Carola M. Frege

A Critical Assessment of the Theoretical and Empirical Research on German Works Councils

The article reviews the existing English- and German-speaking literature on the German works council. Three major research topics are discussed: the ontology and typologies of works councils; their current practice and transformation; and their economic outcomes. Although much research has been conducted on the internal functioning of the works council-management relationship, it is clear that we still know little about the determinants of different workplace relations and their outcomes. The article concludes by advocating a reviving research interest in the link between codetermination and political democracy. Copyright Blackwell Publishers Ltd/London School of Economics 2002.

Institutions Matter: Union Solidarity in Hungary and East Germany

This study examines the extent of union solidarity in two post-communist countries, Hungary and east Germany. It tests the hypothesis that post-communist union members are sceptical and unsupportive of their new interest representation owing to a legacy of disappointing experiences with their former communist unions. A survey of the union members, the first of its kind, in the Hungarian and east German clothing industry revealed strong differences between members’ attitudes in both countries: east Germans were highly committed and supportive of their new union and works councils, whereas Hungarians lacked support for their institutions. The study points to the complexities of former and current attitudes and rejects the generic use of a communist legacy thesis. Instead, it links members’ attitudes to the different institutional context of interest representation in the two countries. It argues that the dual system of interest representation in Germany facilitates members’ trust in their new institutions, whereas the decentralized, overlapping institutions on Hungarian shop-floors impede union solidarity.

Across Boundaries: The Global Challenges Facing Workers and Employment Research

The overall complexity of employment relations today raises new challenges for scholars to extend their work across the boundaries of particular geographies, organizations, theoretical perspectives and disciplines. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the British Journal of Industrial Relations, this article introduces key aspects of global challenges facing employees and research on employment relations. Drawing on the articles of this anniversary issue, we identify several theoretical concepts drawn from the wider social sciences that have proven useful in understanding global challenges around global value chains, transnational and multi-level institutional frameworks, and the role of global finance. We also identify and discuss the emergence of new actors that have a growing salience for global employment research and the establishment of more global forms of worker representation. By further developing theoretical concepts around these global challenges, we argue that employment relations research will increase its dialogue with and distinctive contribution to wider debates in the social sciences.

Managing Transitions: The Reorganization of Two Clothing Manufacturing Firms in Hungary

The emergence of market-oriented economies in eastern and central Europe has produced an extensive debate on institutional transfer. Whilst it is generally recognized that new regulatory systems are being created out of a de facto consensus between unions, employers and government, less is known about the firm-specific organizational ramifications of such changes. This case study examines the interplay between institutional constraints and management decision making in the organization of production and work in two recently privatized Hungarian clothing manufacturing firms. We focus upon managerial action and the implementation of strategy; specifically on how managers have sought to re-shape the organization of production in an attempt to meet the market exigencies of a changing global production system in apparel. We show contrasting ways in which firms have sought to introduce new production paradigms that emphasize quality, cost and productive efficiencies, arguing that even where firms have more resources than others, efforts to restructure time discipline amongst workers are not necessarily successful.

Richard Hyman: Marxism, Trade Unionism and Comparative Employment Relations

Richard Hyman has been a hugely influential figure in the field of industrial relations for the best part of four decades. At a time when the future of the very subject has been questioned, we highlight three areas of Hymans work that we believe provide fertile territory for future research. The first concerns the importance of theory and the continuing need to broaden the subject of industrial relations so that it is treated as an area in which we can examine wider questions about ‘the political economy of waged labour’. The second area is the changing nature of employee representation which, for much of Hymans career, was synonymous with the analysis of trade unions under capitalism. The third area is one of the more striking recent successes within the subject, namely the study of comparative industrial relations. Each of these areas reveals Hymans talent for identifying and clarifying a set of issues around the politics of work that will endure regardless of whether the subject is known as industrial relations, employment relations or human resource management.

Varieties of Capitalism and Job Quality The Attainment of Civic Principles at Work in the United States and Germany

This article explores how institutional differences matter to the quality of a nation’s jobs; job quality is conceived as a dimension of a national economy’s social performance and thus defined in accordance with civic principles. Focus is on the two archetypical varieties of capitalism, the United States and Germany. Using data from a 2009 telephone survey of U.S. and German workers, we find that the overall attainment of civic principles, as perceived by workers, is no different in Germany than in the United States, even though the German institutional environment should be more conducive to them. This is due to higher worker expectations in Germany and a tendency for employer practices to compensate for the weaker (liberal) institutional environment in the United States. Once these are controlled, German workers report substantially more positive outcomes. We find that institutional differences also matter in how various employer practices are adopted and hence have indirect as well as direct implications.

LABOR UNIONS, ALTERNATIVE FORMS OF REPRESENTATION, AND THE EXERCISE OF AUTHORITY RELATIONS IN U.S. WORKPLACES

The authors draw on a telephone survey of 1,000 U.S. workers to explore whether alternative, nonunion forms of representation are filling the gap left by union decline; whether this matters to authority relations at work; and whether these first two points help to explain union decline. The authors find that nonunion associations do not appear to be filling the gap, but that management established, nonunion representation systems are one-and-a-half times as widespread as is union representation and are evaluated somewhat more favorably by workers. Both unions and management-established systems bear positive associations with authority relations at work before controlling for management practices, but these are substantially weakened once management practices—especially “bureaucratic” practices—are entered. The authors argue that, in the case of unions, this is likely because unions cause employers to adopt these practices. This is not likely to be the case of management-established systems, however, which are more likely to be set up in conjunction with these practices. Finally, results suggest that management-established systems are often in violation of the Wagner Act, but they bear no association with the propensity to vote for a union. Instead, bureaucratic practices matter, independently of these systems.

The Discourse of Industrial Democracy: Germany and the US Revisited

To better understand cross-country variations of institutions and practices of industrial democracy, such as between Germany and the US, this article highlights a frequently neglected explanatory factor, the national-specific discourses of democracy at work. These discourses are shaped by alternative political philosophies of the 19th century on the relationship between state, society and economy. In particular, how the role of the firm in society was conceptualized differently between the emerging capitalist economies of Germany and the US had a lasting impact on the extent and form of their industrial democracies today.

Does economic transformation undermine union collectivism? The case of East German textile workers

There is a widespread hypothesis that union members in East Germany are strongly individualistic, passive and instrumental with regard to their collective interest representation. This article examines the extent to which East German union members can be thus characterised and reveals that people were difficult to classify as pure ‘individualists’ or pure ‘collectivists’.

Post-communist workplace relations in Hungary: case studies from the clothing industry

A decade after the fall of communism scholars widely agree that the transformation process of democratisation and marketisation in central eastern Europe (CEE) has left unions (new and independent and successors to the official communist unions alike) with little power to influence political and economic decision-making (Ost 1997; Thirkell et al. 1998). Typical explanations invoke economic factors such as privatisation, the restructuring of the economy and of firms, and the depressed labour market. They also highlight an increasingly hostile environment for unions created by a majority of the new private owners, which is supplemented by ‘distancing’ governments following neo-liberal policies (Pollert 1998). However, I argue that these factors as explanations for union weakness are not entirely convincing. For example, management behaviour and the political context clearly influences the power resources of unions but cannot entirely determine the position and policies of individual unions.