Valeria Pulignano

International Cooperation, Transnational Restructuring and Virtual Networking in Europe

Social networks represent one possible trade union response to cross-border industrial restructuring. The aim is to bring together independent actors so as to generate interaction, cooperation and coordination of cross-national practices and integration of policies. This article draws on empirical evidence from four sectors. It first examines whether unions make effective use of the Internet when developing networking and coordination activities to respond to transnational change in Europe. Second, it discusses the reasons for cross-sectoral variation in the use of virtual networking. It is argued that the use of the Internet by European unions becomes a matter of strategic choices and politics, and reflects sector-based differences in the way that transparency, coordination, social cohesion and democracy are secured for representation and bargaining purposes among employees and unions across borders.

The Diffusion of Employment Practices of US-Based Multinationals in Europe: A Case Study Comparison of British- and Italian-Based Subsidiaries

A number of approaches to the diffusion of employment practices within American-based multinational companies (MNCs) can be discerned. In this paper, two theoretical approaches are contrasted: a ‘country-of-origin’ approach in which the influence of the home country is mediated by national features of host-country institutional environments; and a power resources or strategic choice approach that emphasizes the autonomy of local actors within MNCs and their capacity to shape the diffusion of employment practices. Using a case study comparison of three Italian and two British-based subsidiaries owned by an American MNC, the paper examines factors and patterns of diffusion of employment practices from the parent company to the local subsidiaries. The argument is put forward that company-specific features enhance the strategic power of the subsidiary firm within the wider corporation, thus complementing institutional host-country characteristics in shaping the diffusion of employment practices abroad. Hence, organizational as well as institutional effects contribute to creating the space that the various actors across host countries possess for protecting their interests and for exercising power on the terms and conditions of the diffusion.

Employee participation and involvement : Experiences of aerospace and automobile workers in the UK and Italy

This article questions the view of leading advocates of lean production and high-performance work practices that these increase employee influence. It examines workers’ experiences in the automobile and aerospace sectors in Italy and the UK. Despite national differences in industrial relations and cultural differences between firms, a significant democratic deficit existed in all cases.

Trade unions and labour market dualisation: a comparison of policies and attitudes towards agency and migrant workers in Germany and Belgium

This article addresses the questions of the extent to which, and the reasons why, western European trade unions may have privileged the protection of ‘insiders’ over that of ‘outsiders’. Temporary agency workers, among whom migrant workers are over-represented, are taken as a test case of ‘outsiders’. The findings from a comparison of Belgian and German multinational plants show that collective agreements have allowed a protection gap between permanent and agency workers to emerge in Germany, but not in Belgium. However, the weaker protection in Germany depends less on an explicit union choice for insiders than on the weakening of the institutional environment for union representation and collective bargaining. The conclusion suggests that European unions are increasingly trying to defend the outsiders, but meet institutional obstacles that vary by country.

Understanding varieties of flexibility and security in multinationals: Product markets, institutional variation and local bargaining

Most studies of flexicurity have focused on formal institutions within distinctive national labour market systems. However, the level and types of flexibility and security in a national labour market are to an important extent influenced by company-level processes, relationships and policies; thus a micro-perspective should be integrated into the study of flexibility and security. This article advances understanding of the influences of decentralized rule-making and its links with the macro level by drawing on case study research in four multinational companies, each with subsidiaries in Germany, Belgium, Italy and the UK. It reveals major differences in terms of flexibility and security between companies operating in the same country, and major similarities between the subsidiaries of the same multinational. Product market characteristics affect local autonomy to define human resource policies; national institutions and local circumstances then affect the capabilities of trade unions and works councils to negotiate local flexibility-security trade-offs.

Bureaucracy Transcended? New Patterns of Employment Regulation and Labour Control in the International Automotive Industry

Contemporary changes in patterns of work and management are alleged to have given rise to the post-modern organisation and the diminishing importance of traditional bureaucracy. This paper is concerned with the changing nature of labour control in new multi-enterprise settings in the international automotive sector. Rather than eliminating bureaucracy, the tools of industrial bureaucracy are becoming more sophisticated.

Flexibility and Security within European Labor Markets

In this comparative qualitative study, the authors examine how local bargaining shapes the trade-off between labor flexibility and employment security policies in four multinational subsidiaries in Belgium, Britain, and Germany. They also consider whether and how union power to shape flexibility and security policies is affected by national institutions, the way that multinationals organize their subsidiaries, and local contextual factors. Findings support this multilevel, interdependent framework. Trade-offs are shaped by differences in workers’ structural power in specific local subsidiaries. Differences in inter-subsidiary organizational configurations, markets, and technologies modify how unions can leverage collective resources to wield power in their relationship with management.

Union responses to precarious workers: Italy and Spain compared

Transformations of European labour markets and welfare systems have deepened the problem of precarious work, leading trade unions to develop strategies to represent and organize the workers affected. We focus on Italy and Spain, two of the countries with the most precarious labour markets in Europe, and address the specificity and variety of union responses. We relate these responses to the different institutional contexts, including employment and welfare regulation, and the power resources unions can draw upon.

Transnational negotiations and the Europeanization of industrial relations: Potential and obstacles

The increasing number of transnational agreements signed in recent years at the EU-company level suggests a form of Europeanization of industrial relations, as these agreements constitute a formal recognition of social dialogue across national borders. However, empirical results based on a multi-level research about the experiences with these agreements in the metal sector offer a more complex picture. The strategies of the actors at European, national and local levels, and more importantly the degree and type of their coordination, are crucial to understanding the processes and mechanisms which encourage or prevent the emergence of cross-national negotiations at company level.

Bringing labour markets ‘back in’: Restructuring international businesses in Europe

This article argues that labour market institutional differences need to be taken more into account to explain the diversity in restructuring processes undertaken by multinational companies (MNCs) within national contexts in Europe. Using an in-depth case study analysis of 12 international corporations affected by diverse restructuring processes in the Netherlands, Italy, France, Austria, Denmark, Ireland and Sweden, local social partners’ responses to change are seen to be shaped within their national frameworks. However, more variation is found among (and within) national labour market systems, which implies a dynamic version of institutional variations.