workplace representation -a key vehicle for activism and recruitment which needs to develop for real growth. Japanese unions show little evidence of organizational activity, and growth is limited to manufacturing and construction sectors. Korea provides potential, with evidence of direct action against both government and employers. Israel and Turkey provide an analysis of the Middle East but with a contrast between the hostile environment for union organizing in Turkey and the decline of co-operatives and subsequent privatization in Israel.The future for the trade union movement, the editor argues, 'is one of survival and continual adaptation' (p. 33) and lies in the resilience and adaptability of unions. Although this book did not fully realise its potential, it still makes a contribution by providing evidence of comparative global industrial relations and a valuable analysis of global union revitalization.
Knowledge, services, information and communications technology, market and atypical employment all frame the economy in the new era. Many commentators have claimed that marketization of the employment relationship will be the global tendency, with Britain no exception. They are convinced that the standard employment relationship will be replaced by short-term, temporary, part-time, peripheral, individualized and insecure employment relationships, with the concepts of social class and inequality at work likely to diminish within the process of marketization. In contrast, the authors of this book question whether convergence within the employment relationship does indeed exist in Britain.The authors scrutinize British employees' conditions and experiences by drawing primarily on two national surveys of British employees: the Employment in Britain Survey carried out in 1992 (EiB 1992) and the Working in Britain in the Year 2000 Survey (WiB 2000). Other surveys also are used, such as the Social Class in Modern Britain (SCMB) Survey of 1984 and the Workplace Employee Relations Surveys (WERS) 1998 and 2004. They review American and British literatures and analyse plausible assumptions by applying these to British contexts from the mid-1980s to the early years of this century.The marketization of the employment relationship thesis holds that labour is only one kind of market commodity, so the relationship between employer and employee is exclusively an economic exchange. Employability replaces employment, while less commitment exists between employers and employees, and market forces dominate the employment system with high labour turnover and external hiring. It is theoretically flawed, however, to assume labour as purely a commodity. The empirical evidence presents a mixture of marketization and organization of British employment. Employers hire people outside the organization to supplement the 381 Work, employment and society
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