Manuela Galetto

Engaging with flexibility and security: Rediscovering the role of collective bargaining:

Debates on flexicurity have largely focused on national policies and legislative frameworks, overlooking the role of sub-national regulation including collective bargaining at sector and company levels. Drawing on findings from a cross-national study of collective bargaining in metalworking since the late 1990s, the article demonstrates its distinctive contribution. Agreements mainly support internal forms of flexibility and promote employment, income and combination security. Collective bargaining’s capacity to address flexibility and security differs according to the institutional arrangements governing bargaining. Important differences are identified between multi- and single-employer arrangements and, under multi-employer arrangements, according to the presence and nature of effective mechanisms articulating the sector and company levels.

Collective bargaining and reforms to hospital healthcare provision: A comparison of the UK, Italy and France:

Reforms inspired by the ‘new public management’ approach have changed the provision of hospital healthcare and challenged established arrangements for governing the workforce. We identify four main reform processes in three countries, and examine their impact on collective bargaining and administrative and statutory mechanisms of workforce governance. Although the extent and nature of reforms play a role in the changes to workforce governance, political choices and the interests and responses of organized employers and trade unions intervene to shape outcomes.

Organised decentralisation, uneven outcomes: employment relations in the Italian public health sector

This article looks at the difficulties of adapting a very centralised employment relations system in a country characterised by a deep regional economic divide. In particular, by looking at the Italian public health sector, it is contended that organised decentralisation of employment relations implemented against wide regional differences led to uneven outcomes in second-level (organisation) collective bargaining.

Patterns of trade union participation in territorial pacts: the case of a northern Italian province

This article analyzes the role played by trade unions within Italian territorial pacts (TPs). Trade unions have always played a part in the negotiations that establish TPs, but their role has been rather underplayed in the wider literature. Based on comparative empirical research into the eight territorial pacts signed in the Province of Turin, in the north-west of Italy, it was found that union participation in the TPs was shaped by the type of TP, the size of union organizations, and the personal commitment of individual union representatives. It was found that the patterns of union participation in TPs reflected the long-standing Italian tradition of micro-concertation, but the outcomes did not.

Militant Years: Car workers’ struggles in Britain in the 60s and 70s, by Alan Thornett

whole, outlining its dynamic nature and its distribution among a wide range of households and different macro-regions. Through this analysis, the authors demonstrate and underline how vulnerability specifically affects social groups that used to be fully integrated in the traditional systems of welfare integration and redistribution. It is therefore likely that the level of vulnerability depends not only on individuals and household aspects, but also on the institutional capacity to detect new risks and cover the emerging societal needs with up-to-date and flexible policies, adaptable to every socio-economic context and life-course situation.