Fading Corporatism: Israel\u27s Labor Law and Industrial Relations in Transition

[Excerpt] This book surveys Israeli labor law from 1920 to the present. The process of writing and publishing a book does not always conform to the pace of events, particularly when the subject matter is contemporary history. The book is therefore updated until the end of 2005. References to court cases and events that began before 2005 were updated at the end of 2006. However, no developments since that time have been integrated into the text. In my opinion, no such event undermines the central argument of the book; several reinforce it. Presenting a book in English that focuses on Israel\u27s labor law presents many editorial dilemmas. Moreover, the book\u27s claim is that Israeli law developed on the basis of continental European systems and is now adopting features of American law. Hence it is difficult to determine how to translate the law and how to convey a feel of the Israeli story. While providing a consistent method was the most important goal, I have also attempted to keep the book as simple and user-friendly as possible

Feminist Reflections on the Scope of Labour Law: Domestic Work, Social Reproduction and Jurisdiction

Drawing on feminist labour law and political economy literature, I argue that it is crucial to interrogate the personal and territorial scope of labour. After discussing the “commodification” of care, global care chains, and body work, I claim that the territorial scope of labour law must be expanded beyond that nation state to include transnational processes. I use the idea of social reproduction both to illustrate and to examine some of the recurring regulatory dilemmas that plague labour markets. I argue that unpaid care and domestic work performed in the household, typically by women, troubles the personal scope of labour law. I use the example of this specific type of personal service relation to illustrate my claim that the jurisdiction of labour law is historical and contingent, rather than conceptual and universal. I conclude by identifying some of the implications of redrawing the territorial and personal scope of labour law in light of feminist understandings of social reproduction

Justice in a globalizing world : resolving conflicts involving workers rights beyond the nation state

This paper focuses on two examples – first, the imposition of tariffs on tires made in China and exported to the United States, which culminated in a decision of World Trade Organization’s (WTO) appellate body to uphold the US tariffs, and, second, the development of the European law, especially the decisions of the Court of Justice of the European Union, on posted workers in the context of public procurement – in which labour concerns transcend the nation state’s borders and the relevant agents (states, municipalities, NGOs, trade unions, employers, industry associations) are in conflict outside the familiar space of the nation state. The examples refer to different markets – goods and capital, on the one hand, and services and labour, on the other, and they operate on different scales, the international in one case and the transnational (or regional) in the other. They also focus on qualitatively different governance regimes, which involve different constellations of political and social actors and different relationships between economic and social/political integration. Drawing on Fraser’s discussion of “abnormal justice”, a situation in which the traditional discourse and grammar of justice are being doubted, the paper juxtaposes the case studies in order to highlight three political dilemmas (“what”, “who”, and “how”) that arise in the context of abnormal justice and to illustrate how these dilemmas are interconnected. Although both cases exemplify the “what” question, the paper emphasizes the “who” and “how” dimensions of justice, arguing that if the process for resolving the conflict is fair, inclusive, and dynamically open to challenges, then its outcomes on distributive justice are more likely to be considered legitimate and persuasive

Organizing Workers in Centralized Bargaining Systems

Unions’ decline is prevalent in most western democracies (Blanchflower 2007). Decline takes many features – decreasing bargaining power, reduced role in political negotiations, reduced coverage of collective agreements, shallow bargaining (in terms of topics covered and the extent of workers rights), and declining membership rates. In this article I would like to focus on the latter aspect. The article discusses the need for organizing members, and the different implications organizing may have in different industrial relations regime. I argue that organizing is a necessary component of trade union revitalization strategies in most countries. Only when the individual incentives to join a trade union are very high can trade unions forgo the task of organizing. In all other cases, recruiting new members is necessary for revitalization. However, even this wide-spread need is not a uniform strategy. The need to organize and recruit new members is dependent on the institutional design of the industrial relations system. Hence it is argued that there are logics of organization. The article focuses on systems that maintain a structure of centralized bargaining. It is argued that in such systems that need for recruiting new members is not always readily apparent. Moreover, in such systems the organizing of workers runs into an internal contradiction, whereby the reliance on the more developed strategies for organizing that were borrowed from the liberal systems, notably – the United States, may undermine the comprehensive coverage and centralized nature of the system. More specifically, it is argued that in the process of adaptation there are two basic tracks: (a) organizing within the centralized tradition, where the expected benefits and risks are high, and (b) organizing according to the decentralized systems’ method at the enterprise level, where the benefits and stakes are high. The former will be demonstrated by a Dutch example and the latter by an Israeli example

Circular migration (CM) in Israel. Law’s role in circularity and the ambiguities of the CM strategy

Euro-Mediterranean Consortium for Applied Research on International Migration (CARIM

Irregular Migration in Israel– A Legal Perspective

Euro-Mediterranean Consortium for Applied Research on International Migration (CARIM)Two competing views of irregularity in migration dominate the legal debate. The first sees irregularity as a form of deviant behavior that justifies the denial of rights, deportation and the development of negative incentives for illegal migrants. The second holds irregularity to be an outcome of diverse circumstances, some of which are beyond the migrant's control and some of which require the state to adjust its immigration policy. According to this second viewpoint, irregularity should sometimes be addressed by means of regularization, securing rights and strengthening the state's responsibility toward its migrants. The two views clash: (a) over the understanding of who the irregular migrants are and the reasons for their irregularity, (b) over the balance between the state's monopoly on determining citizenship, and the view that de facto affiliation with the community and other values such as moral obligation and moral worth can impose on the state recognition of status (c) over the conceptual relationship between uninvited presence and rights, and (d) over the likely effects of granting rights on the inflow of further irregular migrants. This report describes Israel's legal regime in the context of illegal migration. It looks at the reasons for irregularity, possibilities for regularization, extension and the denial of rights to irregular migrants and the debate on the incentives, negative and positive alike, employed by the state for individuals with an irregular status

Fading Corporatism: Israel's Labor Law and Industrial Relations in Transition

The abstract, table of contents, and first twenty-five pages are published with permission from the Cornell University Press. For ordering information, please visit the Cornell University Press at http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/.[Excerpt] This book surveys Israeli labor law from 1920 to the present. The process of writing and publishing a book does not always conform to the pace of events, particularly when the subject matter is contemporary history. The book is therefore updated until the end of 2005. References to court cases and events that began before 2005 were updated at the end of 2006. However, no developments since that time have been integrated into the text. In my opinion, no such event undermines the central argument of the book; several reinforce it. Presenting a book in English that focuses on Israel's labor law presents many editorial dilemmas. Moreover, the book's claim is that Israeli law developed on the basis of continental European systems and is now adopting features of American law. Hence it is difficult to determine how to translate the law and how to convey a "feel" of the Israeli story. While providing a consistent method was the most important goal, I have also attempted to keep the book as simple and user-friendly as possible.Fading_Corporatism.pdf: 1023 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020