Chiara Benassi

Union Inclusiveness and Temporary Agency Workers: The Role of Power Resources and Union Ideology

This article investigates the determinants of union inclusiveness towards agency workers in Western Europe, using an index which combines unionization rates with dimensions of collective agreements covering agency workers. Using fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis, we identify two combinations of conditions leading to inclusiveness: the ‘Northern path’ includes high union density, high bargaining coverage and high union authority, and is consistent with the power resources approach. The ‘Southern path’ combines high union authority, high bargaining coverage, statutory regulations of agency work and working-class orientation, showing that ideology rather than institutional incentives shapes union strategies towards the marginal workforce.

Softening industrial relations institutions, hardening growth model: The transformation of the German polítical economy

In contrast with recent literature which sees the German model as either a fundamentally resilient model of coordinated capitalism, or as undergoing liberalization only in the peripheral service sectors but not in the core manufacturing ones, in this paper we make two arguments. First, we argue that a fundamental change is taking place in the German growth model, which is drifting away from the typical wage-led growth pattern of other large Eurozone economies and moving towards exclusively export-led growth. Second, we document a liberalizing trend in German industrial relations institutions in both the manufacturing sectors and in the service sectors, and argue that it stands in a relationship of coevolution with the growth model shift: the liberal erosion of industrial relations institutions has facilitated the pursuit of an economic strategy based on external competitiveness and cost-cutting, while the decline of household consumption as a driver of growth has contributed to lock-in the export-led model and to generate further pressure for industrial relations liberalization.

Contesting Firm Boundaries Institutions, Cost Structures, and the Politics of Externalization

This article develops and applies a framework for analyzing the relationship among institutions, cost structures, and patterns of labor–management contestation over organizational boundaries. Collective negotiations related to the externalization of call center jobs are compared across 10 incumbent telecommunications firms located in Europe and the United States. All 10 firms moved call center work to dedicated subsidiaries, temporary agencies, and domestic and offshore subcontractors. A subset of the firms, however, later re-internalized call center jobs, in some cases following negotiated concessions on pay and working conditions for internal workers. Findings are based on 147 interviews with management and union representatives, archival data on restructuring measures and associated collective agreements, and wage data gathered through collective agreements and surveys. The authors argue that variation in outcomes can be explained by both the extent of the cost differentials between internal and external labor and the ease of exiting internal employment relationships, which in turn affected patterns of contestation associated with externalization measures.

Liberalization Only at the Margins? Analysing the Growth of Temporary Work in German Core Manufacturing Sectors

Drawing on workers’ surveys and workplace interviews, this article investigates the growth of temporary work in German manufacturing sectors since the 1980s. Findings partly confirm a ‘dualization’ scenario as workers without industry-specific vocational training are more likely to be on a temporary contract than skilled workers, and the gap has widened over time. However, also skilled workers have become increasingly vulnerable to casualization due to job routine and the erosion of industrial relations. Evidence confirms the crucial role of institutions in supporting the linkage between specific skills and employment stability, and suggests that the liberalization of the employment relationship has the potential to advance also in the core of the German economy.

Political Economy of Labour Market Segmentation: Agency Work in the Automotive Industry

This paper investigates cross-company variation in the core-periphery configuration of the workforce. The empirical focus is on four automotive plants in Germany, which differ in terms of their organisation of agency work. The comparison reveals that there is no automatic relationship between skills, products and company workforce structure. As traditional employer-driven explanations such as production requirements and skills fail to make sense of the variations encountered, the main argument of the paper is based on the power-resource approach. More specifically, the strategy devised by works councils in relation to managerial imperatives has a major role in shaping employment and the core-periphery configuration in the subsidiaries. The key power resources that condition the strategy adopted by worker representatives are constituted also beyond the workplace, insofar as the plant’s socio-economic context – including factors such as the local unemployment rate, or the threat of outsourcing and labour market deregulation – matters as much as the company-level industrial relations. The paper thus challenges the interpretation of segmented labour markets as a dual efficient equilibrium and points out the political and contested nature of segmentation. The empirical evidence presented here has a wider significance as practices in German automotive MNC, characterized by Europe-wide production networks, are likely to affect a large number of workers across Europe.

Contesting Firm Boundaries

This article develops and applies a framework for analyzing the relationship among institutions, cost structures, and patterns of labor–management contestation over organizational boundaries. Collective negotiations related to the externalization of call center jobs are compared across 10 incumbent telecommunications firms located in Europe and the United States. All 10 firms moved call center work to dedicated subsidiaries, temporary agencies, and domestic and offshore subcontractors. A subset of the firms, however, later re-internalized call center jobs, in some cases following negotiated concessions on pay and working conditions for internal workers. Findings are based on 147 interviews with management and union representatives, archival data on restructuring measures and associated collective agreements, and wage data gathered through collective agreements and surveys. The authors argue that variation in outcomes can be explained by both the extent of the cost differentials between internal and external labor and the ease of exiting internal employment relationships, which in turn affected patterns of contestation associated with externalization measures.

Going up-skill: exploring the transformation of the German skill formation system

The German skill formation system has been undergoing significant changes over the last two decades and most recently we observed massive expansion of higher education vis-à-vis the ‘traditional’ dual vocational training, which stands in contrast with the notion of equilibrium that has accompanied the German skill formation system in the literature. Yet, while the institutional underpinnings of the traditional model have been subject to comprehensive scrutiny and theorisation – including analyses of recent patterns of change – it remains unclear what arrangements have become institutionalised as skill formation ‘moves up’ from the dual vocational training to the university system. The article suggests that a (dominant) pattern of state coordination co-exists with a segmentalist pattern: the state mobilised resources and coordinated the provision of high skills to the benefit of all companies and in particular of small and medium sized enterprises that have relatively fewer resources and capacity to train; in parallel, large firms, with more resources and a large internal labour market, met their high skill needs also without state-mediation, by establishing direct relationships with higher education institutions through dual study programmes.

Explaining divergent bargaining outcomes for agency workers: the role of labour divides and labour market reforms

Under what conditions can unions successfully regulate precarious employment? We compare the divergent trajectories of collective bargaining on agency work in the Italian and German metal sectors from the late 1990s. We explain the differences by the interaction between trade unions’ institutional and associational power resources, mediated by employers’ divide-and-rule strategies and by union strategies to (re)build a unitary front. In both countries, the liberalization of agency work allowed employers to exploit labour divides, undermining unions’ associational power and preventing labour from negotiating effectively. However, while Italian unions remained ‘trapped’ in the vicious circle between weak legislation and fragmented labour, German unions were able to overcome their internal divides. The different degree of success depended on the nature of the divides within the labour movements.

Varieties of workplace dualisation: a study of agency work in the German automotive industry

This article investigates the variation in workplace arrangements on agency work across four German automotive plants. The plants differ in terms of the proportion of agency workers, the length of their assignment, their function and their wage level compared with the permanent workforce. The article explores how the interaction between national-level deregulation, workplace power resources and the local political and economic context affects the bargaining outcomes achieved by works councils. Findings rely on interviews with human resource managers and labour representatives at workplace and sectoral level.

Contesting firm boundaries: Institutions, Cost Structures, and the Politics of Externalization: Explaining Variation in Contestation over Boundary Strategies for Call Center Jobs

This article develops and applies a framework for analyzing the relationship among institutions, cost structures, and patterns of labor–management contestation over organizational boundaries. Collective negotiations related to the externalization of call center jobs are compared across 10 incumbent telecommunications firms located in Europe and the United States. All 10 firms moved call center work to dedicated subsidiaries, temporary agencies, and domestic and offshore subcontractors. A subset of the firms, however, later re-internalized call center jobs, in some cases following negotiated concessions on pay and working conditions for internal workers. Findings are based on 147 interviews with management and union representatives, archival data on restructuring measures and associated collective agreements, and wage data gathered through collective agreements and surveys. The authors argue that variation in outcomes can be explained by both the extent of the cost differentials between internal and external labor and the ease of exiting internal employment relationships, which in turn affected patterns of contestation associated with externalization measures.