ABSTRACT The transition to electric vehicles is deepening labour market dualism, yet unions—widely expected to contest this trend—have often reinforced it. This paper argues that coordination, the organizational capacity to align heterogeneous interests and sustain collective discipline across levels, is a key mechanism determining whether union power resources translate into solidaristic or exclusionary outcomes. Drawing on fieldwork at Hyundai Motor Group in South Korea, it shows that despite substantial structural, associational and institutional power, weak coordination between union leadership and the shopfloor allowed core worker interests to dominate workplace‐level negotiations, creating openings for management to expand precarious employment within assembly plants and deepen segmentation across the supply chain. The paper extends power resource theory by specifying coordination as a distinct organizational condition, and contributes to just transition scholarship by showing how intra‐union dynamics shape the distributional outcomes of industrial transformation.
ABSTRACT In the 2000s, questions were open on whether the EU eastern enlargement would contribute to upwards or downwards convergence in labour standards, or even to divergence. Over two decades later, it is possible not only to attempt an answer, but also to identify the industrial relations processes that mediate economic integration between widely different countries. This paper does so by tracing how the East–West free movement of capital, labour, services and goods after enlargement has influenced labour standards within a shipbuilding company operating in Norway and Romania—two countries situated at the opposite poles of the extended European Single Market regarding labour costs and industrial relations systems. It compares how these mobility flows have impacted staffing practices, industrial relations, wages and working conditions in the respective yard subsidiaries, and identifies changes at three levels: market‐driven reallocation of capital and labour, institutional changes and industrial relations responses. As a result, two outcomes are observed. First, a process of convergence, whereby the two‐way mobility of production factors has contributed to levelling up of pay, facilitated by re‐regulation of wage setting institutions to counteract their erosion. Second, a process of fragmentation, driven by the outsourcing of work and by international labour and services mobility, which has deepened within‐country inequalities and shifted insecurity and risk onto the growing shares of subcontracted cross‐border workers. In the case of European shipbuilding, the single market has thus brought upward convergence of wages between countries and increased divergence of industrial relations, working conditions and economic risks within them.
ABSTRACT This review examines Job Quality in a Turbulent Era and its attempt to rethink job quality under conditions of automation, platformisation and labour market fragmentation. The book argues that current frameworks are insufficient to capture the changing nature of work, particularly in contexts of algorithmic management and dispersed labour control; and it suggests that there are limits to the efficacy of established approaches in regulating job quality in these contexts.
This article examines the impact of rapidly changing skill requirements on skills mismatch in Europe and the role of training in mitigating adverse effects. Using data on approximately 70 million online job vacancies, we estimate the extent to which occupational skill requirements changed between 2019 and 2023 across European Union (EU) countries plus Norway and the United Kingdom. STEM-related occupations saw the greatest degree of change, whereas lower skilled manual jobs saw the least. By linking job vacancies to survey data, we show that employees in fast-changing jobs are more likely to experience skills deficits. Training plays a role in mitigating these negative effects, and the type and intensity of training matters. Training seminars/workshops are most effective. Formal training courses and on-the-job training are less effective when used in isolation but can mitigate skills deficits when combined with other types of training. Our constructed dataset of occupational skill change is published as an accompanying data appendix. This should be of use for future research across a range of areas in labour economics and industrial relations.
ABSTRACT Polycrisis—understood as intersecting crises that amplify each other rather than unfolding separately—poses profound challenges for employment relations theory and practice. The employment relationship is simultaneously a site where the effects of crises are most acutely experienced and a central mechanism through which profit is generated within a capitalist political‐economic system characterised by recurring crisis tendencies. Therefore, employment relations offer a particularly useful vantage point from which to analyse how the polycrisis is impacting the world of work. In this perspective article, we ask: How does polycrisis affect employment relations in countries across the world? We begin by examining ‘polycrisis’ as a concept before considering its implications for employment relations across the world. Then, we evaluate whether prevailing theories within employment relations and critical political economy scholarship help us comprehend the current era of polycrisis. Building on this assessment, we present a multi‐theory and multi‐level analytical framework that highlights the complex and diverse impacts of polycrisis and the role of institutions and actors at various levels in different country settings. We close by identifying key avenues for future research.
ABSTRACT What do workers in global value chains (GVCs) consider a good job? Research on work in GVCs largely studies compliance with standards set from the top‐down rather than worker preferences. Understanding worker preferences is crucial because workers are the intended beneficiaries of governance institutions; policies better aligned to their preferences could enjoy greater legitimacy and effectiveness. To explore what GVC workers want, we embedded an experiment in an original survey of 2500 workers in 50 formal Moroccan apparel factories integrated into GVCs. These workers highly valued jobs with characteristics that reduced their exposure to physical risks and provided job stability. They also had strong preferences for jobs with supervisors that treated workers respectfully. By contrast, worker preferences for wage increases available in the Moroccan context were weak, especially when compared with non‐wage features. Our results suggests that when wages are compressed and extended working hours is the main way to increase earnings, preferences for non‐wage attributes may dominate. We also find more similarities than differences between men and women workers; although women place greater value on respectful supervision, safety and childcare benefits, their overall preferences closely track those of men. These findings provide novel evidence to inform efforts to improve jobs in GVCs.
When statutory work-family entitlements are deemed insufficient, workers often rely on collective bargaining to secure better terms. However, the extent to which unions can deliver higher than statutory benefits remains underexplored, especially in developing countries with decentralized bargaining systems and low union salience. Bridging this gap and drawing on a novel dataset covering all private-sector collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) in the Philippines (2016-2021), this article examines the dynamics and embedding of maternity and paternity leave provisions, or paid parental leaves (PPLs) collectively, focusing on three plausible drivers: leaders' gender, competing wage provisions and changing policy-related opportunity structures. I specifically test whether female leadership and wage increase provisions 'crowd in' PPLs and assess how a 2019 maternity leave reform, which expanded statutory maternity leave entitlements from 8 to 15 weeks, affected PPL inclusion using two identification strategies: a pre-post comparison of multi-plant ultimate parent entities (UPEs) and a regression discontinuity in time (RDiT) design. Results suggest that 56% of CBAs contain reinforcing provisions that merely restate statutory entitlements, whereas only 5% include augmenting provisions that expand them. Neither wage increases nor the 2019 reform crowd out PPLs. Instead, wage increase provisions, both at the extensive and intensive margin, are associated with a higher probability of PPL inclusion. Semi-structured interviews with union leaders and negotiators support a bounded augmentation hypothesis such that in contexts where enforcement of statutory rights is perceived as weak, redundancy operates as a functional deterrent to non-compliance.
Domestic violence (DV) is a widespread, gendered social issue and a workplace problem. Over the last two decades, the development of international standards, legislation and organisational provisions has aimed to tackle the impact and effects of DV in the workplace. While establishing such frameworks is a significant step towards safeguarding victims of violence at work, it is how these policies are enacted which determines their success. At the workplace level, implementation of DV policies through a gendered lens is essential to make substantive progress towards gender equality outcomes. In our article, insights from case study organisations and key informants reveal significant variation in the conceptualisation of gender in relation to DV policies in the workplace. Where key informants, including NGOs, trade unions and government agencies, emphasised a gender-informed approach to DV and the workplace, case study organisations tempered the role of gender, adopting a largely gender-neutral approach in policy enactment. These different approaches are significant for policy implementation, which is both inclusive, particularly of LGBT+ relationships, and contributes to gender equality outcomes.
We examine the mechanism by which workers move from inaction to collective action, focusing on cognitive liberation, the awareness that change is possible, as it unfolded among workers at an Amazon warehouse in North Carolina who contributed to the emergence of an independent, worker-led union during a period of renewed growth in organising initiatives across the United States. Through interviews, we explore their life histories and identify that the interplay between a destabilising event, signals of opportunity and threat, along with the constellation of social actors, enabled this mechanism. Our findings reveal that in the South, traditions of historical resistance to oppression, faith and labour organising provide critical foundations for workers' cognitive liberation. These efforts, inspired by peers at other Amazon facilities, illustrate the potential for organising trickle effects that may contribute to the wider cognitive liberation of other workers.
While trust's relevance in employment relations has been recognised by scholars, empirical studies on management's trust in employee representation are notably scarce. The paper addresses this gap, contributing to a more comprehensive understanding of the dynamics that shape effective dialogue in the employment relationship. Drawing from the European Company Survey 2019, we found that management's trust in employee representation predicts the implementation of direct employee involvement and participation practices and employee representation effectiveness. Our findings also show patterns consistent with the importance of direct employee involvement and participation practices as a transmission channel through which trust in employee representation translates into greater employee representation effectiveness. Finally, we explore firm size as a boundary condition, showing that the proposed channel is stronger in medium-sized firms. Overall, our results are robust to alternative specifications. We discuss the theoretical implications of our findings and present avenues for future research.
This paper investigates the impact of pay transparency on firm performance, measured as sales growth, in a large sample of UK-registered companies between 2005 and 2023. We employ a difference-in-difference approach based on the pay transparency regulation enacted in 2017, which mandated all companies registered in the United Kingdom with at least 250 employees to publicly disclose gender pay equality indicators. We show that the pay transparency regulation improved firm performance by 0.016 percentage points in terms of sales growth in companies affected by the law compared to those with under 250 employees. Furthermore, firms subject to the reporting requirement and led by women experienced faster sales growth (by about 0.01 percentage points) than those led by men, after the introduction of the law. Similarly, the positive effect of the pay transparency regulation on firm performance is more pronounced in industries with the largest share of female workers.
