Shaping Global 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.

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.

'The most comprehensive and authoritative comparative analysis of employment relations . . .' Thomas Kochan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States '. . . breaks new ground as an integrated account of the forces shaping employment relations.' William Brown, University of Cambridge. United Kingdom Established as the standard reference for a worldwide readership of students, scholars and practitioners in international agencies, governments, companies and unions, this text offers a systematic overview of international employment relations. Chapters cover the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia, Italy, France, Germany, Denmark, Japan, South Korea, China and India. Experts examine the context of employment relations in each country: economic, historical, legal, social and political. They consider the roles of the major players: employers, unions and governments. They outline the processes of employment relations: collective bargaining and arbitration, consultation and employee involvement. Topical issues are discussed: non-unionised workplaces, novel forms of human resource management, labour law reform, multinational enterprises, networked organisations, differences between Asian and Western companies, small and medium-sized enterprises, migrant workers, technological change, labour market flexibility and pay determination. This sixth edition is fully revised with an emphasis on globalisation and comparative theories, including concepts of convergence. It offers a new framework for varieties of capitalism in the Introduction, and concludes with an insightful account of the forces shaping employment relations in the world economy.

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

Globalization of production has created opportunities and challenges for developing country producers and workers. This volume provides solutions-oriented approaches for promoting improved working conditions and labour rights in the apparel industry.

The Role of the State and Industrial Relations Edited by Adalberto Perulli & Tiziano Treu 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. The contributions in this unrivalled book provide important new perspectives on the many challenges inherent in the present and future of the relationship between industrial relations and the state. Analyzing industrial relations systems from international, supranational, European and national points of view—and with an interdisciplinary approach connecting labour law, commercial law, corporate governance and international law—this one-of-kind book examines such salient aspects of the subject as the following: cooperative versus conflictual industrial relations systems; phenomenon of constitutionalization of power by multinational enterprises; competitive, illiberal and protectionist patterns of state regulation; freedom of association and industrial relations; potential power of transnational collective bargaining; impact of worktime arrangements; role of European Works Councils; exemplary value of the German system of workers’ participation; and global framework agreements. Using a comparative approach (the European Union, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Japan, China, the United States, Brazil, South Africa, India), the book reconstructs the general framework of global industrial relations, considering challenges and future prospects and proposing a new agenda for the state. Contributors include widely renowned professors of labour, commercial and international law, as well as experts from the International Labour Organization and the International Society for Labour and Social Security Law. The debate about industrial relations and the state in our globalized world is of major concern for practitioners in governments, companies, employers’ associations and trade unions, as well as for company managers, entrepreneurs, consultants, judges, human rights lawyers and academics interested in labour, industrial relations and social rights in European and international contexts.

Examines the interaction between industrial relations and international relations in the global economy and analyses the key developments in union strategy on a local, national, regional and global level.