Posted Work and Transnational Workspaces in Germany

Author(s):  
Ines Wagner

Chapter 2 shows how transnational regulation and de-territorialization impact employment relations in the German construction and the meat slaughtering industries. The aim of this chapter is to examine how this opened up exit options for capital and constrained the rights of unions, works councils, and mobile workers, thereby creating a space that allows for the importation of informal work practices. It relates the literature on labor market dualization to the changes in the nature and organization of the Westphalian state system. Findings of the chapter show that declining territorial boundedness allows firms to circumvent key German industrial relations institutions.

Author(s):  
Ines Wagner

This book addresses the complexities of transnational posted work through three key topics. First, it examines how the de-territorialization of national models and employment relations systems opens up exit options for management, enabling them to use the regulatory framework creatively and at a disadvantage for workers. Second, it discusses how re-territorialization, or resistance, is possible within these spaces. Third, the book analyzes the contours of the new structure for employment relations that emerges within the pan-European labor market and its implications for worker voice, regulatory enforcement, and management power. The research presented in this book is based on a qualitative and multilevel case study approach. It examines how posted workers and actors involved in the posting relationship actually utilize and experience the European posting framework by focusing on the experiences of transnational posted workers. This distinguishes the book from macro- and national-focused approaches in comparative political economy and industrial relations by zooming in on the workplace dynamics in a transnational setting. The window to how posted workers experience intra-EU mobility is Germany and the two sectors where posting is most prevalent: the construction and meat slaughtering industries.


2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 415-433 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Forth ◽  
Alex Bryson ◽  
Anitha George

Debates on the desirability of workplace employee representation are rarely evidence based. We use a workplace survey covering 27 EU countries to show that its incidence is strongly and independently correlated with the degree of centralization in a country’s industrial relations regime and the extent of legislative support. Industry profits are important in explaining trade union presence but are unimportant in the case of works councils. We find support for the exit-voice model, traditionally associated with Anglophone regimes, whereby worker representation is associated with poorer perceptions of the employment relations climate and with lower voluntary quit rates.


Author(s):  
Ines Wagner

Chapter 5 adopts a more explicitly spatial perspective and looks at how borders are constructed in both regulatory and workplace terms. It analyzes the contours of the new structure for employment relations that emerges within the pan-European labor market and studies the reshaping of the nation state from the micro-level points of view of societal actors such as mobile workers, public administration officials, firms, and trade unions. Findings demonstrate that two types of borders are significant in relation to posting in a pan-European labor market: (1) borders for labor market regulation that inhibit the enforcement of labor rights and (2) the border of the firm—that is, the border between the main and subcontracting firms that isolates workers from the host-country industrial relations systems. These borders impact the institutional separation between posted workers and host-country trade unions.


Author(s):  
Berndt Keller

The article deals in an interdisciplinary perspective with the consequences of progressive digitalization processes which are controversially discussed in the current discourse for the dual system of employment relations. After initial comments, the first part deals with the changing contours of forms of interest representation in the existing economy, i. e. requirements and options for works councils and trade unions. The second part focuses explicitly on the platform economy and its emerging forms of corporate actors, trade unions and works councils as well as platform operators/employers. The third part concentrates on perspectives of employment relations for the established economy as well as for platform work. The fourth part elaborates on measures of regulation that should be taken at company and sectoral level. A short outlook concludes the article. Processes of digital transformation have the tendency to weaken the existing institutions of labor markets, in particular forms of employees’ representation.


Author(s):  
Richard E. Ocejo

In today's new economy—in which “good” jobs are typically knowledge or technology based—many well-educated and culturally savvy young men are instead choosing to pursue traditionally low-status manual-labor occupations as careers. This book looks at the renaissance of four such trades: bartending, distilling, barbering, and butchering. The book takes readers into the lives and workplaces of these people to examine how they are transforming these once-undesirable jobs into “cool” and highly specialized upscale occupational niches—and in the process complicating our notions about upward and downward mobility through work. It shows how they find meaning in these jobs by enacting a set of “cultural repertoires,” which include technical skills based on a renewed sense of craft and craftsmanship and an ability to understand and communicate that knowledge to others, resulting in a new form of elite taste-making. The book describes the paths people take to these jobs, how they learn their chosen trades, how they imbue their work practices with craftsmanship, and how they teach a sense of taste to their consumers. The book provides new insights into the stratification of taste, gentrification, and the evolving labor market in today's postindustrial city.


2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 504-511 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hande Inanc

Precarious Lives addresses one of the most important developments in employment relations in the neoliberal era: increase in labor precarity and the subsequent decline in employee well-being. Drawing on data on social welfare institutions and labor market policies in six rich democracies, the author shows that work is less precarious, and workers are happier, when institutions and policies provide job protection, and put in place support systems to buffer job loss.


2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 451-464 ◽  
Author(s):  
Märt Masso ◽  
Deborah Foster ◽  
Liina Osila ◽  
Balázs Bábel ◽  
Jan Czarzasty ◽  
...  

Work accommodations are generally understood to refer to individual solutions for older and disabled employees that have been tailored to their specific situation within a workplace. This article, however, argues that there is potential for collective employment relations to motivate and enable social partners to develop a role in implementing reasonable accommodations and supporting older and disabled employees in the labour market. Focusing on industrial relations and work accommodation systems in Estonia, Poland and Hungary, the potential role that social partners could play in creating more inclusive workplaces is explored. This is done by reference to the findings from an action research project that brought together social partners to discuss ways in which practices in providing work accommodations could help better to integrate underutilised sources of labour in these three countries. The industrial relations regimes in the three countries have potentially enabling characteristics that could facilitate work accommodations. Current knowledge of the work accommodation process and the integration of this issue into the collective employment relations agenda, however, needs further improvement.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Nur Anisah

This study aims to evaluate the industrial work practice program at the Integrated Islamic Vocational School through the Context, Input, Process, Product and Outcome approaches. This research is a quantitative description. The method in this study using a questionnaire. The research sample was one principal, two deputy head of industrial relations, one deputy head of curriculum, four teachers who supervised the industrial practice program, and 133 students. The results of the study show the suitability or relevance of the dimensions: 1) Context consists of the goals, competencies and work ethic of students as well as links and matches; 2) Input consists of planning, provisioning, curriculum, students, human resources, infrastructure and financing; 3) Process, consisting of mapping, implementation, monitoring, effectiveness; 4) Product consists of a competency test and certification; 5) Outcome consisted of student absorption and change in attitude skills. The results of the research can contribute to evaluating the overall industrial work practice program from various dimensions, so that it can increase the competency absorption of Integrated Islamic Vocational Schools in the business and industrial world.


2010 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 102-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anke Hassel

German unification acted as a catalyst for the substantial transformation of the German welfare and employment regime which has taken place over the last two decades. The changes can be described as a process of a partial liberalization of the labor market within the boundaries of a coordinated industrial relations system and a conservative welfare state. This article depicts the transformation as a trend towards a more liberal welfare and employment regime by focusing on the shifting boundaries between status and income maintenance and poor relief systems.


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