We present comparative research on precarious work and trade union strategies in three sectors (construction, industrial cleaning, temporary agency work) across seven European countries. Specific ...sectors have a profile of precarious work that is remarkably similar across countries, originating from similar employer strategies and work organizations. This results in unions facing comparable challenges concerning precarious work at sectoral level and developing comparable sectoral strategies to combat precarious work. The success of these strategies depends to a large extent on the available power resources. Between sectors within single countries, we observe some similarities but also very substantial differences in their institutional configuration and in actors’ constellations, power resources and repertoires of action. National institutional contexts seem much less significant than often assumed.
The launch of the European Pillar of Social Rights has reinvigorated the debate on the role that the European Union can exercise in the sphere of subjective rights. Such debate has traditionally ...focused on the limits of the current social acquis, considered unable to create fully-fledged European social citizenship, that ultimately remains limited to the right to reside and freely move within the EU and enjoy social rights as nationals. Conversely, this article argues that the gradual expansion of the EU’s social acquis has slowly but clearly started to disconnect social rights from their exclusive national foundations, leading to the emergence of a new marble cake pattern of right production, which to a large extent reproduces the trajectory of federal polities. To capture this development, this article proposes an original analytical framework to dissect the notion of social rights as bundles of power resources (normative, instrumental and enforcement), which enable individuals to claim and actually receive material benefits in order to cope with a codified array of risks and needs. By shifting the attention from the formal dimension (laws and their enforcement) to its concrete practice (access and outputs), our conception connects the concept of social citizenship more directly to what ultimately matters for life chances (individualised material benefits) as well as for the social and political bonds of a community (the rights-based claim and experience of social protection). In so doing, we move beyond the boundaries of the nation-state as the only producer of social entitlements and are able to appreciate the increasing relevance of the European Union as a provider of power resources and guarantor of policy outputs.
This engaging and timely book provides an in-depth analysis of work and labour relations within global platform capitalism with a specific focus on digital platforms that organise labour processes, ...known as labour platforms. Well-respected contributors thoroughly examine both online and offline platforms, their distinct differences and the important roles they play for both large transnational companies and those with a smaller global reach. Chapters explore how labour platforms have become controversial and ambiguous as they increasingly appear to provide important sources of work and income globally but conversely raise concerns over exploitation of workers and the lack of legal protection provided to them. Offering a global perspective and including studies from different continents, the book covers three key areas: platform work in the wider context of contemporary capitalism, labour platforms from an international division of labour perspective, and labour processes and relations. This informative and thought-provoking book is an excellent resource for scholars with a particular interest in political economy, the sociology of work, labour relations and labour policies. Policymakers and regulators looking to understand how to effectively apply existing regulations for platform workers when creating new business models will also find this an invigorating read.
This introductory article to the Special Issue Marshall in Brussels? A new perspective on social citizenship and the European Union first argues that there is a need for a novel systematic framework ...that captures the increasingly complex web of relationships between the European level and the national and local levels in the creation and implementation of social rights. It then summarizes the contributions of the articles included in the Special Issue, starting with the first article that provides such a novel framework, a power resource-based and multi-layered conception of social rights which looks at social rights as bundles of three key power resources: normative, enforcement and instrumental resources. It then shows how the other articles apply this framework when analysing a variety of issues related to European social citizenship. Finally, it sums up the main contributions of the Special Issue: its contribution to the further development of power resource theory; to the theory of social citizenship; and to capturing how social rights in the EU increasingly result from the creative assemblage of different resources provided by different actors and levels of government, resulting in a ‘marble cake’ pattern akin to that existing in historical federations like the US or Switzerland.
This article re-introduces the company in the analysis of labour market dualisation by studying local actors’ (i.e. management and employee representatives) strategies as embedded in organisational ...and institutional contexts. Building on 12 case studies of multinational corporation (hereinafter MNC) subsidiaries in Belgium, Germany and Britain, the authors illustrate how organisational and institutional legacies influence (but do not determine) local actors’ strategic arrangements regarding the working conditions of standard (insider) and non-standard (outsider) workers. The outcomes resulting from these local (negotiated) arrangements illustrate a variety of inequality patterns, rather than any single pattern. The study distinguishes between convergence, where differences in working conditions between the different groups of workers decrease as the result of reduced standards for the better-off group, and divergence, where these differences increase.
This article presents a comparison of interest representation in the videogame industry in Denmark, Italy and the Netherlands. While traditional industrial relations actors play a minor role, ...interest representation is far from absent in this creative industry. Interest representation is, however, dominated by other actors that often cut across the employer–employee divide. This article argues that the specific features of interest representation in the videogame industry can be explained by the characteristics of employment in the sector. The presence of fluid labour markets, the strong importance of intrinsic motivation in workers’ attitudes to work, and the presence of groups of workers willing to pursue individual strategies, contribute to distance the industry from the collective identities of traditional industrial relations actors and to strengthen the appeal to occupational identities developed by professional organizations, trade associations and informal communities.
In the context of rising inequality between capital and labour and among wage-earners in Europe, this state-of-the-art article reviews the literature concerning the relationship between collective ...bargaining and inequality. It focuses on two main questions: (i) what is the relationship between collective bargaining, union bargaining power and inequality between capital and labour? and (ii) what is the relationship between collective bargaining, union bargaining power and wage inequality among wage-earners? Both questions are discussed in general terms and for single- and multi-employer bargaining systems. It is argued that collective bargaining coverage and union density are negatively related to both types of inequality. These relationships are however qualified by four additional factors: who unions represent, the weight of union objectives other than wages, the statutory minimum wage, and extensions of collective agreements by governments.
In this article, we discuss the role of trade unions in the evolution of occupational pensions in four countries: Austria, Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands. In all four cases, important reforms ...have been made to the pension systems, including the consolidation of extensive occupational pensions in the Netherlands, substantial expansion of occupational pensions in Germany, and a continued marginal position of occupational pensions in Austria and Belgium. We show that the distinct developments in occupational pensions in the four cases since the 1990s can, to an important extent, be understood by the differences in the power resources and preferences of trade unions. The influence of unions on the development of occupational pension systems depends, on the one hand, on the extent to which they see them as an opportunity or a threat, and, on the other hand, on the extent to which they have the power resources to consolidate, oppose or shape these systems.
The cultural and creative industries (CCI) is a sector where the workforce is highly educated, yet precarious working conditions are prominent. Although flexible and marginal work is often treated as ...an overall feature of the sector, this study based on register data on all workers in the sector shows that processes of flexibilization and marginalization are highly divergent between its subsectors. In half of the CCI subsectors, some form of collectively bargained response to the ongoing flexibilization and marginalization has emerged. This first of all shows that creative workers do indeed not only care about expressing their creativity but also about their material working and living conditions. Also how employers’ organizations and trade unions respond to these developments by means of collective agreements varies. Where they disagree, concrete action is postponed. Where they align, either counteracting measures are included, or attempts are made to bridge the divide between employees and the self-employed to some extend in the collective agreement. By doing so, they counteract processes of dualization, paving the road for innovative approaches of industrial relations actors. Still, this counts only for part of the CCI as much of it remains not covered by collective agreements.
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