Valeria Pulignano - Böcker

Work is widely thought to have become more precarious. Many people feel that unions represent the interests of protected workers in good jobs at the expense of workers with insecure employment, low pay, and less generous benefits. Reconstructing Solidarity: Labour Unions, Precarious Work, and the Politics of Institutional Change in Europe argues the opposite: that unions try to represent precarious workers using a variety of creative campaigning and organizing tactics.Where unions can limit employers' ability to 'exit' labour market institutions and collective agreements, and build solidarity across different groups of workers, this results in a virtuous circle, establishing union control over the labour market. Where they fail to do so, it sets in motion a vicious circle of expanding precarity based on institutional evasion by employers. Reconstructing Solidarity examines how unions build, or fail to build, inclusive worker solidarity to challenge this vicious circle and to re-regulate increasingly precarious jobs. Comparative case studies from fourteen European countries describe the struggles of workers and unions in industries such as local government, retail, music, metalworking, chemicals, meat packing, and logistics. Their findings argue against the thesis that unions act primarily to protect labour market insiders at the expense of outsiders.

Work is widely thought to have become more precarious. Many people feel that unions represent the interests of protected workers in good jobs at the expense of workers with insecure employment, low pay, and less generous benefits. Reconstructing Solidarity: Labour Unions, Precarious Work, and the Politics of Institutional Change in Europe argues the opposite: that unions try to represent precarious workers using a variety of creative campaigning and organizing tactics.Where unions can limit employers' ability to 'exit' labour market institutions and collective agreements, and build solidarity across different groups of workers, this results in a virtuous circle, establishing union control over the labour market. Where they fail to do so, it sets in motion a vicious circle of expanding precarity based on institutional evasion by employers. Ieconstructing Solidarity examines how unions build, or fail to build, inclusive worker solidarity to challenge this vicious circle and to re-regulate increasingly precarious jobs. Comparative case studies from fourteen European countries describe the struggles of workers and unions in industries such as local government, retail, music, metalworking, chemicals, meat packing, and logistics. Their findings argue against the thesis that unions act primarily to protect labour market insiders at the expense of outsiders.

The Politics of Unpaid Labour introduces the theory of the politics of unpaid labour to advance understanding of inequality within the context of precarious work. It understands unpaid labour as the time and effort people invest to undertake tasks which relate to the work implicitly or explicitly assigned to them, but for which they are not paid. The book establishes a crucial link between unpaid labour's political dimensions and its role in fuelling emerging forms of precarious work characterized by persistent inequalities in a context of labour market reforms, societal shifts, and technological changes, and it reveals how these seemingly disparate elements intertwine, connecting the intricate dynamics of the social system's micro-level components to larger macro-level structural patterns. Comparing working conditions in creative dance, residential care, and online freelancing in the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, and Poland, the book's empirical section is based on a wide range of biographical interviews and work diaries. In addition to introducing the major themes, theories, and thinkers of inequality and precarious work within the tradition of work, employment, and economic studies in sociology and the political economy, the theoretical section advances the current discussion on how unpaid labour contributes to inequality in precarious work in three ways. First, it establishes the characteristics differentiating employment from self-employment, and how these lead to a revised definition of unpaid labour. Second, it illustrates that unpaid labour is both shaped by class and serves to reproduce class interests, revealing ongoing changes in welfare, employment, and state institutional policies. Third, it considers the necessity to establish conditions within the labour market conducive to genuinely cultivating and honouring the diversity of human capabilities and actions within labour structures and promoting their manifestation.This is an open access title available under the terms of a [CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International] licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

Since the 1980s, the process of European economic integration, within a wider context of globalization, has accelerated employment change and placed a new premium on ‘flexible’ forms of work organization. The institutions of employment relations, specifically those concerning collective bargaining between employers and trade unions, have had to adapt accordingly. The Transformation of Employment Relations focuses not just on recent change, but charts the strategic choices that have influenced employment relations and examines these key developments in a comparative perspective. A historical and cross-national analysis of the most important and controversial ‘issues’ explores the motivation of the actors, the implementation of change, and its evolution in a diverse European context. The book highlights the policies and the role played by different institutional and social actors (employers, management, trade unions, professional associations and governments) and assesses the extent to which these policies and roles have had significant effects on outcomes. This comparative analysis of the transformation of work and employment regulation, within the context of a quarter-century timeframe, has not been undertaken in any other book. But this is no comparative handbook in which changes are largely described on a country-by-country basis, but instead, The Transformation of Employment Relations is rather focused thematically. As Europe copes with a serious economic crisis, understanding of the dynamics of work transformation has never been more important.

Since the 1980s, the process of European economic integration, within a wider context of globalization, has accelerated employment change and placed a new premium on ‘flexible’ forms of work organization. The institutions of employment relations, specifically those concerning collective bargaining between employers and trade unions, have had to adapt accordingly. The Transformation of Employment Relations focuses not just on recent change, but charts the strategic choices that have influenced employment relations and examines these key developments in a comparative perspective. A historical and cross-national analysis of the most important and controversial ‘issues’ explores the motivation of the actors, the implementation of change, and its evolution in a diverse European context. The book highlights the policies and the role played by different institutional and social actors (employers, management, trade unions, professional associations and governments) and assesses the extent to which these policies and roles have had significant effects on outcomes. This comparative analysis of the transformation of work and employment regulation, within the context of a quarter-century timeframe, has not been undertaken in any other book. But this is no comparative handbook in which changes are largely described on a country-by-country basis, but instead, The Transformation of Employment Relations is rather focused thematically. As Europe copes with a serious economic crisis, understanding of the dynamics of work transformation has never been more important.

An examination of the form and character of recent transformations in the international automobile industry. Using comparative and national-based case study analysis, it explores the nature of such recent developments (outsourcing, modularization, high performance workplaces, etc.) and their impact on issues in the sector on a world scale.

Shifting Solidarities offers a comprehensive analysis of solidarity at a time when major social transformations have penetrated the heart of European societies, disrupting markets and labour relations, transforming social practices, and affecting the moral infrastructure of European welfare states.

Shifting Solidarities offers a comprehensive analysis of solidarity at a time when major social transformations have penetrated the heart of European societies, disrupting markets and labour relations, transforming social practices, and affecting the moral infrastructure of European welfare states.