This article examines the activities of Union Solidarity International (USI), a new UK‐based organisation in the international union arena. USI seeks to encourage and support international solidarity between trade unions and other worker movements around the world by harnessing the dynamism of the Internet and social media. Drawing on a combination of in‐depth semi‐structured interviews, documentary analysis, Google Analytics and social media data, the findings of this case study suggest that USI is successfully developing an international audience in the United States, the UK and Ireland. However, USI's ability to reach beyond English‐speaking countries and mobilise people to engage in collective action appears limited. The article makes an important contribution to the growing literature on social media in industrial relations through analysing the extent to which digital technologies can contribute to effective transnational labour solidarity.

This article introduces the special issue of New Technology, Work and Employment titled “The Internet, Social Media and Trade Union Revitalization: Still Behind the Digital Curve or Catching Up?” The objectives of this special issue are threefold. First, to develop an analytical framework that can help researchers assess the role that internal and external factors play in mediating the nature and scope of union experimentation with new information and communication technologies (ICTs) and its contribution to the outcomes of revitalisation. Second, to present methods and concepts that are new to this area of research. Third, to generate empirical insight into how the various actors that constitute the trade union movement (e.g. worker councils, union confederations, trade unions, and union‐led coalitions) can and are using the internet, social media and artificial intelligence as a means of revitalisation. Taken together the geographical scope of the articles range from single‐country cases studies in Germany, the UK and Canada, to a cross‐national case study in Australia and the USA, and a comparative study across Europe. In terms of ICTs, attention is given to websites, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and an AI chatbot.

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to review “institutional experimentation” for protecting workers in response to the contraction of the standard employment relationship and the corresponding rise of “non-standard” forms of paid work. Design/methodology/approach The paper draws on the existing research and knowledge base of the authors as well as a thorough review of the extant literature relating to: non-standard employment contracts; sources of labour supply engaging in non-standard work; exogenous pressures on the employment relationship; intermediaries that separate the management from the control of labour; and entities that subvert the employment relationship. Findings Post-war industrial relations scholars characterised the traditional regulatory model of collective bargaining and the standard employment contract as a “web of rules”. As work relations have become more market mediated, new institutional arrangements have developed to govern these relations and regulate the terms of engagement. The paper argues that these are indicative of an emergent “patchwork of rules” which are instructive for scholars, policymakers, workers’ representatives and employers seeking solutions to the contraction of the traditional regulatory model. Research limitations/implications While the review of the institutional experimentation is potentially instructive for developing solutions to gaps in labour regulation, a drawback of this approach is that there are limits to the realisation of policy transfer. Some of the initiatives discussed in the paper may be more effective than others for protecting workers on non-standard contracts, but further research is necessary to test their effectiveness including in different contexts. Social implications The findings indicate that a task ahead for the representatives of government, labour and business is to determine how to adapt the emergent patchwork of rules to protect workers from the new vulnerabilities created by, for example, employer extraction and exploitation of their individual bio data, social media data and, not far off, their personal genome sequence. Originality/value The paper addresses calls to examine the “institutional intersections” that have informed the changing ways that work is conducted and regulated. These intersections transcend international, national, sectoral and local units of analysis, as well as supply chains, fissured organisational dynamics, intermediaries and online platforms. The analysis also encompasses the broad range of stakeholders including businesses, labour and community groups, nongovernmental organisations and online communities that have influenced changing institutional approaches to employment protection.

The current economic recession has had a dramatic impact on youth employment across Europe. This article analyses responses by trade union confederations in Denmark and the UK. Looking first at their power capacities (with a specific focus on communicative power and its relevance for young people), the article moves on to analyse how these capacities and the broader political opportunity structure shape the nature and extent of actions in which they engage. The article ends with some reflections on the usefulness of communicative power as a new theoretical and analytical tool.