Chris Howell

A Common Neoliberal Trajectory: The Transformation of Industrial Relations in Advanced Capitalism

Based on quantitative indicators for fifteen advanced countries between 1974 and 2005, and case studies of France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and Ireland, this article analyzes the trajectory of institutional change in the industrial relations systems of advanced capitalist societies, with a focus on Western Europe. In contrast to current comparative political economy scholarship, which emphasizes the resilience of national institutions to common challenges and trends, it argues that despite a surface resilience of distinct national sets, all countries have been transformed in a neoliberal direction. Neoliberal transformation manifests itself not just as institutional deregulation but also as institutional conversion, as the functions associated with existing institutional forms change in a convergent direction. A key example is the institution of centralized bargaining, once the linchpin of an alternative, redistributive and egalitarian, model of negotiated capitalism, which has been reshaped in the past twenty years to fit the common imperative of liberalization.

Trade Unions and the State: The Construction of Industrial Relations Institutions in Britain, 1890-2000

Acknowledgments ix CHAPTER ONE: Introduction: The Puzzle of British Industrial Relations 1 CHAPTER TWO: Constructing Industrial Relations Institutions 20 CHAPTER THREE: The Construction of the Collective Laissez-Faire System, 1890-1940 46 CHAPTER FOUR: Donovan, Dissension, and the Decentralization of Industrial Relations, 1940-1979 86 CHAPTER FIVE: The Decollectivization of Industrial Relations, 1979-1997 131 CHAPTER SIX: The Third Way and Beyond: The Future of British Industrial Relations 174 Notes 195 References 221 Index 237

Rethinking Institutions and Institutional Change in European Industrial Relations

This article traces the process of institutional change in industrial relations in Britain, France and Sweden over the last quarter-century in order to identify the mechanisms and forms of institutional change. These three cases demonstrate a high degree of institutional plasticity, and a greater convergence in industrial relations than comparisons of national institutions have tended to suggest. These findings in turn suggest the need to rethink both the role of institutions and the nature of institutional change in comparative political economy.

The Transformation of French Industrial Relations: Labor Representation and the State in a Post-Dirigiste Era:

Despite continued social protest, something quite fundamental has changed in the regulation of class relations in France. This article explores two paradoxes of this transformation. First, a dense network of institutions of social dialogue and worker representation has become implanted in French firms at the same time as trade union strength has declined. Second, the transformation has involved a relaxation of centralized labor market regulation on the part of the state, yet the French state remains a central actor in the reconstruction of the industrial relations system. Institutional reform of industrial relations could not take place without the active intervention of the state because employers and trade unions alone were unable to create durable industrial relations institutions. The collapse of trade unionism meant the need for new actors on the labor side and only the state could both create and confer legitimacy upon those new actors.

Women as the Paradigmatic Trade Unionists? New Work, New Workers and New Trade Union Strategies in Conservative Britain

The British labor movement has responded to a lengthy period of economic restructuring, state hostility and a consequent decline in union membership and influence, with a wide-ranging strategic reevaluation of the relationship between women and trade unions. It is primarily the nature of the locations in the labor market occupied by women, and not the specific interests or experience that women bring to collective organization or action at work, that has driven British union strategy. As a result, the major strategic union innovation of the past decade has been an enhanced emphasis upon legislation, as both a substitute and a support for trade union action.

Regulating class in the neoliberal era: the role of the state in the restructuring of work and employment relations

The article argues that, in the last three decades, states have become more preoccupied with, and interventionist in, the regulation of class relations in order to facilitate a broad liberalization of employment relations institutions. Drawing on insights from Regulation theorists and Karl Polanyi, the article examines the market-making role of states during periods of transition from one growth regime to another. The more prominent role of the state follows from the stickiness of institutions and the role that states can play in compensating workers from the consequences of liberalization. The article illustrates the argument with an examination of France and Sweden in the period since the early 1980s. For all their differences, in both cases substantial liberalization of employment relations institutions took place and in both cases, but for the state, the process of liberalization would have been either stymied or much more uneven than it was.

The Changing Relationship Between Labor and the State in Contemporary Capitalism

Over the course of the past quarter century, paralleling the decline of organized labor, there has been a marked increase in the role of the state in the industrial relations of advanced capitalist societies. This has come both in the form of state activism in the reconstruction of institutions, and through the replacement of collective self-regulation by employer and labor organizations with legal regulation. Unsurprisingly, these developments have failed to encourage a renewal of trade union collective power, leaving workers increasingly insecure, dependent upon markets, and vulnerable to the vagaries of state power.

Facing up to Thatcherism : the history of NALGO, 1979-1993

1. NALGO: What Kind of Trade Union? 2. NALGO 1905 to 1978 3. The Advent of Thatcherism 4. The Squeeze Tightens 5. Thatcherites Versus the Trade Union Movement 6. Privatization and the Retreat from National Bargaining 7. Storms: Financial, Climatic, and Industrial 8. Shake it All About: Into the 1990s 9. NALGOs Last Year 10. In UNISON

Constructing British industrial relations

One can identify the construction and transformation of three distinct systems of industrial relations in Britain over the last century. In contrast to the view that the state has been largely abstentionist in the sphere of industrial relations, or that, where intervention has taken place, it has been ad hoc, incoherent and reactive, this article makes two arguments in explaining this pattern of institutional construction. First, that the British state has been a central actor in the construction and ‘embedding’ of industrial relations institutions. Secondly, that broad processes of economic restructuring have created the context and trigger for state action. It is the timing and character of economic restructuring which explain the distinctive evolution of British industrial relations.

Book Review: Industrial Relations Theory: Liberié, Égalité, and Fraternité at Work: Changing French Employment Relations and ManagementLiberié, Égalité, and Fraternité at Work: Changing French Employment Relations and Management. By JefferysSteve. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. 261 pp. ISBN 0-333-744137-4,

characterized by an enduring paradox. A weak, fragmented labor movement, low on almost every measure of collective strength and capacity, has nonetheless been capable of periodic mass mobilizations that have forced government policy reversals, and in recent years French workers appear to have maintained a stubborn anti-capitalist refusal to accommodate themselves to the prevailing neoliberalism. A labor movement that organizes less than one in ten workers is regularly consulted on matters of public policy by governments of both the Left and the Right, and the few collective agreements that are reached are extended by government decree to cover nine out of ten workers.