations. The book is an ideal resource for students on advanced undergraduate and postgraduate comparative programmes across areas such as Employment Relations, Human Resource Management, Political Economy, Labour Politics, Industrial and Economic Sociology, Regulation and Social Policy.

As more and more corporations operate around the globe, the development of an international perspective on industrial relations becomes increasingly urgent. Toward that end, the contributors to Workplace Industrial Relations and the Global Challenge examine the workplace itself. On the basis of ethnographic case studies and comparative data, they conclude that global economic forces and transnational corporations are, indeed, driving industrial relations initiatives. However, national and workplace cultures, as well as state policies, still strongly affect the ways in which cooperation and conflict are negotiated on the shop floor.

Thoroughly updated and revised by a team of international experts, this fifth edition continues to be the most authoritative and accessible overview of industrial relations practices around the world.

The Role of the State and Industrial Relations', using a comparative approach (the European Union, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Japan, China, the United States, Brazil, South Africa and India), reconstructs the general framework of global industrial relations considering challenges and future prospects and proposing a new agenda for the state. The new era of industrial relations that has been stealthily changing the world of work in recent decades seems to have reached a stage where it can be systematically monitored and analyzed, in great part because the "creeping renationalization" that has been noted since the financial crisis of 2008 has reinvigorated state intervention in essential economic structures. In the globalized word, with the internationalization of the economy and increasing competitive pressures, industrial relations are developing in new directions. The contributions in this book provide important new perspectives on the many challenges inherent in the present and future of the relationship between industrial relations and the state.

The international economy is a key factor shaping relations between employers, unions and governments in the world's advanced industrial societies. This study reports how globalization affects the contemporary workplace and how workplace policies can make