Of minimum wages and other vices of the labour market…

The outcome of yesterday’s first day of social dialogue regarding the future of the minimum wage in Greece is important for two reasons: first, because the social partners vowed their support to the 13th and 14th salary and agreed any pay decreases (or wage freezes – practically it’s the same any way) to be implemented from 2013 onwards (with the signing of the new national collective agreement); and, second, because their stance provides a firm answer to the government’s ‘threat’ that it will legislate a reduction to the minimum wage if the social partners’ agreement is not deemed viable

Process versus content; or the slow and painful death of social dialogue

The European Union is built on structures of economic co-operation, yet the sovereign debt crisis is testing to the limit its ability to avert a financial disaster. In the current Greek imbroglio, both Athens and its euro-zone partners seem unable to achieve their aims and are finding it impossible to convince the markets they have found a way out. Given both sides proclaimed a Greek default (and possibly an exit from the euro-zone) is what they wished to avoid, how come they haven’t been able to cooperate and secure their shared goal

Industrial relations in crisis?: the ‘new industrial relations' theory and the field of industrial relations in Britain

A common feeling among the Industrial Relations community is that the field faces a crisis that challenges both its ability to address the phenomena it studies and its institutional structures. However, the literature is not clear on the reasons for this development. Some argue, predominantly in Britain, that the cause of this crisis is the penetration of Human Resource Management (HRM) or, as this trend is also known, of the New Industrial Relations (NIR) theory, in the intellectual and institutional edifice of the field. Others, however, especially from the US, believe that the reason for the inability of the field to deal with the external environment is its adherence to an oldfashioned paradigm that does not take into consideration the changing nature of industrial relations realities. For them, the solution is to incorporate the teachings of the NIR theory in the intellectual corpus of Industrial Relations. Thus, one is faced with two contradictory positions that have the same bases, namely that the field is in a critical condition and that, somehow, a theory is involved (or should be involved) in the picture. However, the discrepancy between the two theses poses important conceptual problems for the future of the field for it is not as yet clear who is to blame (if anyone) for its current situation. It is, therefore, the aim of this Thesis to clarify the above picture. To achieve this, both the above theses will be evaluated. To do so, it is imperative to study the epistemological implications of the NIR theory for the field of Industrial Relations, and then to examine the place the NIR theory occupies in the intellectual structures of the field in Britain. Once this is achieved, the issue of crisis will be tackled in more detail to determine whether British Industrial Relations actually face the crisis that the various voices in the literature ascribe it with. In the Introduction the general problem and the Research Questions of the Thesis will be discussed. Then, the First Chapter will set the theoretical context upon which the analysis will be based. Chapter Two will present the intellectual and institutional development of the field of Industrial Relations, while Chapter Three will be devoted to an analysis of the NIR theory. Chapter Four will examine the epistemic value of the theory for the field of Industrial Relations and Chapter Five will investigate the position that the NIR theory occupies in the British Industrial Relations fora of knowledge development. Chapter Six will complement the above discussion by examining the evolutionary dynamics of the NIR theory. In Chapter Seven the intellectual status of Industrial Relations will be examined to see whether the field faces an intellectual crisis. Then, Chapter Eight will analyse the dynamics of the field in Britain to evaluate the condition of the field’s institutions. Finally, in Chapter Nine, the institutional status of the field, together with some ideas about the field’s future will be further discussed, and some promising avenues for future research will be presented

United We Stand? Marketization, institutional change and employers’ associations in crisis

The continuous process of marketization of employment relations in a variety of European countries has raised questions about the power of collective social actors and their legitimizing role in policy-making. The article examines the responses of employers’ associations to institutional changes towards marketization in the context of the Greek economic crisis. The analysis exposes the hidden fractures between and within the peak-level employers’ associations and unveils a variation in their strategic responses towards institutional changes. To explain this variation, the article advances a power-based explanation and argues that the institutional changes altered the associations’ interest representation and power resources, which in turn, redefined their role and identities in the employment relations system

Institutional change in Greek industrial relations in an era of fiscal crisis

The main aim of this paper is to contribute to the ongoing debate on the facets of the Greek crisis via an analysis of the changes in the institutional framework of the labour market that are introduced as a result of the EU/IMF mechanism for financial support. The paper tries to make sense of the immense transformation in the Greek industrial relations system and to evaluate the direction of change, using insights from the varieties of capitalism literature. In this strand of literature it is well established that the comparative institutional advantage and high economic performance of a country depends on its overall institutional arrangement and the fit between different institutions (including the industrial relations sphere). Thus, it is important to examine the current injection of liberal market elements in the Greek industrial relations realm vis-a-vis the wider institutional context. This will allow us to guage the suitability and chances for the implementation of IMF's 'one-size-fits-all' policies

The genesis of a scientific community: the British Universities Industrial Relations Association and the field of industrial relations in Britain, c.1950–1983

Scholarship dealing with labor-related topics has been prevalent in Britain from the early twentieth century, but a scientific field dedicated exclusively to the study of industrial relations did not emerge until the second half of the century. Although the socio-economic context of the post-war years provided a fertile ground for the field’s emergence, the reason for its eventual development was a socialization process that took place in the early 1950s with the establishment of an informal group of industrial relations scholars. The group would grow to become the British Universities Industrial Relations Association and its activities would help the emerging community develop a ‘disciplinary identity’ and form the institutions that would subsequently define the field of Industrial Relations