Between a rock and a hard place:the shaping of employment in a global economy
When the irresistible force of globalisation meets the immovable object of specific national labour laws, industrial relations and working practices, as the song goes, ‘something’s gotta give’. This issue explores what gives when work is reshaped in this encounter. Pummeled between the rock of global market forces on the one hand and national laws, traditions and cultures on the other, how is work being reshaped in different industries and countries and what price is being paid by workers in their daily lives? How are national policies and trade union strategies able to resist the impact of global forces? And what other factors are shaping the experience of work in the 21st century?
Contents
Between a rock and a hard place: the shaping of employment in a global economy
Ursula Huws
Fragmenting labour: organisational restructuring, employment relations and the dynamics of national regulatory frameworks
Jörg Flecker
Anchors for job quality: sectoral systems of employment in the European context
Damian Grimshaw and Steffen Lehndorff
Reforms and job quality: the case of the elder-care sector
Annamaria Simonazzi
Against erosion of labour standards: global reorganisation of value chains and
industrial relations in the European motor industry
Josep Banyuls and Thomas Haipeter
Cut from a different cloth: employee relations, job design and control of the labour process in Nordic-owned garment factories in the Baltic States
Markku Sippola
Employment challenges to the knowledge economy in Europe: the case of IT services
Isabelle Berrebi-Hoffmann, Damian Grimshaw, Michel Lallement
and Marcela Miozzo
Offshoring and the new insecurities: towards new types of ‘white collar
consciousness’ in Germany in globalised working environments
Andreas Boes and Tobias Kämpf
The hotel industry in service economies: from one ‘service world’ to another
Florence Jany-Catrice and Thierry Ribault
Out of control: changes in working-time patterns and strategies for work-life
balance in Europe
Bettina-Johanna Krings, Linda Nierling and Marcello Pedaci
European urban public transport: towards a single European employment model? James Wickham and Erich Latniak
From conflict to consensus: European neoliberalism and the debate on the future of EU social policy
Stefan Bernhard
Collective bargaining and the flexibilisation of employment in Italy
Alessia Vatta
How much structure is in the changes? a short journey through some recent books on labour, markets and classes
Markus Promberger
Work organisation, labour & globalisation 