Perils of the High and Low Roads: Employment Relations in the United States and Germany

[Excerpt] The U.S. crisis is characterized by growing income inequality, a shrinking safety net, and the decline of worker representation. Like the German crisis, it is caused in part by intensified global competition. Unlike in Germany, problems in the United States have also been exacerbated by deregulation, short-term horizons (e.g., quarterly reports to shareholders), and the decline of the labor movement. Both Germany and the United States, however, have substantial political, economic, and social resources to use in solving their problems. The contemporary crises do not appear for either of these countries to foreshadow a major collapse like that of the Great Depression. We are confident that actors in Germany and the United States can and will pursue reforms, including policy innovations and negotiation. In so doing, we suggest that these societies—the two strongest western economies—have a great deal to learn from each other and from their common experience in the global economy. They do not need, and are unlikely to get, convergence. Yet, each could benefit significantly by adopting elements and aspects of the other\u27s institutions, practices, and policies. In this chapter, the focus is on employment relations, which we believe are central to the broader economic and social problems in each society. We consider the following two interrelated questions. First, exactly how do the internal and external pressures on employment relations emerge in each country? Second, in what tangible forms do these pressures appear on the ground, where labor and business (and, more indirectly, other political, social, and economic actors) interact to perpetuate, alter, or scrap certain modes of production, including service delivery, work organization, and negotiation

Industrial relations and European integration

Sammelbesprechung zu: (1) Keller, Berndt/ Hans-Wolfgang Platzer (eds.) (2003): Industrial Relations and European Integration. Trans- und Supranational Developments and Prospects. Aldershot: Ashgate, 192 pp. (2) Kohl, Heribert/ Hans-Wolfgang Platzer (2004): Arbeitsbeziehungen in Mittelosteuropa. Transformation und Integration - die acht EU-Beitrittsländer im Vergleich. 2., neu bearb. u. aktual. Aufl., Baden-Baden: Nomos, 335 pp. (3) Kohl, Heribert/ Hans-Wolfgang Platzer (2004): Industrial relations in Central and Eastern Europe. Transformation and integration. A comparison of the eight new EU member states. Brussels: ETUI. 422 pp. (4) Marginson, Paul/ Keith Sisson (2004): European Integration and Industrial Relations. Multi-level Governance in the Making. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 360 pp

German Trade Unions and Right Extremism: Understanding Membership Attitudes

Right-wing populism and extremism present challenges for trade unions throughout Europe. This article reports findings from a representative survey and group interviews with union members in Germany. Far right attitudes are neither more nor less widespread among union members as a whole than in the population at large, but there are considerable differences within the membership. In particular, skilled workers as well as middle managers who are union members are significantly more inclined to extremist attitudes than non-unionists. The article discusses these results and presents several conclusions regarding future trade union policy

Unions in Germany: Searching to regain the initiative

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Using networks towards global labor standards? Organizing social responsibility in global production chains

"In einer sich globalisierenden Ökonomie wird Arbeit nicht selten in einer Form organisiert, die gegen die elementarsten Menschenrechte verstößt. Dieser Tendenz wird von in Fragen sozial verantwortlicher Unternehmungsführung besonders engagierten Unternehmungen entgegen gewirkt, indem entsprechende Verhaltenskodizes formuliert und nicht nur in der Unternehmung, sondern auch in ihrem globalen Zuliefernetzwerk implementiert werden. Allerdings stößt die Implementierung dort auf zum Teil kaum zu überwindende Schwierigkeiten. Die Organisationsform des Netzwerks wird in Hinblick darauf untersucht, inwiefern und unter welchen Bedingungen sie einer in Hinblick auf die Einhaltung globaler Arbeitsstandards sozial verantwortlichen Unternehmungs- bzw. Netzwerkführung entgegensteht oder aber unterstützt. Die Rolle des institutionellen Kontexts einer sozialverantwortlichen Führung wird dabei berücksichtigt und verschiedene denkbare Regulierungsmodi angesprochen. Die Untersuchung ist von strukturationstheoretischen Grundüberlegungen getragen und basiert empirisch auf der explorativen Analyse von drei Fallstudien aus der Bekleidungsindustrie." (Autorenreferat)"The prosperity of spreading economic globalization often rests on subjecting labor to working conditions which violate elementary human rights. Political, and to a markedly lesser extent, academic controversies over counter-measures have developed with a primarily focus on cases of buyer-driven global commodity chains. With general and judicable global standards non-existent, consumer and shareholder pressure plus internal goals for setting labor standards have led some globally active enterprises to voluntarily adopt codes of conduct as a means of dealing with this problem all along the commodity chain. Using some basic tenets of structuration theory and insights based on an exploratory empirical analysis of three cases from the apparel industry, this paper looks at such codes as a tool of corporate social responsibility. From this, it goes on to ask whether the form and the shape of the inter-organizational network are conducive or a hindrance to achieving acceptable labor standards. Following a brief review of the problems associated with achieving generally recognized global labor standards, the paper concludes with an appraisal of the need to embed corporate social responsibility in a comprehensive institutional framework in the interest of human rights and global labor standards." (author's abstract

Analysing Social Partnership: A Tool of Union Revitalization?

[Excerpt] Recently, much has been written about social partnership. Especially in Europe, the spread of national social pacts, the introduction of tripartite institutions to the Central and Eastern European accession countries, and the implementation of the Social Dialogue in the European Union have created a new interest in the effects and effectiveness of such arrangements. In the United States, the meaning of labour-management partnership is developing further, as revitalized unions of service and construction workers have applied this instrument to extend and consolidate gains (Mills 2001; WAI 2002). This chapter focuses on one issue among many with regard to social partnership: When can it be a tool of union revitalization? In the past, critics close to the labour movement associated social partnership with a stagnant and defensive brand of unionism that was out of touch with the working class, overly concerned about ongoing relations with the state and capital, and incapable of carrying out a contentious role in class struggle and pluralist industrial relations (Parker and Slaughter 1994; Kelly 1998). More recently, critical voices have taken a more contingent approach by using different union capacities (Parker and Slaughter 1997) and differing product and labour market conditions (Kelly 2004) to explain varying outcomes of partnership experiences for unions and their members. Using evidence from five countries, we find that social partnership contributes to revitalization, when it is institutionalized, integrated with other union strategies, and, most importantly, when it is pursued in the interest of a broader social agenda

Initiating transfer of practices via union involvement

International Framework Agreements (IFAs) represent a still small but growing and particularly interesting contribution to the global regulation of employment relations. IFAs enable global union federations (GUFs) to become actively involved in co-designing employment relations within transnational corporations (TNCs) and their global production networks. Based upon theoretical insights into the challenges of transferring practices in and across organizations, we present and discuss a model of practice transfer for global production networks based on empirical data from a content analysis of IFAs and from interviews with representatives of TNCs, GUFs, and other experts. Our study contributes to an organizational theory of practice transfer. But more importantly, it aims at a better integration of IHRM and international industrial relations by looking more closely at the particular role of GUFs as external actors

The global and the local of framework agreements in the USA

Global Framework Agreements (GFAs) are still a marginal topic in political and academic discourses over global governance and corporate responsibility. In functional terms, GFAs are a commitment to include global labor standards with respect to human resource management as part of this broader turn to CR. But to what extent are these intentions and goals actually realized? Are corporations able and willing to implement GFAs in a joint effort together with the unions across a vastly diverse range of institutional settings and national arrangements? And do GFAs have an influence on core elements of a company’s business policy decisions? Drawing on the insights from an interdisciplinary and multinational project, this paper uses four case studies to explore the conditions and variations in GFA implementation in the USA. Although we observe, as have others before us, that key matters of business strategy such as investments, acquisitions, restructuring, or relocation are more centralized than corporate policies on labor relations, we provide some evidence that the implementation of GFAs can be moved forward by a confluence of external actor involvement and of corporate strategies motivated by a desire to streamline HRM practices (that include the goals covered by GFAs in their core business practices). This finding of the influence of external actor voice in implementation processes may also have broader explanatory power with respect to CR initiatives in general. And in theoretical terms it allows us to explore the interplay between macro structural explanations like the Varieties of Capitalism approach, and the strategic “micro-political” explanations. Our study, in fact, suggests a strong need to combine these in a more systematic fashion