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This book argues that liberalization of industrial relations has been a universal tendency among European countries over the last thirty-five years.
List of contents
Introduction; 1. Arguing for neoliberal convergence; 2. Quantitative analysis of industrial relations change; 3. Constructing a liberal market economy: the collapse of collective regulation in Britain; 4. State-led liberalization and the transformation of worker representation in France; 5. Softening institutions: the liberalization of German industrial relations with Chiara Benassi; 6. 'Well dug old mole!' The rise and decline of concessionary corporatism in Italy; 7. The conversion of corporatism: re-engineering Swedish industrial relations for a neo-liberal era; 8. Actors, institutions and pathways: the liberalization of industrial relations in Western Europe; 9. From industrial relations liberalization to the instability of capitalist growth; Bibliography; Index.
About the author
Lucio Baccaro is Professor of Sociology at the Université de Genève. He received his Ph.D. in industrial relations and political science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has authored numerous articles on the comparative political economy of industrial relations and labor markets, as well as on participatory and deliberative governance.Chris Howell is Professor of Politics at Oberlin College. He received his Ph.D. in political science from Yale University, Connecticut. He is the author of two books, Regulating Labor: The State and Industrial Relations Reform in France (1992), and Trade Unions and the State: Constructing Industrial Relations Institutions in Britain, 1890–2000 (2005). The latter won the 2006 Labor History prize for best book in labor studies.
Summary
Aimed at researchers and students interested in comparative politics and industrial relations. It demonstrates that the landscape of industrial relations has changed in fundamental ways since the end of the 1970s, everywhere in the same direction, involving an expansion of the power and discretion of employers over workers and unions.
