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Employment Relations (employment + relation)
Terms modified by Employment Relations Selected AbstractsInterest-Based Negotiations in a Transformed Labor,Management SettingNEGOTIATION JOURNAL, Issue 1 2004Nils O. Fonstad The authors introduce a group of essays that evolved from a March 2003 symposium on the path-breaking new partnership and use of interest-based negotiation (IBN) at Kaiser Permanente (KP), one of the largest integrated health care programs in the United States. They briefly trace the history of the IBN approach (both success stories and failures); the growth of this phenomenon; and its use in collective bargaining settings. The KP case, the focus of the symposium (which was jointly sponsored by MIT's Institute for Work and Employment Relations and Harvard's Program on Negotiation), is by far the largest instance of the use of IBN in U.S. labor relations history. [source] The New Economy and Transforming Employment Relations: A Review EssayANTHROPOLOGY OF WORK REVIEW, Issue 1 2005David Karjanen The State of Working America 2004/2005. Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein, and Sylvia Allegretto. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004. The Betrayal of Work: How Low-Wage Jobs Fail 35 Million Americans. Beth Shulman. New York: The New Press, 2003. Low-Wage America: How Employers Are Reshaping Opportunity in the Workplace. Eileen Appelbaum, Richard J. Murnane, and Annette Bernhardt, editors. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2003. The Working Poor: Invisible in America. David K. Shipler. New York: Knopf, 2004. [source] Employment Relations in the Voluntary Sector , By Ian CunninghamBRITISH JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, Issue 3 2010Steve Davies No abstract is available for this article. [source] Dominance Effects from Local Competitors: Setting Institutional Parameters for Employment Relations in Multinational Subsidiaries; a Case from the Spanish Supermarket SectorBRITISH JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, Issue 4 2009Tony Royle Dominance effects are normally associated with multinational corporations (MNCs). However, we argue that a strong local competitor can create ,dominance effects' setting the institutional parameters for employment relations in multinational subsidiaries. Moreover such an effect can be persistent. In this case the Spanish-owned El Corte Inglés (ECI) used its power and influence to establish an employer's federation and two ,yellow unions'. These yellow unions infiltrated the French-owned MNC Carrefour and most of the Spanish supermarket sector by the early 1980s and continue to dominate collective bargaining rounds and works council elections, marginalizing the main independent trade unions. This has resulted in poor pay and working conditions and a lack of effective employee representation across most of the Spanish supermarket sector. The fact that Carrefour established an international framework agreement to observe union rights in 2001 has as yet not changed this situation. [source] Immigration, Labour Markets and Employment Relations: Problems and ProspectsBRITISH JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, Issue 2 2007Patrick McGovern In this review essay, I argue that immigration presents employment researchers with a promising strategic research site because it raises a number of theoretically significant problems with mainstream economic approaches to labour and labour markets. Despite the tendency to view economic migrants as homo economicus personified, I argue that immigration brings the institutional nature of labour markets into sharp relief as it exposes, among other things, the influence of the state, processes of labour market segmentation, and the role of trade union policy and practice. Having identified a number of empirical anomalies that contradict neoclassical economic theory, I proceed to sketch out three areas where a more institutionally oriented approach should prove more fruitful. [source] Employment Relations in a Changing Society , Assessing the Post-Fordist Paradigm , Edited by Luis Enrique Alonso and Miguel Martínez LucioBRITISH JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, Issue 4 2006Enrique Fernández Macias No abstract is available for this article. [source] Partnership and the High Performance Workplace , Work and Employment Relations in the Aerospace Industry , Andy Danford, Mike Richardson, Paul Stewart, Stephanie Tailby and Martin UpchurchBRITISH JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, Issue 4 2006Aurora Trif No abstract is available for this article. [source] Ten Years After: South African Employment Relations Since the Negotiated RevolutionBRITISH JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, Issue 1 2006Eddy Donnelly Post-apartheid South Africa has embarked on an ambitious programme of labour market reform in pursuit of ,dynamic efficiency' and ,redistributive justice'. It involves both legislation to promote equality among races and an institutional framework inspired by the European Social Model. We examine how this framework has fared over the past decade, in particular pinpointing the tension between adversarial traditions and the new social partnership, and between market-oriented economic policy and corporatist institutions. Our conclusion is that the system has performed reasonably well, but tackling the mass unemployment at the root of continued inequality is a far longer-term project. [source] Politics and Employment RelationsBRITISH JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, Issue 4 2003Steve Ludlam First page of article [source] Employment relations, cost minimisation and inter-organisational contractingINDUSTRIAL RELATIONS JOURNAL, Issue 1 2009Steve Vincent ABSTRACT This article explores and theorises the employment relations consequences of cost minimisation in the management of inter-organisational contracts for less-skilled work. Case-study data reveal that cost minimisation creates and exacerbates employment relations problems, with the ,success' of particular tactics dependent on the relative tractability of broader economic conditions and social relationships. [source] Institutional Environments, Employer Practices, and States in Liberal Market EconomiesINDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, Issue 2 2002John Godard This article draws on the new institutionalism in economics, sociology, and political studies in order to establish a foundation for analyzing how states shape employer human resource management and union relations. It then reviews and extends the available literature on this topic, establishing how, in addition to legal regulation, states help to shape the cognitive and normative rules that undergird employer decision processes, the social and economic environment within which employers act, and ultimately, the relations of authority constituting the employment relation itself and hence employer policy orientations. The article concludes with a discussion of the prospects for state policy initiatives in view of established employer paradigms, institutional logics, and state traditions, and identifies possibilities for further work in this area. A neoclassical world would be a jungle, and no society would be viable. Douglas North (1981:11) [source] The Backward,Bending Phillips Curve And The Minimum Unemployment Rate Of Inflation: Wage Adjustment With Opportunistic FirmsTHE MANCHESTER SCHOOL, Issue 1 2003Thomas I. PalleyArticle first published online: 12 FEB 200 This paper presents a theory of the backward,bending Phillips curve. There is aminimum unemployment rate of inflation which offers a policy alternative to the non,accelerating inflation rate of unemployment. Nominal wages are downwardly rigid because workers oppose cuts initiated from within the employment relation. Instead, workers may acceptreal wage adjustments effected by increases in the general price level, a variableoutside individual firms' control. This is why inflation ,greases'labor market adjustment. However, workers resist too rapid a real wage adjustment,and too high an inflation generates wage resistance that cancels the grease effect and increases unemployment. [source] Are You in This Country?ANTIPODE, Issue 2 2010How "Local" Social Relations Can Limit the "Globalisation" of Customer Services Supply Chains Abstract:, The relocation of thousands of call centre and back office jobs from the UK to subcontractors in India in the early 2000s led to extensive speculation that the "globalisation" and "jobs flight" of service work was underway. Yet as this article illustrates some call centre customer services do not easily transfer to different local, social and cultural contexts. Call centre operations are embedded in local social relations and taken for granted skills that are difficult to reproduce outside of the locality which has produced them. Nevertheless the spatial dispersal of work can be as much a political process as it is an economic one. This article, which follows the journey of 1000 call centre jobs from the UK to India, illuminates how subcontracting service work "offshore" can facilitate a transformation of the employment relation and an escape from a difficult to discipline labour force. [source] Beyond the High-Performance Paradigm?BRITISH JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, Issue 1 2001An Analysis of Variation in Canadian Managerial Perceptions of Reform Programme Effectiveness Proponents of the high-performance paradigm often argue that the variable success of new forms of work organization is explained primarily by a failure to implement them comprehensively and to adopt complementary HRM practices. This paper argues that these explanations are inadequate and develops an alternative, political economy approach which accounts more fully for how conflicts embedded in the employment relation limit the effectiveness of reforms. It draws on a unique longitudinal data set representing 78 Canadian workplaces to analyse the extent to which reform programme content, pre-existing HRM conditions and workplace context variables are associated with reform programme effectiveness. [source] Health-Care Reform and ESI: Reconsidering the Relationship Between Employment and Health InsuranceBUSINESS AND SOCIETY REVIEW, Issue 3 2010PATRICIA C. FLYNN ABSTRACT The health-care reform promised by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of March 2010 continues our dependence on a central feature of the American health-care system: employer-sponsored insurance (ESI). In this article I will criticize the assumptions regarding market and welfare concerns on which this dependence is based and argue that efforts to mandate ESI ignore both the dynamics of the employment relation and the nature of health-care needs. A comparison between investing in employee education and investing in employee health will reveal the pragmatic challenges to ESI and the covert appeal to employer beneficence on which ESI rests. This paper argues that relying on ESI to guarantee appropriate care for a significant segment of the population is undesirable and unsustainable from both market and moral perspectives. [source] The magistrate, the community and the maintenance of an orderly society in eighteenth-century EnglandHISTORICAL RESEARCH, Issue 191 2003Gwenda Morgan The lone magistrate was the central figure of early modern English law enforcement, yet few records of his activities survive. This study of one of the rare notebooks kept by a local J.P. in north-east England in the eighteenth century suggests that his primary purpose was to negotiate peace between disputants rather than to secure prosecution and conviction of those accused of crimes. Prosecutions in court were few. Reconciliation was mixed with enforcement in areas such as employment relations, poor relief and the maintenance of illegitimate children, but here, as in the many cases of physical assault, outcomes were frequently ,agreed'. [source] Externalizing the core: Firms' use of employment intermediaries in the information and communication technology industriesHUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, Issue 2 2007Torstein Nesheim Recent research suggests that nonstandard employment relations may be a source of innovation for the firm. In this article, we analyze firms' strategic correlates and perceived benefits from using two types of employment in-termediaries,consulting firms and temporary help agencies,in their core activities. Organizations with an innovation strategy are more likely to use consulting firms in their core activities, while organizations that compete on the basis of low cost are more apt to use temporary help agencies. Moreover, managers say that consulting firms are more likely than temporary help agencies to provide them with special competencies in their core activities. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source] Changes in HRM and job satisfaction, 1998,2004: evidence from the Workplace Employment Relations SurveyHUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, Issue 3 2008Andrew Brown This paper examines the relationship between human resource management practices and job satisfaction, drawing on data from the 1998 and 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Surveys. The paper finds significant increases in satisfaction with the sense of achievement from work between 1998 and 2004; a number of other measures of job quality are found to have increased over this period as well. It also finds a decline in the incidence of many formal human resource management practices. The paper reports a weak association between formal human resource management practices and satisfaction with sense of achievement. Improvements in perceptions of job security, the climate of employment relations and managerial responsiveness are the most important factors in explaining the rise in satisfaction with sense of achievement between 1998 and 2004. We infer that the rise in satisfaction with sense of achievement is due in large part to the existence of falling unemployment during the period under study, which has driven employers to make improvements in the quality of work. [source] Employee participation and union voice in the National Health ServiceHUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, Issue 2 2004Stephen Bach This article examines the role of trade unions in the health service at workplace level under the Labour government's modernisation agenda, and focuses on the shifting balance between forms of direct and indirect participation drawing on case studies of three acute hospital trusts. There has been a strong growth in forms of direct communication within the case study trusts and some increase in direct participation among professional groups. Despite this ,dualism' in employment relations, however, the target culture of the NHS has precluded the development of effective voice mechanisms. The policy implications for trade unions and the implications for the implementation of NHS pay modernisation are considered. [source] Collectivism versus individualism in Dutch employment relationsHUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, Issue 1 2004Jan De Leede From a very centralistic and collectivistic tradition after World War Two, Dutch employment relations now show a trend towards radical decentralisation and individualisation. What might be the consequences of this trend for labour relations? Do developments still fit within a movement towards ,organised decentralisation' or will the existing system of labour relations be hollowed out and destroyed? And what will be the consequences for ER management at company level? We present empirical data on how companies deal with their decentralised and individualised employment relations. It appears that, in the main areas such as labour contracts, working time arrangements, reward systems and development plans, decentralisation and individualisation are taking place. It has also become clear that management as well as workers support this and that a new form of negotiation between them is developing at workplace level, resulting in what we call ,third contracts' that are additional to the initial labour contract and the collective agreement. Our results also highlight the pragmatic way in which companies deal with these decentralised and individualised employment relations, which, nevertheless, remain linked to the national and collective levels of bargaining. Within the multilevel system of Dutch employment relations a new balance between collectivism and individualism is emerging. [source] ,Too scared to go sick',reformulating the research agenda on sickness absenceINDUSTRIAL RELATIONS JOURNAL, Issue 4 2010Phil Taylor ABSTRACT This article argues that our understanding of absence and absenteeism, deriving from seminal studies in the sociology of work and employment, has been overtaken by hugely significant developments in political economy, regulation and employment relations. A new research agenda that addresses the changed organisational politics of absence management and the consequences for employees is urgently required. [source] Does partnership at work increase trust?INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS JOURNAL, Issue 2 2008An analysis based on the 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey ABSTRACT In the late 1990s, partnership at work was embraced with some enthusiasm by a number of stakeholders in employment relations and incorporated in the 1999 Employment Relations Act. The implementation of the Information and Consultation Regulations has also been extensively signalled. We might therefore expect to see some evidence of partnership-related practices in Britain. The 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS 2004) provides an opportunity to explore the extent of partnership practice, and also, for the first time, to explore its link to trust relations. This article reports evidence from WERS 2004 suggesting that partnership practice remains relatively undeveloped and that it is only weakly related to trust between management and employee representatives and to employees' trust in management. Direct forms of participation generally have a more positive association with trust than representative forms. There is also modest evidence that trust may be associated with certain workplace outcomes. The case for partnership and more particularly representative partnership as a basis for mutuality and trust is not supported by this evidence. [source] Why is there not more ,annualised hours' working in Britain?INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS JOURNAL, Issue 5 2007James Arrowsmith ABSTRACT Annualised hours (AH) contracts offer employers greater control over working time at lower cost. These efficiency gains may also be shared with workers in terms of pay or time off work. Yet AH remains relatively rare in the UK. Though under-researched, one explanation is that AH normally requires collective bargaining, which is disappearing across most of the private sector, and often high-trust employment relations, which is in still shorter supply. [source] Comparing modes of privatisation: a study of the telecommunications sectors in Argentina and Mexico, 1990,2000INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS JOURNAL, Issue 2 2007John P. TumanArticle first published online: 20 FEB 200 ABSTRACT This article examines the variation in the post-privatisation pattern of labour and employment relations in the telecommunications sectors of Argentina and Mexico. The findings suggest that the initial mode of privatisation,negotiated vs. imposed reform,shaped changes in employment, subcontracting and work rules in the period following privatisation. The research also suggests, however, that negotiated reform is more likely to emerge only when certain political incentives are present. [source] Institutional constraints on organizations: the case of Spanish car dealershipsMANAGERIAL AND DECISION ECONOMICS, Issue 1 2009Benito Arruñada We study the effect of organizational choice and institutions on the performance of Spanish car dealerships. Using outlet-level data from 1994, we find that vertically integrated dealerships showed substantially lower labor productivity, higher labor costs and lower profitability than franchised ones. Despite these gaps in performance, no vertically integrated outlet was separated until 1994, yet the few outlets that were eventually separated systematically improved their performance. We argue that the conversion of integrated outlets into franchised ones involved significant transaction costs, due to an institutional environment favoring permanent, highly unionized employment relations. In line with this argument, we find that the observed separations occurred in distribution networks that underwent marked reductions in worker unionization rates, following the legalization of temporary labor contracts. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Immigration, employment relations, and health: Developing a research agendaAMERICAN JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL MEDICINE, Issue 4 2010Joan Benach Abstract Background International migration has emerged as a global issue that has transformed the lives of hundreds of millions of persons. Migrant workers contribute to the economic growth of high-income countries often serving as the labour force performing dangerous, dirty and degrading work that nationals are reluctant to perform. Methods Critical examination of the scientific and "grey" literatures on immigration, employment relations and health. Results Both lay and scientific literatures indicate that public health researchers should be concerned about the health consequences of migration processes. Migrant workers are more represented in dangerous industries and in hazardous jobs, occupations and tasks. They are often hired as labourers in precarious jobs with poverty wages and experience more serious abuse and exploitation at the workplace. Also, analyses document migrant workers' problems of social exclusion, lack of health and safety training, fear of reprisals for demanding better working conditions, linguistic and cultural barriers that minimize the effectiveness of training, incomplete OHS surveillance of foreign workers and difficulty accessing care and compensation when injured. Therefore migrant status can be an important source of occupational health inequalities. Conclusions Available evidence shows that the employment conditions and associated work organization of most migrant workers are dangerous to their health. The overall impact of immigration on population health, however, still is poorly understood and many mechanisms, pathways and overall health impact are poorly documented. Current limitations highlight the need to engage in explicit analytical, intervention and policy research. Am. J. Ind. Med. 53:338,343, 2010. © 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source] In search of the wage-labour/service contract: new evidence on the validity of the Goldthorpe class schemaTHE BRITISH JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY, Issue 4 2000Geoffrey Evans ABSTRACT In this paper we examine new empirical evidence on the coherence and magnitude of the main classes in the Goldthorpe class schema. Particular attention is paid to issues that have recently been a source of academic dispute: the coherence and size of the service class and the distinction between the service class and intermediate classes. Using recently available British data collected by the Office for National Statistics we examine: (i) the extent to which measures of class-relevant job characteristics are empirically discriminated by the categories of the schema; (ii) the structure of a ,contract type' dimension of employment relations conceived of as a categorical latent variable; and (iii) the association between this latent variable and both the Goldthorpe class schema and a related measure,socio-economic group (SEG). We find that the data are consistent with the existence of a three category latent ,contract type' variable largely corresponding to the notions of service, intermediate and wage-labour contracts explicit in discussions of the theoretical rationale for the Goldthorpe schema. We further find a substantial degree of fit between the latent ,contract types' and the schema. However, the service class fault line appears to lie within class I and II of the schema rather than between them and the intermediate classes which suggests a revised, smaller service class would better capture the reality of the contemporary British occupational structure. [source] Risky subjects: changing geographies of employment in the automobile industryAREA, Issue 2 2001David Butz This paper examines employment in the Canadian automobile industry in terms of Beck's (1992) Risk Society. We demonstrate that risk transcends terms of employment, to encompass injury, lay-off, and displacement. Work becomes increasingly risky with the blurring of employment relations within and among three geographic scales: the globe, the locale and the plant. We argue for an embodied account of the experience of risk which emphasizes the inscription of different temporal and spatial configurations of work on the body. [source] Remaking the World of Chinese Labour: A 30-Year RetrospectiveBRITISH JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, Issue 3 2010Eli Friedman Over the past 30 years, labour relations, and, indeed, the entirety of working-class politics in China, have been dramatically altered by economic reforms. In this review, we focus on the two key processes of commodification and casualization and their implications for workers. On the one hand, these processes have resulted in the destruction of the old social contract and the emergence of marketized employment relations. This has implied a loss of the job security and generous benefits enjoyed by workers in the planned economy. On the other hand, commodification and casualization have produced significant but localized resistance from the Chinese working class. Up until now, the activities of labour non-governmental organizations and of the official trade unions have contributed to the state's effort of individualizing and institutionalizing labour conflict resolution through labour law and arbitration mechanisms. Finally, we provide a brief discussion of the impact of 2008's Labour Contract Law and the outbreak of the economic crisis on labour relations. We conclude that the continual imbalance of power at the point of production presents a real dilemma for the Chinese state as it attempts to shift away from a model of development dependent on exports. [source] Dominance Effects from Local Competitors: Setting Institutional Parameters for Employment Relations in Multinational Subsidiaries; a Case from the Spanish Supermarket SectorBRITISH JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, Issue 4 2009Tony Royle Dominance effects are normally associated with multinational corporations (MNCs). However, we argue that a strong local competitor can create ,dominance effects' setting the institutional parameters for employment relations in multinational subsidiaries. Moreover such an effect can be persistent. In this case the Spanish-owned El Corte Inglés (ECI) used its power and influence to establish an employer's federation and two ,yellow unions'. These yellow unions infiltrated the French-owned MNC Carrefour and most of the Spanish supermarket sector by the early 1980s and continue to dominate collective bargaining rounds and works council elections, marginalizing the main independent trade unions. This has resulted in poor pay and working conditions and a lack of effective employee representation across most of the Spanish supermarket sector. The fact that Carrefour established an international framework agreement to observe union rights in 2001 has as yet not changed this situation. [source] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||