The Histadrut was founded in 1920 to organize the so-called Zionist conquest of labor, which aimed to exclude Palestinian workers from the economy. While this ideology was central to the Yishuv, ...labor shortages and settler-colonial expansion following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 led to the integration of Palestinian workers in the workforce. Focusing on the construction industry, this article explores the ways in which the Histadrut’s contemporary membership structure, collective agreements, and relationship to the Israeli state serve to further institutionalize a highly racialized and segregated sector. Palestinian and migrant construction workers toil in dangerous circumstances for low pay, without union protection, and under the supervision of unionized Jewish managers and engineers.
There was a strong push from employers to decentralize wage setting in Finland in the early 2000s. We analyze the incidence of decentralization and its effect on the level and dispersion of wages by ...using nationally representative panel data. The results show that wage setting was more likely decentralized in collective agreements where a high share of employees worked in manufacturing or real estate industries than in other industries, such as in education and human health and social work activities. Decentralization was, for the most part, quite short-lived. Using recent difference-in-differences methods that allow for heterogeneous treatment effects and differences in the timing of treatment, we show that decentralization had modest positive effects on the level and dispersion of wages in manufacturing.
What is the role of collective agreements in explaining how unions affect firm‐level productivity? Using matched employer–employee panel data for the Norwegian labour market, comprising almost 21 ...million individual‐year observations in the period 2002–2018, we find that the presence of a collective agreement in a firm is associated with higher productivity. Without a collective agreement, higher union density is estimated to reduce productivity. However, if a collective agreement is implemented in the firm, not only is the estimated negative effect reduced—in some cases it becomes positive. This result remains significant, numerically and statistically, across several model specifications and different estimation methods. In particular, we provide a new source of exogenous variation in union memberships by utilizing information on intergenerational transmission of union preferences. Besides regulating terms and conditions for wage formation and working hours, collective agreements have a profound impact on how firms organize and formally recognize the voice of workers. In this regard, our finding supports the conclusion of Freeman and Medoff that the quality of institutional systems is crucial to understand what unions do to productivity.
Wage setting can be defined as the procedures which determine the remuneration which needs to be paid to employees as the counterpart of their work. The ancillary relationship between wage moderation ...and the new economic governance has never been expressed as clearly as in the Europlus Pact. The new economic governance (NEG) of the European Union has fostered wage moderation. This approach to wage setting and wage moderation is analysed from the perspective of the freedom of collective bargaining as a fundamental right, and on the basis of a national case study (Belgium). In order to carry out this analysis, the national wage moderation policies adopted in Belgium prior to the era of the NEG need to be examined first. The recommendations addressed to Belgium to reform the wage-setting system will then be analysed, as well as the impact they had both in confirming the existing system of wage moderation and the attempts to strengthen the restrictions imposed on collective autonomy. In light of these findings, these restrictions of collective autonomy are assessed on the basis of the freedom of collective bargaining, understood as a fundamental right.
Many governments, large institutions, and collective actors rely on the principle of solidarity to embed social policies on firm normative and legal grounds. In this original volume, a ...multidisciplinary roster of scholars come together to examine the contributions – and challenges –implicit in relying on the idea of solidarity to 'inscribe' this principle in social policies. Chapters explore how the dependence on the solidarity principle, and especially on inclusive understandings of solidarity, can strengthen or weaken institutions and movements. The volume's contributors cover developments across decades with a multilevel approach exploring dynamic interactions between local, national, and supranational arenas in pursuing and adjudicating the solidarity principle. Unique and innovative, Inscribing Solidarity examines the implications and dynamics of solidarity across a variety of terrains to illuminate its concrete limitations and specific advantages. This title is also available via Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Unionized organizations are implementing more than ever technological changes to cope with an increasingly changing and highly digital environment. Despite the extensive literature on union responses ...to changes, there is not much evidence on how unions and employers draft provisions pertaining to technological changes in collective agreements. Therefore, this paper aims to conduct an in‐depth analysis of these provisions in over 500 collective agreements signed between 2000 and 2020. Specifically, this study focuses on office workers in two of the most important Canadian industries, namely, the healthcare and manufacturing sectors. The findings indicate that within the examined provisions, the regulation of technological change varies along a continuum that extends from no obligations to stringent obligations on the part of the employer. Moreover, the results show that these provisions have remained stable over the past two decades.
The article examines the existing legal framework for collective bargaining in Poland with the situation, strategies and opinions of social partners and discusses the result – the coverage by ...collective agreements (approximately 12%). Next, de lege ferenda proposals and expectations for the future are put forward.
There is a burgeoning literature regarding using Internet‐based data in employment, university admissions, and healthcare settings, but such pertaining to forensic mental health assessment (FMHA) ...contexts is only beginning to develop and professional ethics codes have yet to address these issues in depth. We present the first empirical investigation of mental health and related professionals’ (n = 139) attitudes and practices regarding using Internet data in forensic and therapeutic contexts. Respondents reported their experiences and levels of agreement with items measuring beliefs and attitudes toward using Internet‐based data in various professional situations (e.g., 23% have searched the Internet for information about a therapy client, 39% for a forensic examinee, and only 26% opposed the practice for forensic evaluators). They also reported high levels of collective agreement, including feeling that there is a lack of guidance available from professional resources regarding Internet‐related issues. Implications for forensic practice and research are presented.
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