National Labour Relations in Internationalized Markets

Abstract

The regulation of the labour market by industrial-relations institutions has been an important theme in sociology, political science, economics, and jurisprudence. What has particularly attracted attention from a comparative perspective is the astonishing variety of national labour-relations institutions. This variety, when confronted with persistent economic internationalisation raises two main questions. First, does internationalisation impose pressures for change and, more specifically, for convergence on institutions? If such pressures are at work, is there a superior model the national systems are converging on? Second, under economic internationalisation, cross-national differences in national arrangements may have an increasing impact on national economic performance. Hence the question is whether national labour-relations systems perform differently, and to what extent their performance has changed over time due to shifting circumstances. This book investigates these questions on the basis of a cross-national comparison, including comparable data from twenty OECD countries.

measurement and analysis of industrial relations aggregates: what is the relevant unit of analysis in comparative research?

“…These variables used here are: the number of trade unions (#U), the number of employers' organizations (#E), trade union density (UD), employers' organization density (ED), collective bargaining coverage (CBC), and the mode of collective bargaining (CBM). These six variables represent a kind of 'standard' set of indicators for industrial relations systems for which the importance is repeatedly argued (e.g., Clegg, 1976;Vernon, 2006;Traxler, 2010) which are usually used in comparisons and for various debates (e.g., Traxler et al, 2001;Marginson and Sisson, 2004;Bechter et al, 2011aBechter et al, , 2012.…”

“…in social dialogue, has a long tradition. Very influential and important theoretical and empirical research in the field is of a comparative nature (e.g., Crouch, 1993;Hyman, 2001;Traxler et al, 2001;Marginson and Sisson, 2004;Meardi, 2013). From a policy perspective, the most influential work which has informed (fundamental) public policy decisions in the past is predominantly comparative (e.g., Calmfors and Driffill, 1988;Soskice, 1990;Traxler, 1995).…”

The Governance of Economic Uncertainty: Beyond the ‘New Social Risks’ Analysis

“…Above individual fi rm level, collective bargaining may be involved in explicit fl exibility/security trade-offs, but only where bargaining takes a co-ordinated form, with unions and employers associations being so structured that they cannot easily avoid taking responsibility for macroeconomic consequences of their actions, including a signifi cant role for unions and associations representing the exposed sector of the economy (Traxler 2003;Traxler, Blaschke and Kittel 2001;Traxler, Brandl, and Glassner 2008). This takes us back to something similar to the politics of counter-infl ation strategies in the 1970s.…”

International Homogenization or the Persistence of National Practices?

“…Contemporary Mozambican employment relations are at least partially path dependent, with external market pressures being channelled and moulded by national level institutional realities (c.f. Traxler, Blaschke and Kittel, 2001); clearly identifiable continuities stretch back to the colonial era (Pitcher, 2002;c.f. Newitt, 1996).…”