SASE 2005: Abstracts Network E

Abstracts Network E - Industrial Relations and the Political Economy

Matthew Allen (Manchester Metropolitan University Business School, United Kingdom)
Lothar Funk (Cologne Institute for Business Research, United Kingdom)
Heinz Tüselmann (Manchester Metropolitan University Business School, United Kingdom)
E-Mail address: m.allen@mmu.ac.uk, h.tuselman@mmu.ac.uk
Can Variation in Public Policies Account for Differences in Comparative Advantage?

This paper assesses the validity of one of the main claims of the Varieties of Capitalism approach that public policies can, in part at least, help to shape export success. This paper uses data on revealed symmetric comparative advantage and odds ratios for the UK (a 'liberal market economy') and Germany (the paragon of a 'co-ordinated market economy'), as well as for a handful of other OECD countries to determine whether the VoC is correct to expect 'cross-national patterns of [product] specialization' (Hall and Soskice 2001b, 38). OECD export data at the one- and two-digit levels form the basis of this assessment. Data from 1999 were chosen as they are contemporary to important contributions to the VoC literature (Soskice 1999, Hall and Soskice 2001). Data from 1994 are also included to provide a dynamic element to the analysis. The results do not support claims that there is a link between a country's success in certain product markets and its (para) public policy system. They do, however, raise important conceptual and methodological issues for the approach. These issues not only highlight the need for carefully crafted research designs, but also the potential variation in firms' strategies within the same political economy.

Uwe Becker (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
Corina Hendriks (Univeristy of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
E-Mail Address: k.u.becker@uva.nl
Open Systemness and Contested Reference Frames: On the Stability and Dynamics of Varieties of Capitalism

The theory on the Varieties of capitalism is conceived as a systems theory. Often without explicitly using systems theoretical language, the liberal and coordinated (or third) varieties are constructed as entities, the parts of which are complementary. A main criticism is that this renders impossible the understanding of institutional change. While joining this criticism I will argue that a systems perspective, more exactly a perspective of open and relatively loose ordered social entities revealing a certain degree of systemness, is appropriate for analysing varieties of capitalism. This is because for the survival of the people political economies need to generate this systemness - without strictly being a system. No capitalist variety can stay competitive without a considerable degree of functionality or complementarity. No automatism leading to systemness, however, does exist because the parts of political economies (firms, branches, stock markets, state departments) are relatively autonomous, and reference frames, consisting of economic, social and environmental goals are contested. These aspects of openness are the basis for change that on the other hand is kept in check by the forces of path inertia.

Reynald Bourque (Université de Montréal, Canada)
E-Mail address: reynald.bourque@umontreal.ca
International Framework Agreements: A Step Toward International Collective Bargaining?

Our paper analyses the emergence of International Framework Agreements (IFA) as a new instrument for international trade unions to attain their goals. The economic and political events of the last two decades have led to considerable changes in the structures and priorities of international trade unions. The collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe resulted in a growth of the influence of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) at world level. The International Trade Secretariats (ITS) which bring together industry based national trade unions did not escape these economic and political changes. The growth in importance of multinational companies in the global economy has resulted in a series of mergers of ITSs; their number dropped from an approximate twenty in 1980 to ten in 2000. ITSs also have more than forty world union councils in to place since 1960 providing coordination of union actions in multinational companies. In 1998, the ICFTU and ITSs have adopted a code of labour practices requiring that multinational companies respect the fundamental labour rights defined in the Tripartite Declaration of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and apply these same rules to their subcontractors. This code serves as foundations to IFAs negotiated by the ITSs and multinational companies. According to the list published September 30, 2004, on ICFTU's website, 32 IFAs have been negotiated by five ITSs (ICEM, IFBWW, IMF, UFI, UNI). Our analysis of IFAs is centered on three key questions. How do these agreements relate to the ILO's core conventions, to the obligations of the subcontractors, and to the follow-up procedures? What are the optimal conditions for the negotiation of these kinds of agreements? What roles do the labour and management actors play in the implementation and follow-up of these agreements? In the light of the data collected to answer to these questions (IFAs analysis, interviews with ITS negotiators), we will review the content and the efficiency of IFAs as well as their contribution to international collective bargaining.

Klaus-Peter Buss (SOFI - Soziologisches Forschungsinstitut an der Georg-August Universitaet Goettingen, Germany)
Volker Wittke (SOFI, Germany)
E-Mail address: kbuss@gwdg.de, vwittke@gwdg.de
Varieties of German Capitalism

Fifteen years ago East and West Germany were unified. For the East German economy this implied a specific path of transformation since the adoption of the West German model of capitalism was widely seen as most promising. So very soon it was tried to replicate central institutions of the West German Model, while the West German production model was praised as the recipe for success. Today it's obvious that these transferred models and institutions never developed the same effectiveness. Compared to West Germany East Germany is characterized by a lack of apprenticeships, general problems in corporate financing, weak industrial relations etc. This lack of institutional effectiveness is often seen either as a proof of the functional obsolescence of the whole German model or as a central cause of East German socioeconomic problems. However, a lot of East German companies seem to develop very well in this apparently disadvantageous environment. Drawing on our own research our paper will show that successful companies either made use of the weak institutional structuring to shape their regional environment, were able to find functional equivalents to institutions that obviously didn't work under East German conditions, or found their own ways to make them work. Despite the transfer of West German institutions, a distinct and quite stable East German development path has evolved. Whether this will result in a distinct East German model of capitalism or is still a transitional phenomenon has to remain open.

Eshien Chong (University Paris Sud - Paris XI, France)
E-Mail address: chong.eshien@online.fr
Yardstick Competition vs. Individual Incentive Regulation: What the Theoretical Literature Has to Say?

Incentive regulation can take on roughly two forms: an individual one or a yardstick one. In individual incentive regulation, the regulator would regulate a monopoly based solely on some of its own observable measures, while under yardstick competition the regulatory scheme will be determined on performances of the monopoly relatively to that of its peers. Both schemes would push the monopoly toward greater efficiency. However, using schemes based on an absolute measure might well create different effects on the monopolies from the case when the regulator uses a scheme based on relative measures. Therefore our aim is to understand circumstances under which one scheme can be preferred over the other. We find that yardstick competition allows the regulator to save on informational rents, and allows for better trade off between incentives and insurance. However, under yardstick competition, the regulator creates a more complex environment, and regulated monopolies have more strategies at their disposal to react to the regulatory constrains. As such, before implementing such a type of regulation, the regulator must take into account the possibility of inducing non desired equilibrium(ia).

Virginia Doellgast (Cornell University, USA)
Ian Greer (Cornell University, USA)
E-Mail address: vld7@cornell.edu
Vertical Disintegration and the Disorganization of German Industrial Relations

Vertical disintegration has only recently become popular in Germany, but is having lasting effects on firm structure and work organization. As new subcontracting and subsidiary strategies move from the margins to the mainstream in German firms, managers have grown more aggressive in using corporate restructuring to renegotiate collective agreements and to introduce greater variation in pay and working conditions. How have these trends affected labor-management relations in "model Germany"? In this paper, we compare restructuring in the telecommunications, auto and health care industries, based on over 200 interviews with managers, union and works council representatives, and policy makers. We argue that vertical disintegration is having deep and lasting effects on the "dual system" of industrial relations by breaking down firm and sector boundaries and introducing new forms of competition between employee groups. These trends are contributing to a rapid process of "disorganization" in German industrial relations that recent comparative research has overlooked or underestimated. Although unions are scrambling to re-establish employee representation in new firms and sectors, they have had uneven success. We conclude with a discussion of the different strategies unions are adopting to revitalize their organizations under these harsh new conditions.

Jan Drahokoupil (Central European University, Hungary)
E-Mail address: drahokoupil@email.cz
Socio-economic Governance in East-Central Europe: Regulationist and State-Theoretical Analysis

Recent emergence of the 'regional tiger under Tatras' as the financial press would have the radical neoliberal reform in Slovakia, marks the shifts in the modes of economic governance in East-Central Europe. These transformations reflect in a particular way the after-Fordist transformations of global capitalism. It seems that the post-socialist states have embarked on the developmental strategies based on supply-side management and foreign-direct-investment attracting. This paper describes transformation of the state form and its intervention in the Visegrad counties after the fall of communism in 1989. It investigates the effects of state forms on the improbable reproduction and production of capitalism(s). In order to characterize respective state forms, I construct their ideal-typical models in a comparative analysis. At this point, I can outline the analysis of the Czech case. Here, I argue, in the late 1990s, the mode of governance in the Czech Republic has experienced a crisis of a specific post-socialist state regime, which I call Klausian welfare national state. A regulatory regime and state form that may be emerging from the search for an alternative can be described as Porterian workfare postnational clan, which is a local articulation of the Schumpeterian workfare postnational regime.

Werner Eichhorst (Institute for Employment Research, Germany)
Regina Konle-Seidl (Institute for Employment Research, Germany)
E-Mail address: werner.eichhorst@iab.de; regina.konle-seidl@iab.de
The Interaction of Labour Market Regulation and Labour Market Policies in Recent Welfare State Reforms

Employment protection legislation, unemployment insurance, and active labour market policy are welfare state institutions which not only determine the level of income and employment security - they also influence overall labour market adaptability to changing economic conditions. Hence, in order to increase the adaptability of European labour markets, recent reforms had to address more than one of these policy areas. The first aim of the paper is to describe recent reform sequences affecting employment protection, unemployment insurance, and active labour market policies in a number of European welfare states (Denmark, the United Kingdom, Sweden, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain and Germany). The paper shows whether and to what extent policy patterns in different countries converge in the direction of a new balance of flexibility and security ("flexicurity") with employment protection being eased and labour market policies being "activated" through a combination of "carrots and sticks". Secondly, in terms of the political economy of welfare state reforms, the paper will answer the question whether consistent reforms of the three crucial institutions are more likely in political systems characterized by relative strong government and/or social partnership since such institutional prerequisites may favour "package deals" across policy areas.

Roland Erne (University College Dublin, Ireland)
E-Mail address: Roland.Erne@ucd.ie
Europeanisation, Labour Migration and a Future for "Inclusive Corporatism"

There is agreement that the EU exposes national industrial relations systems to increased competition. But it is not often realized that these competitive pressures take different forms in different sectors. In manufacturing these pressures are mediated through the free movement of goods, while in construction they are mediated through the free movement of people. In the later instance, therefore, the distinction between "competitive corporatism" and European coordination of collective bargaining makes little sense. Likewise, while the wage coordination guidelines of the European Metalworkers' Federation questions the autonomy of its affiliates, the European Federation of the Building and Woodworkers' aims to protect the autonomy of its members, i.e. through its lobbying against the Bolkestein directive. Nevertheless, the construction unions also face a dilemma, namely whether to adopt a hostile or an inclusive posture in relation to foreign workers. Here, I propose to compare the conflicting policies of the German and the Swiss construction workers' unions. The analysis demonstrates that the more corporatist Swiss arrangements were matched by a much more inclusive union approach vis-à-vis foreigners. This questions the nationalistic connotation of "competitive corporatism" and raises the prospect of a union strategy that might be more properly referred to as "inclusive corporatism".

Carola Frege (London School of Economics, United Kingdom)
E-Mail address: c.m.frege@lse.ac.uk
Varieties of Industrial Relations Research: Take-over, Convergence or Divergence?

Industrial relations research faces various pressures of internationalization. Not only do global economic forces increasingly shape the subject of the discipline, employment relations, but also the academic community itself is becoming more international. The article discusses whether and in what ways IR research is affected by these trends. It is based on a comparative, longitudinal study of journal publications in the US, Britain and Germany. The findings reveal significantly different patterns of IR research across the three countries. In particular, the strong variation between US and British research patterns challenges the common notion of a homogenous Anglo-Saxon style in conducting social science research. The analysis suggests that despite growing internationalization, IR research continues to be strongly embedded in nationally specific research cultures and traditions.

Trygve Gulbrandsen (Institute for Social Research, Norway)
E-Mail address: tgu@samfunnsforskning.no
Family Businesses and Unions

There has been an increasing scholarly interest in how the governance system and the organization of private businesses are influenced by what kind of owners the businesses have. A large part of private businesses are owned by the founders or their families and inheritors. There are several studies examining to what extent founder and family owned businesses are organized, managed and governed differently than companies with other types of owners In Scandinavia in general and in Norway particularly, formalized cooperation between the employers and employees is an important part of the governance system in the enterprises. Based upon laws the employees and their organizations are represented in the board and the general assembly of the firms. Moreover, through laws and formal agreements there have been established various bodies within the firms where management and employee representatives meet in order to discuss and find solutions to specific problems or challenges. To a large extent, this industrial relations system presupposes the presence of unions, which elects the various employee representatives and organize discussions of the interests and claims of the employees. To my knowledge, internationally very few researchers have focused upon how family ownership affects or is related to the presence of unions and union organization. Are employees in family businesses unionized to the same extent as in other Norwegian businesses, or are trade unions less common in family businesses? Mass media in Norway have on several occasions referred to examples of family business owners being reluctant to trade unions and unionization among the employees. But are these examples representative of the whole population of family businesses? There are theoretical reasons to believe that unions will be less present and the degree of unionization lower in family businesses. According to the general theory about ownership, owners are residual claimants. Active unions work for higher salaries and better work conditions, both of which may reduce the residual, i.e. the profits of the firm and concomitantly the incomes of the owners. Against this background owners may be expected to be reluctant to unionization among their employees. Previous researchers have demonstrated that family owners prefer to keep personal control of the running of the business. Active unions may force an owner to relinquish part of his control of the firm. This situation, too, may motivate owners to counter unionization among their employees. There are, however, also theoretical arguments in favour of expecting no difference between family owned firms and other types of businesses as to unionization. According to institutional theory, firms will attempt to adopt or copy management and organization principles which in the business community generally are looked upon as efficient, wise, or "modern", in other words which have been institutionalized. In the Norwegian economy there is a high level of accept of unions, and they are looked upon as legitimate and useful partners. From this pint of view one should expect that family business owners host unions as often as businesses with another ownership structure. To explain any lower degree of unionization in family businesses it is not, however, sufficient to refer to any reluctance against unions on the part of the owner-managers. It is as well necessary to discuss why the employees in these firms themselves abstain from support become members of a union. There are at least three possible explanations of why employees hesitate to join a union: (1) In local labour markets with few alternative employment opportunities employees may be careful not to provoke an owner into downsizing the company. In such a situation unionization may be perceived by the employees as a provocation which should be avoided in order save their jobs. (2) The employees may be less motivated to join a union because the owner, deliberately or not, pay them higher salaries and offer more benefits than in comparable non-family firms. (3) The family businesses may have fostered a culture, f.i. treating the employees as members of an extended family, which gives the employees no incentive to unionize. In order to examine the prevalence of unions in family businesses and check the validity of the various expectations and explanations discussed above I will avail myself of data from a survey of a representative sample of nearly 2358 Norwegian private and public establishments of which 1600 are private establishments - the Work and Enterprise Study 2003. In this study a "family business" denotes a private firm where a person or family owns at least 50 per cent of the shares. 42 per cent of the private firms were family businesses. Within the category of family businesses we distinguish between firms managed by the owner or a member of the owner family (owner-management) and firms managed by employed, professional CEOs.

Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick (Birkbeck College, University of London, United Kingdom)
E-Mail address: r.gumbrell-mccormick@bbk.ac.uk
Conflicting Demands: Equal Opportunities and Solidarity

The rise of equal opportunities policies in Europe, North America and other regions has placed new demands on industrial relations actors, trade unions, managers and policy makers alike. In order to calculate the extent of discrimination - whether against women, black and ethnic minority, gay and lesbian, or disabled workers - and monitor the effects of anti-discrimination policies, it is necessary that workers agree to be identified as members of a particular group, and for employers and governments to have the power to identify them as such. This process requires changes to law and custom in many countries, and poses a particular challenge to the trade union movement, based as it is on a traditional notion of solidarity that transcends - or hides? - such differences. In my paper, I will explore how European labour movements are reacting to the challenge of diversity, while seeking to maintain and strengthen solidarity. I will focus on two 'identity' groups: racial minorities and disabled workers, in the UK, France, Denmark, and the Netherlands.

Anke Hassel (International University Bremen, Germany)
E-Mail address: a.hassel@iu-bremen.de
New Forms of Governance in Labor Relations - Embedding Business in a Global Economy

In the last decade new forms of governance of multinational companies have emerged that operate beyond the established structures of labour regulations. Companies have committed themselves either voluntarily to codes of conduct and other forms of Corporate Social Responsibility and Social Reporting or have been subjected to assessments by Social Rating Initiatives and Ethical or Social Criteria of Investment Funds. The paper assess how and to what extent these developments have an impact on established forms of industrial relations in the industrialized world that has been characterized for a long time by 'embedded liberalism' - generally defined as the reconciliation of the efficiency of markets with values of social community. It argues that with declining union strength and increasing labour market deregulation in many countries of the OECD these new forms of governance are increasingly important mechanisms to set labour standards even in countries with strong industrial relations institutions.

Richard Hyman (London School of Economics, United Kingdom)
E-Mail address: r.hyman@lse.ac.uk
Soft Law and Hard Markets: A New Mode of Regulation?

As Polanyi emphasized, the creation of a market economy depended on intense and systematic action by the state; the concept of laissez-faire is oxymoronic. The reinvention of 'free markets' in the latter decades of the twentieth century similarly required strong states. Britain under Thatcher represents a paradigm case. But what type of regulation emerges once marketisation is consolidated? And how do we make sense of marketisation at the level of the European Union when the EU 'state' is typically regarded as weak? The paper will explore such issues.

Angela Jamison (University of California, Los Angeles, USA)
E-Mail address: ajamison@ucla.edu
On the Logics of Collective Action: Corporations, Union Leaders and Strikers in the Southern California Supermarket Conflict

After 50 years of union contracts and 25 of amicable union relations, Southern California's three major supermarkets organized in Fall, 2003, to demand a renegotiated contract with sharp wage and healthcare reductions. The UFCW (United Food and Commercial Workers), which represented the workers, struck one of the three markets; the other two locked out their own workers in a show of solidarity that endured throughout the conflict. Combining participant observational data from 4.5 months of strike line activity around Los Angeles with newspaper accounts of UFCW leadership's internal workings, this paper shows the UFCW did NOT match the corporations' solidarity or organizational planning. Rather, as leaders struggled to stretch human and financial resources, and to save face, they directed little information or training to striking workers, who created measures to ascertain "how the strike [wa]s going." As those who remained on the lines lost a sense of contact with strikers at other markets, and as local cleavages formed among those with varying seniority and language fluencies, strikers' increasingly relied on individualized experiences-whether they had "good" or "bad" days and how that influenced their will to continue-to assess the "success" of the strike in general.

Jooyeon Jeong (Korea University, Korea)
E-Mail address: jjooyeon@korea.ac.kr
Diverse Shifts in Sizes of Union Memberships Across Korean Industries

As observed in many advanced nations during the last two decades, unions have recorded industrial diversities in shifts in sizes of union membership within Korea. This paper finds different directions and rates of growth and declines in those sizes in metal, chemical, auto transport, and financial industries in Korea after 1986. In these four industries, previous patterns of union growth, industrial growth stages, institutional environment of industries, personal and firm-related structural variables, and behavioral roles of unions and employers turn out to be associated with their differences. In parallel with our understandings on growing diversities of union sizes across industries in advanced nations, the Korean experience calls for building a comparative micro-socioeconomic theory taking into account of behavioral factors of industrial relations actors in association with several social and economic environments at micro(firm and industry)-levels.

Marta Kahancova (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
E-Mail address: M.Kahancova@uva.nl
One Company - Three Factories: A Local Response to Employment Flexibility Needs

Multinational companies (MNCs) have often been viewed as actors bringing the same challenges to different labor markets and industrial relations systems. In contrast to this statement, this paper aims to discuss the extent to which we can consider MNCs as actors sustaining, or even generating, the persistent variation of workplace-level employment practices and industrial relations. Based on studies on (non)convergence in industrial relations and employment practices (Ferner and Hyman, Visser and van Ruysseveld, Marginson), the author discusses the responsiveness of a Western-European MNC to employment flexibility needs in local conditions in Poland, Hungary and Belgium where the company's selected factories are located. Instead of centrally diffused policies, we find different systems of managing employment flexibility in these factories. The company's intention to utilize local conditions and to develop locally tailored employment flexibility measures explains this variation. The paper focuses on workforce fluctuations, working time, structure of contracts, and the share of temporary workers. After describing the existing variation in flexibility measures, the author assesses the involvement of trade unions in flexibility negotiations, and discusses the local labor market characteristics, institutions, and industrial relations practices that enabled the multinational employer to develop the described flexibility measures.

John Kelly (Birkbeck, University of London, United Kingdom)
Kirsten Hamann (University of Central Florida, USA)
E-Mail address: j.kelly@bbk.ac.uk
Party Politics and the Re-emergence of Social Pacts in Western Europe

One of the most striking developments in contemporary West European industrial relations is the re-emergence of national agreements negotiated between labor unions and governments, normally described as 'social pacts'. The most influential accounts of social pacts suggest they re-emerged in the 1990s at the instigation of governments as centralized mechanisms of wage control. Governments were said to be responding to competitive pressures on European industry and to the economic ceilings on public debt and borrowing in the Maastricht Treaty (1992) in preparation for European Monetary Union. The conventional wisdom is that wage pacts played a significant role in moderating wage settlements, thereby contributing to low inflation and falling unemployment within the EU (see for example Hancke 2002; Hancke and Rhodes 2004; Hassel 2002, 2003). This paper argues that the presence or absence of pacts also reflects strategic choices by political parties about the policies which will maximize their votes and seats and assist their remaining in, or returning to, office. We use case study evidence from both pact and non-pact countries, including Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain and Austria, to illustrate the role of party electoral strategies.

Bernhard Kittel (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
Bernhard Ebbinghaus (University of Mannheim, Denmark)
E-Mail address: b.e.a.kittel@uva.nl; bebbinghaus@sowi.uni-mannheim.de
European Rigidity vs. American Flexibility: The Institutional Adaptability of Collective Bargaining

According to the "unified theory", higher unemployment in Europe as compared to the US is caused by higher wage rigidity which in turn results from more "inflexible" labor market institutions. Focusing on one important institution, the system of wage coordination, the empirical analysis shows that the variety of bargaining patterns across European countries and over the period 1971-1998 contradicts a simple juxtaposition of the US with a European average. Although some national bargaining systems have to cope with "excessive" wage growth, many others do not trigger higher average wage growth than the US. Moreover, some forms of coordination even systematically exceed the American performance. Secondly, we show that contrary to the contention of rigidity, the labor market actors in most European countries are responsive to the performance of their bargaining system; they tend to adapt their system if wages seem to overshoot. Hence, the rigidity of Europe thesis does not hold in a more detailed cross-national and long-term analysis of the institutional changes in wage bargaining systems.

Balazs Kotosz (Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary)
E-Mail address: balazs.kotosz@uni-corvinus.hu
Fiscal Policy of Transition

When we want to analyze fiscal policy, we need uniform and internationally comparable data. If the necessary data is available, sophisticated econometric analysis can be made. If not, as usually in reality, the analyst has to develop special methods useful only in this case, or has to use simple methods in his work (calculations of means and standard deviations as robust methods). This general statement can be represented by the example of transition economics. During post-communist transition, the production of internationally comparable fiscal data was not the main aim of the national authorities. After one year of data hunt, only a notably unbalanced panel database could be done, what does not allow the use of special econometric techniques. Simple methods give interesting results, and can be the base of drafting the ideal fiscal policy of transition which is made of one year strong restrictions followed by two years of smaller expansion.

Paul-Andre Lapointe (Laval University, Canada)
Guy Cucumel (UQAM, Canada); Paul R. Bélanger (UQAM, Canada)
Benoît Lévesque (UQAM, Canada)
E-Mail address: paul-andre.lapointe@rlt.ulaval.ca; cucumel.guy@uqam.ca; belanger.paul_r@uqam.ca; levesque.benoit@uqam.ca
Logics of Workplace Innovations

It is possible to challenge technological and market determinism. The primary method for diffusing organizational innovations in the workplace is to foster a vigorous social dynamic. In non-union plants, the main vehicles for this dynamic are HRM practices and participation in intermediate sectoral institutions, whereas in union plants, union strategies and jointness fulfill this role. Organizational innovations are found in a variety of contexts each of which is guided by its own logic, which depends on the union status of the plant. In non-unionized plants, the social dynamic dominates, regardless of the type of innovation, while in unionized plants two distinct logics co-exist. In unionized plants, the new technical-productive paradigm circulates more readily under pressure from technology and globalization. However, in these plants greater participation (in work teams and quality groups) is prompted by the social dynamic, which is fostered by partnerships and jointness. The social dynamic in union plants is substantially different from that of non-union plants. In non-union plants, innovations are closely tied to flexible remuneration, whereas in union plants they are associated with social dialogue and partnership. These are the principal conclusions emerging from a survey conducted among management and union representatives in Quebec manufacturing sector.

Andrew Lawrence (University of Virginia, USA)
E-Mail address: andrew.lawrence@virginia.edu
Paradoxes and Pathways of Power: Associations and Democratization in Twentieth Century Germany, South Africa and the United States

This paper compares the patterns of associational power among union and employer federation development in Germany, South Africa and the U.S. in order to do three things. First, this comparison allows for a more complex pattern of sequencing and understanding of democratization and welfare state development than is usually acknowledged in comparative studies. Second, it delineates how important sources of workplace-based and associational labor movement power interact and change over time, with lasting effects in terms of labor-market and welfare policies in the three countries. Whereas social-democratic party affiliation is usually held to be the most important expression of labor movement power, this applies at best poorly or not at all among the cases examined, so that other forms of interaction grow in analytical importance. Third, it provides a necessary context for understanding the divergent contemporary politics of unemployment and underemployment in each case. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the "varieties of capitalism" literature accounts for the patterns described.

Rebecca Oliver (Northwestern University, USA)
E-Mail address: r-oliver@northwestern.edu
Globalization and Diverging Developments in Wage Inequality: Which Institutions Matter?

Why has pay inequality, the difference between the wages and salaries of the highest and lowest paid individuals, grown in many advanced industrial countries over the past 25 years, and not in others? My paper investigates how key institutions magnify or mitigate pressures from growing international competition and new production techniques on the degree of wage inequality. Based on extensive field research in Italy and Sweden, I have identified two bargaining institutions which decisively shape developments in wage inequality: 1) industry-wide wage scales, more precisely the extent to which industry-wide wage minima (wage scales) cover both high and lower skilled workers; and 2) union confederations, specifically the way in which union confederations group workers of different skill levels. In order to access the explanatory power of these institutional variables across OECD countries, I conduct a series of cross-sectional time-series analyses using data from a recent unpublished dataset from the OECD (2002), which covers 14 OECD countries from 1980 to 2000. To anticipate, the results strongly indicate that one of the new variables in particular (the presence of industry-wide wage scales) is a key factor in the evolution in wage inequality across OECD countries.

Oscar Molina Romo (European University Institute, Italy)
E-Mail address: oscar.molina@iue.it
Still the Century of Political Exchange? Trade Union Strategies and Policy Adjustment in Southern Europe

The 1990s have witnessed a renaissance of social partnership forms of governance in the EU. This return has been more significant and paradoxical in so-called weak neocorporatist countries. Several consensuses have emerged from the literature devoted to explain its causes: the identification of exogenous forces as the main explanatory factor; a re-dimensioned role for formal institutions and organizational architectures of corporate actors; macroeconomic stability and a competitiveness-friendly regulatory framework as the driving motivation and finally governments as key players (very often first-mover actors) in the process. Through the comparison of Italy and Spain (two most-similar cases in terms of macroeconomic conditions and institutional / organizational endowments) this article challenges some of the above consensus. The article starts by illustrating the existence of marked differences in several dimensions of the process of concertation and pacting. Then it critically assesses the capacity of existing approaches to explain this variation. It shows that neither neo-institutionalist accounts nor even actor-centered explanations as they stand now do a good job. The article proposes an actor-centered explanation of variation focused on the role of trade unions. According to this, the variation found in political exchange underlying negotiated adjustment reflects different equilibriums between the power capabilities of unions vis-à-vis other actors (inter-associational resources) and their constituency demands (intra-associational constraints).

Mariana Sorina Rusu (Central European University, Poland)
E-Mail address: mrusu@ceu.edu.pl
Central and Eastern European Trade Unions in Transformation: Reforms and Self-perceptions

Comparison of national labour movements throughout Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) attracted a lot of recent attention from the industrial relations scholarship. While the weakness of CEE's trade unions is no news, the factors behind the recorded differences in configuration and strength of various national labour movements remain controversial. This paper attempts to answer this question by analyzing the self-perception of trade unions in the context of transformation in different CEE countries, as a bridge to understanding different trade union movements' configuration. As an evaluation yardstick, the paper looks at the attempted reforms by the trade unions. Consequently, the comparison of the reforms planned by four of the CEE trade union organizations in Moldavia, Poland, Romania, and Ukraine reveals important differences between the roles that trade unions see themselves responsible for. After an inquiry into the explicit and implicit meanings of the planned reforms (organizational or strategical), the paper examines the reforms undertaken by the four organizations. The paper contrasts the trade union developments in the countries of the former Soviet Union (Moldavia and Ukraine), where there is a significant continuity in the trade unions self-perceptions, to the unions in Romania and Poland, which underwent significant redefinitions of their aims and goals in tune with the structural transformations that those countries went through.

Sean Safford (London School of Economics, United Kingdom)
Michael Piore (MIT,USA)
E-Mail address: s.safford@lse.ac.uk; mpiore@mit.edu
Changing Regimes of Workplace Governance: Shifting Axes of Social Mobilization and the Challenge to Industrial Relations Theory

This paper challenges the prevailing view on the collapse of American system of collective bargaining and offers an alternative. We argue first that a new regime has emerged, but this regime is not the market but rather a system of substantive employment rights specified in law, judicial opinions and administrative rulings which are supplemented by mechanisms at the shop or enterprise level. Second, the emergence of the new regime has been driven, not by the rise of neo-liberal ideology, by rather by a shift in the axes of social worker mobilization from economic identities associated with class, industry, occupation and enterprise to identities rooted in the society outside the workplace: sex, race, ethnicity, age, disability, and sexual orientation. Third, the shift in the axes of social mobilization reflects the collapse of the underlying model of social and economic organization upon which the New Deal collective bargaining regime was based. Section II argues that this alternative interpretation poses a number of problems for the conceptual tools we use to understand the issues of work and to frame the public policy debate; and that without new tools it is difficult to explore the implications of the changes that have taken place.

Sotiria Theodoropoulou (London School of Economics and Political Science, United Kingdom)
E-Mail address: s.theodoropoulou@lse.ac.uk
Reducing the Equilibrium Rate of Unemployment: Testing for Substitutes for Labour Market Reforms toward Deregulation

The aim of this paper is to develop and test the hypothesis that labour market reforms, such as reducing the generosity of non-employment benefits and the strictness of employment protection legislation and decentralising collective wage bargaining to firm level, are not necessary for reducing the Equilibrium Rate of Unemployment (ERU) in an open economy. Instead, my hypothesis goes, the effects of labour market reforms like the above on the ERU can be delivered, at least to a certain extent, by the combination of a non-accommodating monetary policy regime, coordination of collective wage bargaining to sectoral and/or national level and the openness of an economy to international trade. There is then a substitution relationship between labour market reforms/policies and the aforementioned conditions. The theory offered here synthesizes the insights of economics literature on labour market policies and European unemployment and those of comparative political economy literature on the interactions between the monetary policy regime and the behavior of price- and wage-setters in open economies. These two literature strands have, so far, been looking into the determinants of the ERU largely taking the insights of each other for granted. My hypothesis is tested using regression analysis.

Andrew R Timming (University of Cambridge, United Kingdom)
E-Mail address: art37@cam.ac.uk
Identity Constructs, Trust Relations and European Works Councils

The paper examines the complicated relationship between identity constructs and trust relations in the context of European works councils. Drawing from an in-depth case study of a large, Anglo-Dutch multinational firm, I analyze three manifestations of identity and two interrelated forms of trust. The three identity constructs examined are: (i) class identity, (ii) nation-based identity and (iii) industrial relations system identity. I will argue that these manifestations of identity generate substantive divisions in European works councils. The two forms of trust examined are: (i) employer-employee trust and (ii) employee-employee trust. Thus, I recognize that, beyond the Foxian low trust syndrome between workers and managers, there is also a low trust syndrome of sorts between workers of different national cultures and industrial relations systems. The paper will seek to spell out the analytical relationship between the three manifestations of identity and the two forms of trust. It will conclude with a set of policy implications in respect to how best to build trust in European works councils.

Christine Trampusch (Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Germany)
E-Mail address: trampusch@mpifg.de
Industrial Relations and Welfare States: The Different Dynamics of Retrenchment in Germany and the Netherlands

Proceeding from a historical-analytical reconstruction of the development of collectively negotiated benefits in the Netherlands and Germany, the paper investigates the role and function of labor relations as a provider and financier of welfare. It is argued that social policy based on collective agreement strongly influences contemporary retrenchment policies. Discussing the literature on retrenchment policies, the paper suggests specifying unions and employers as collective actors which both support retrenchment by offering financial and organizational resources for government attempts of welfare delegation. The conclusion for comparative welfare state research is that when viewing policies of social cutbacks it should break away from its static focus on analyzing the political behavior of the actors involved and systematically include industrial relations in its frame of reference.

Guy Vernon (Kings College London, United Kingdom)
E-Mail address: guy.vernon@kcl.ac.uk
Does Collective Bargaining Coverage Matter For the Pay Structure?

Coverage is given much attention in the comparative literature. Hyman (1997, 312) writes that the 'practical implications' of the presence of multi-employer bargaining are of 'critical significance', only substantiating this claim by reference to the correlation between the bargaining centralisation and coverage. Traxler et al (2001, 194) assert that coverage is the 'most important indicator of the organization/ disorganization of labour markets'. Traxler et al (2001, 195) note that coverage does not necessarily imply 'governance power' and show uncertainty about the significance of bargaining in France. Yet, with reference to bivariate correlations of coverage to pay inequality, they claim that 'coverage does govern wage formation from a comparative perspective.' (2001, 195). This paper first considers the content of the multi-employer agreements which secure high coverage in nations otherwise lacking in IR infrastructure. It then analyses the comparative relationship between coverage and pay inequality, focusing in particular on the nations of continental Europe, and on inequality in the bottom half of the distribution, where one would expect collective bargaining principally to act. The paper shows that correlations between coverage and inequality are artifacts of coverage's relationship to other features of political economies, principally beyond collective bargaining, which do matter for inequality.

Matt Vidal (University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA)
E-Mail address: mvidal@ssc.wisc.edu
Lean Enough: Production Politics and Technical Knowledge

Capabilities and routines vary widely across organizations, being shaped in specific ways by the political interactions of workers and managers (both individuals and in coalitions) who, in turn, develop stakes in particular routines. Based on qualitative research in US manufacturing firms, I show how these politics of production shape the cognitive frames of managers and workers, not only altering aspiration levels (hence decision making) but also in ways that affect how new information is received and processed. It is in this context that technical knowledge often imported from outside, tacit and thus hard to replicate based on articulable knowledge, must be implemented. Many particular combinations of practices are limited and selective relative to world-class work systems, yet efficient and flexible relative to their former Fordist systems. These changes can get a plant focused enough on product flow and inventory reduction to yield substantial performance improvements. Yet the tenacious pursuit of organization-wide change necessary for a world-class operation with continuous improvement may be backed off because of the politics of production. Instead of doggedly pursuing such systematic, organization-wide change, many mangers temper their ambition in reaction to their local politics of production and consider their plants lean enough.

Paul Willman (Oxford University, United Kingdom)
Alex Bryson (Policy Studies Institute, United Kingdom)
E-Mail address: paul.willman@sbs.ox.ac.uk; a.bryson@psi.org.uk
Accounting for Collective Action

Collective action and representation requires the mobilization of resources. Where collective associations are continuous, these resources are provided both by formal organization and by volunteer activism. The mix between the two is important for both the nature and effectiveness of collective action. The paper uses a variety of data sources to map trends in resource availability for trade unions in Britain. These resources are in the form of subscription income and accumulated assets shown in union accounts and establishment level resources provided by employers and union members. The paper documents a substantial decline in available resources across the period 1990 -2003 and attempts both to explain the reasons for this decline and its consequences for employee representation.

Ying Zhu and Peter Schulte (The University of Melbourne, Australia)
E-Mail address: y.zhu@unimelb.edu.au
Globalization and Labour Relations in Australian Airlines Industry: A Case Study of Pilot Experience

The 1989 pilots' dispute fundamentally altered the nature of pilot labour relations in Australia. The once powerful pilot union was convincingly defeated by airline management with the assistance of the Government. Since the dispute ended in 1989, globalization has become an increasingly important factors influencing the reform agenda for both state and airlines companies. This paper aims to research the impact that globalization has had on the pilot labour relations in Australia through the investigation of the initiatives and response of key players such as airline management, pilot unions, and pilots themselves. The results show that the influence of management over the pilot labour relations process has increased substantially. The conditions of employment and their ability to collectivise through trade unions have been systematically suppressed by a series of 'reform agenda' with the neo-liberal ideological orientation. Important challenges for the future of pilot labour relations in Australia are also considered.