European Journal of Industrial Relations

The conclusions of the European summits since 1992 and the content of the Amsterdam Treaty seem to imply that the employment issue has finally reached the Community agenda. How far does the new approach differ from previous policy? How were the changes of the 1990s achieved? This article reviews previous EU social policy as regards employment issues, then analyses the different elements of the European employment strategy (EES) and offers a preliminary assessment. A major question addressed is how, compared to previous regulation methods, this new process is likely to affect the legitimacy and efficiency of `Social Europe'.

Since 1991 a research group has investigated the relationship between environmental policies and the industrial relations systems in 10 European countries. It might be expected that the growing importance of the environment as a policy issue would prompt an enlargement of the traditional agenda of industrial relations systems, leading to stronger inclusion of the social partners in environmental action; but in the main, evidence of such enlargement has been sparse. The Netherlands, where works councils legislation has been used to extend collective rights for greater environmental involvement, stood out as the exception. Elsewhere, initiatives have been mostly confined to company-level voluntary agreements, with certain sectors playing a prominent role. Very few attempts have been made to develop the environmental role of industrial relations actors through legislation. A number of explanations for this relatively slow progress are explored, as are the prospects for developments in the future.

This article examines the link between labour market regulation, in particular in relation to employment security, and the development and maintenance of an adequate skill base. The implications of the different institutional and regulatory contexts within France and the UK are addressed through a comparative study of the civil aerospace sector. The evidence indicates that the institutional framework can have a profound effect on levels of employment security and, therefore, on training and skill development; and thus that labour market flexibility in the UK is a major barrier to the development and maintenance of skills.

The distribution of low pay by sector, size of firm, occupation, type of contract and gender varies cross-nationally. This article examines the extent to which systems of collective bargaining and minimum wage regimes explain such differences. It compares Britain, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain and the USA using a newly harmonized data set, PACO, and the European household panel study for Spain. The findings indicate that strong collective bargaining and minimum wage regimes reduce the percentage of low-paid workers. However, the benefits of such regulation do not extend to women and especially part-time women employees as much as to men.

This article evaluates progress towards independent trade unionism in the post-command economies of Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and, in most detail, the Czech Republic. A general introduction is followed by presentation of survey evidence on the views and experiences of trade unionism among workers, union members and union representatives. Issues covered include changing attitudes towards trade unions over the first seven years of capitalist transformation, types of union-management relationships, trade union influence at the workplace, and problems of union decline and retention. The article addresses the relationship between employers and managers and unions, and that between workers and their unions. The conclusions drawn are that unions have made substantial progress in establishing the institutional frameworks of labour representation; but collective bargaining is weak; and unless union membership decline is reversed, labour representation as such seems vulnerable.