Industrial Relations in Europe
Traditions and Transitions
- Joris Van Ruysseveldt
- Jelle Visser - University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
Through a coordinated analysis of industrial relations in specific European nations, the book gives a representative, up-to-date and dynamic understanding of the subject. Across the individual national case studies, a range of common elements is examined. These include: the differing roles of governments, business and labour as actors in the industrial relations system, and their mutual relationships; the dynamics of collective bargaining, conflict, consultation and worker participation; and the overall performance of industrial relations in economic, social and political terms.
These issues are addressed within the wider context of changes affecting industrial relations in Europe in the 1990s: European unification; the globalization of production and markets, the information revolution; the destabilization of labour markets; the fragmentation of societies in the post-industrial era; and the crisis of welfare states.
`Each chapter is tidily and logically sectionalised. Text-boxes highlight key features of any given system, such as the voluntaristic tradition in the UK, the central role of state involvement in France, the strength of German employers' associations, or the scala mobile inflation-adjustment mechanism in Italy. The tables covering single countries in the chapters themselves are supplemented by a table appendix providing comparative data for all the countries on 30 or so dimensions. I estimate the bibliography at just under 600 items, most of them very or fairly recent, with what a quick sampling suggests is a very high degree of documentary accuracy.... What a staggering people the Dutch are when it come to languages! If only some of us wrote so fluently in English as this team does. Multiple library copies all round please, and a three-star rating on reading lists' - BUIRA Newsletter