Bøker i Routledge Studies in Employment and Work Relations in Context-serien

Public services throughout Europe have undergone dramatic restructuring processes in recent years in connection with liberalization and privatization. While evaluations of the successes of public services have focused on prices and efficiency, much less attention has been paid to the impacts of liberalization and privatization on employment, labor relations, and working conditions. This book addresses this gap by illustrating the ways in which liberalization has contributed to increasing private and foreign ownership of public services, the decentralization of labor relations has amplified pressure on wages, and decreasing employment numbers and increasing workloads have improved productivity partly at the cost of service quality. Examining diverse public-service sectors including network industries, public transportation, and hospitals, and using international case studies, Privatization of Public Services covers a wide range of aspects of service provision, with particular emphasis on companies and workers. The result is a unique picture of the changes created by the liberalization processes in Europe.

Through the work of leading international specialists, this collection of essays examines the process and dynamic of transnational trade union action and provides analytical and conceptual tools to understand these developments. The research presented here emphasizes that the direction of transnational solidarity remains contested, subject to experimentation and negotiation, and includes studies of often overlooked developments in transition and developing countries with original analyses from the European Union and NAFTA areas. Providing a fresh examination of transnational solidarity, this volume offers neither a romantic or overly optimistic narrative of a borderless unionism, nor does it fall into a fatalistic or pessimistic account of international union solidarity. It instead disentangles the processes and dynamics of institution building and challenges the conventional national based forms of unionism that prevailed in the latter half of the twentieth century.

Presenting a survey of continuity and change in trade unions of the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK, this contemporary text provides a firm basis for informed discussion about the place of trade unions in modern economies.

In this work leading scholars take stock of the evidence and implications of the new workplace, drawing on examples from a variety of contexts, they seek to characterize the nature of contemporary workplace change, and assess its implications.

This work examines the relations between patterns of labour control (production regimes) and approaches to national labour (regulatory regimes). The contributors assess the nature of labour resistance and accommodation across a range of manufacturing industries in different national contexts.

Analyzing the impact of "Japanese-style" management techniques such as lean production, teamworking and business unionism of factory workers, this text investigates different facets of the organization of the labour process and employment relations within 15 Japanese transplants in South Wales.

This collection of country studies explores changing relationships between the state, employers and labour in an increasingly internationalized world economy. It covers ten countries and examines the tensions and contradictions caused by neo-liberal market agendas.

An examination of the process of transformation in work organization, technology and labour and product markets. The analysis moves between a broad appreciation of structural developments within the economies of the advanced industrial nations, and an in-depth study of enterprise and workplace.

Relates stories of minority sexual identity from six organizations drawn from three different industry sectors: the Emergency Services, the Civil Service and the Banking sector. This book intends to make a contribution to our understanding discursive construction of identity in the workplace, as experienced by sexual minorities.

Although the world is undergoing enormous changes involving politics, the economy and society, the position and place of the state, and the significance of state policy in this process, is heavily contested.

This book examines the relationship between the organization of work, industrial relations, production spaces and the dynamics of capitalist investment, using a case study of London manufacturing.

First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book examines countries that have tried, with varying degrees of success, to use legislative strategies to encourage and support collective bargaining, including Australiäs Fair Work Act. It is the first major study of the operation and impact of the new collective bargaining framework introduced under the Fair Work Act, combining theoretical and practical perspectives. In addition, a number of comparative pieces provide rich insights into the Australian legislation¿s adaptation of concepts from overseas collective bargaining systems ¿ including good faith bargaining, and majority employee support as the basis for establishing bargaining rights. Contributors to this volume are all leading labor law, industrial relations, and human resource management scholars from Australia, and from Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States.

As the world economy is liberalized, it is vital for non-governmental organizations to create an international agenda. This title studies what makes such organizations successful on an international level. The focus is on trade unions, as a key international group of NGOs.

This book illustrates the ways in which liberalization has contributed to increasing private and foreign ownership of public services, the decentralization of labor relations has amplified pressure on wages, and decreasing employment numbers and increasing workloads have improved productivity partly at the cost of service quality. Examining diverse public-service sectors including network industries, public transportation, and hospitals, and using international case studies, Privatization of Public Services covers a wide range of aspects of service provision, with particular emphasis on companies and workers.

Featuring research from Australia, Europe and North America, this collection of cutting-edge, multi-disciplinary research-based chapters on work, workers and the regulation and management of workplace health and safety explores important historical examples and emerging contemporary trends in international and historical perspectives.

An appraisal of current offshore industrial relations, and safety regulations instituted after the 1988 Alpha disaster in the North Sea. This text discusses the oil industry's attempts to contain subsequent, unwelcome regulatory interference, and assesses trade unionism in the offshore industry.

Unfree labor has not disappeared from advanced capitalist economies. It is in the context of this rapidly changing landscape that this book consolidates and expands on research designed to understand new institutions for work in the global era. This edited collection provides a theoretical and empirical exploration of the links between unfree labor, intermediation, and modes of regulation, with particular focus on the evolving institutional forms and political-economic contexts that have been implicated in, and shaped by, the ascendency of temp agencies. What is distinctive about this collection is this bi-focal lens: it makes a substantial theoretical contribution by linking disparate literatures on, and debates about, the co-evolution of contingent work and unfree labor, new forms of labor intermediation, and different regulatory approaches; but it further lays the foundation for this theory in a series of empirically rich and geographically diverse case studies. This integrative approach is grounded in a cross-national comparative framework, using this approach as the basis for assessing how, and to what extent, temporary agency work can be considered unfree wage labor.

Offering a sociological analysis of trade unionism in the globalized era, this book gives a comparative analysis of the debate surrounding trade unions and their renewal. Using theory and a variety of case studies, it explores: the debate about the form of trade unionism; the bases for collective organization; and the struggle of trade unionism.

In this work leading scholars take stock of the evidence and implications of the new workplace, drawing on examples from a variety of contexts, they seek to characterize the nature of contemporary workplace change, and assess its implications.

Regional trade agreements have expanded over the years, and have become a significant, if controversial, factor in the expanse of economic globalization. This book attempts to take an interdisciplinary approach to address labour regulation. It argues that there is a dynamic interplay between institutions and actors of social regulation.

An exploration of the interplay between employment and domestic relations within a specific group of young women, which includes single working women without children and working mothers. The text is based on actual experiences, as related in interviews.

Why is vocational training seen to be an "old" institution? This book seeks to respond to this question. It offers a comparative analysis of the vocational training systems in ten different countries.

Drawing from the fields of industrial sociology, management studies and labour process theory, this title attempts to understand the reform agenda in relation to teachers, their professional identities and their experience of work by drawing on critical perspectives that seek to challenge orthodox policy discourses relating to remodelling.

Presenting a survey of continuity and change in trade unions of the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK, this contemporary text provides a firm basis for informed discussion about the place of trade unions in modern economies.

The worldwide expansion of the tourism industry creates many encounters between global agents and local forces. This study documents and discusses such a global-local encounter, based on fieldwork carried out in hotels in Barbados and Malta.

The implications of globalization for labour are more often asserted than analyzed. This collection seeks to remedy this deficiency by presenting contemporary research on the relationship between the globalization of production and the regulation of labour.

The focus of this work is unionization in the road haulage industry, in particular the role of leadership in determining the quality of union organization. It assesses theories of unionization and democracy and utlizes oral and documentary sources, including archives of the TGWU.

Trade union movements in many countries face uncertain futures. After three decades of economic restructuring at both national and international levels, the way forward for unions is unclear. This title expores the background, current roles and prospects of trade unions in six countries.