Héloïse Petit

How Did Workplaces Respond to Recession

This chapter examines workplace-level responses to the biggest economic recession in living memory. The chapter begins by establishing the degree to which there was heterogeneity in both the size of the economic shock and the responses to it across workplaces in the two countries. It then examines workplaces’ reactions to the crisis in terms of wages, hours, employment levels, labour turnover, and the use of non-standard employment. It also examines how the crisis impacted upon employees’ job quality as measured by feelings of job security and labour intensification. Emphasis is placed throughout on the mediating role of employee representation.

Tenure, Skill Development, and Pay: The Role of Internal Labour Markets

This chapter examines the approaches that firms take towards recruitment, skill development and pay. These are some of the most central elements of the firm’s employment system, and go some considerable way towards determining the shape of employees’ careers. The chapter shows that there is substantial heterogeneity in both countries, with workplaces in both countries having a strong orientation towards the promotion of internal labour markets (ILMs). However, in line with previous literature, we find that these orientations are more prevalent, on average, in France.

Vive La Difference? Managing and Working in Britain and France

This chapter provides an overview of our findings and offers some conclusions. It first outlines the motivation for our study of workplace employment relations in Britain and France, and highlights the distinctiveness of our approach, based around comparable linked employer–employee surveys. It then goes on to sum up our key comparative findings about employment relations in the two countries. Particular emphasis is given to the role played by the workplace in shaping the practice of employment relations. The chapter also draws out some of the implications of our findings for practitioners and policymakers.

Managing and Working in Britain and France: An Introduction

This chapter introduces the key elements of our comparative study. We set out two broad hypotheses: first, that an understanding of the economy and working conditions is incomplete without knowing what happens within and across workplaces; and second, that ‘local’ factors play a key role in shaping the practice of workplace employment relations, but in a more nuanced way that is ordinarily portrayed in the literature. The chapter situates our study within the existing comparative literature, provides a brief portrait of the two economies, and introduces the WERS and REPONSE survey data that provides the basis for our comparative analysis.