Economic and Industrial Democracy

In the new EU member states, tripartite national-level social pacts have been promoted as a preferred and effective instrument for a rapid and relatively painless fulfilment of the Maastricht criteria, following the example of many of the old member states in the 1990s, and notably Italy. But such policy advice is not based on careful comparisons. By comparing Poland and Italy, this article undermines the dominant view that the failure of concertation attempts in Poland is mostly due to trade union politicization. The comparative test with Italy, a country with equally politicized trade unions, and where, by contrast, important social pacts have been signed, suggests that divergent employer strategies and organization are at least an equally important factor. Additionally, the study provides a more mixed assessment of the Italian social pacts.

Employability is believed to be a crucial concept concerning employees’ job security. This study investigates whether factors associated with human capital and the dual labour market predict perceived employability. Two national representative Swedish samples are used, representing economic recession (1993, N ¼ 4952) and prosperity (1999, N ¼ 6696). Employability was perceived as higher during prosperity, but human capital factors as well as dual labour market factors predicted perceived employability, irrespective of the time period. These findings indicate that the understanding of employability is enhanced by considering both structural and individual dimensions.

With the expansion of the service sector, working conditions have changed during recent decades and it has become more relevant to highlight psychosocial factors as a complement to physical aspects of work. The main scope of this article concerns legal forms of ownership (i.e. the public sector, public enterprises, private enterprises and cooperatives), different types of operations within the service sector, and whether these organizational characteristics create differences in psychosocial working conditions for the individual employee. A total of 1384 employees in 60 workplaces within 25 establishments participated, and the data consisted of both a survey answered by the employees and structured interviews conducted with the local managers in each participating organization. Multilevel analysis showed that a rather high degree of variance in working conditions could be attributed to factors outside/above the individual level, and furthermore, that both ownership and type of operation were significant and relevant variables in order to explain differences in working conditions.

This article focuses on a trade union-owned commercial vehicle assembler operating in Israel since the mid-20th century. The article analyses the transformation of the case study firm’s management, employment and work organization, the outcome of which is a firm concerned with profit, not employee welfare, as it was initially. The article explores how and why this transformation occurred. Secondary and primary data research is used in the analysis, consisting of archival and interview data respectively. This analysis reveals three distinct periods in the transformation, with an old firm, a transitional firm and a new firm. The research indicates that these periods correlate to the changes of political economy and institutional configurations within which the case study firm is embedded, suggesting that such embeddedness is a key issue for the firm and its orientation to welfare or profit.

This study examines how the balance of power has changed between the parties in industrial relations in the area of individual labour law in Turkey in the 2000s. It analyses the new Labour Act of Turkey with regard to changes in the notion of subordination and changing working conditions. It presents a definition of ‘the new employer’ – as the representative of the flexible company.