International Collaborative on Social Europe

First Steps to a European Level of Collective Bargaining in Health and Safety

Wolfhard Kohte — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 12:31:00 PDT

Health and safety belong to the central and classic topics of the labour law. Already within the 19th century these were some of the most important topics developing an autonomous labour law in Great Britain, France and Germany and – later on – in most of the other European countries. One expected public authorities to control the activities of the employers and to array elemental safety-measures. Very early supra-national activities were started to secure an international standard of safety (Berliner Konferenz 1890).

The Spread of Workfare: Activation, Devolution, Privatization, and the Changing Status of Citizenship

Joel F. Handler — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 12:24:11 PDT

Dismissal Law in the United States: The Past and Present of At-Will-Employment

Katherine V.W. Stone — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 12:05:57 PDT

In the United States, sociological legal scholars have long admonished that it is necessary to understand the distinction between the law on the books and the law in action. Any discussion of dismissal in the United States must be particularly mindful of this distinction. In employment, there is a wide disjunction between the law as it is written and articulated by judges, and the actual practice of labor relations. Further, in the area of dismissal from employment, both the law on the books and the law in action are in flux at the present time, both in flux and moving in opposite directions.

Disability and Social Segregation - How Inclusive is the Hungarian Labour Market?

Edit Kajtar — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 11:54:31 PDT

2007 has been declared the “European Year of Equal Opportunities for All”. This Paper focuses on a specific segment of equality namely social exclusion of disabled people and their chances on the labour market. The first part of the Paper defines social inclusion and presents five different models of disability. The second part studies the human rights documents addressing disability. The third part looks at the evolution of the European Union’s disability agenda. It traces how the Community has gained competences in the social field from the Treaty of Rome up till now and how the issue of disability has been perceived during this period. The fourth part examines to what extent EU objectives have been implemented in Hungary. First it gives a brief historical overview and examines how the transition from the socialist to the EU era influenced the concept of social inclusion and disability. Later on concerning acts and other regulations fighting discrimination on the ground of disability are studied, information and insight is provided into current policy measures. The final part offers concluding remarks. The Paper’s objective is to point out the measures available to equalize opportunities for people with disabilities at the workplace and to assess the effectiveness of [the]current legal framework, the main question being: how inclusive is the Hungarian labour market.

Organizing Workers in Centralized Bargaining Systems

Guy Mundlak — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 11:47:23 PDT

Unions’ decline is prevalent in most western democracies (Blanchflower 2007). Decline takes many features – decreasing bargaining power, reduced role in political negotiations, reduced coverage of collective agreements, shallow bargaining (in terms of topics covered and the extent of workers rights), and declining membership rates. In this article I would like to focus on the latter aspect. The article discusses the need for organizing members, and the different implications organizing may have in different industrial relations regime. I argue that organizing is a necessary component of trade union revitalization strategies in most countries. Only when the individual incentives to join a trade union are very high can trade unions forgo the task of organizing. In all other cases, recruiting new members is necessary for revitalization. However, even this wide-spread need is not a uniform strategy. The need to organize and recruit new members is dependent on the institutional design of the industrial relations system. Hence it is argued that there are logics of organization. The article focuses on systems that maintain a structure of centralized bargaining. It is argued that in such systems that need for recruiting new members is not always readily apparent. Moreover, in such systems the organizing of workers runs into an internal contradiction, whereby the reliance on the more developed strategies for organizing that were borrowed from the liberal systems, notably – the United States, may undermine the comprehensive coverage and centralized nature of the system. More specifically, it is argued that in the process of adaptation there are two basic tracks: (a) organizing within the centralized tradition, where the expected benefits and risks are high, and (b) organizing according to the decentralized systems’ method at the enterprise level, where the benefits and stakes are high. The former will be demonstrated by a Dutch example and the latter by an Israeli example.

New Governance and Decentralisation in Employment Policy

Milena Buchs et al. — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 11:19:04 PDT

When thinking about the traditional boundaries of the welfare state, particularly of labour and employment policies, we tend to place them within the boundaries of the nation-state. However, with contemporary processes of European economic integration and devolution of competences to sub-national entities, our understanding of the spatial configuration of the welfare state has been challenged. These developments are also partially related to 'new governance' patterns in social policy. The authors explore the 'downward' movement of employment and labour market policies (LMP) in Germany, the United Kingdom, and Italy and explore cross-national differences regarding the characteristics and degree of decentralisation. The paper finds that decentralisation in Germany and the UK is mainly related to the 'activation' and 'employability' agenda, as well as a broader trend of public management reform whilst in Italy a more general restructuring of the state is the main motor of LMP decentralisation. In addition, we see private actors at the local level gaining an important role in the provision and management of this policy area (i.e., de-concentration) in the three countries. Nonetheless, even if we observe this cross-national trend, in all three countries the national level retains an important role in LMP policy design and financing.

Fairness-control of Dismissals by Labour Courts - Legal Conception and Practical Effects

Armin Holand — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 10:53:51 PDT

The highly controversial debate in Germany on the relationship between labour law and labour market has put labour courts in the front line of criticism. They are being blamed mainly for cultivating a fanciful and biased making of law in favour of dismissed employees rendering the outcome of dismissal decisions for employers unforeseeable and, due to the allegedly almost automatic attribution of severance payments, unnecessarily expensive. Given these legals risks, critics argue, employers would refrain from recruiting new employees and would, therefore, not sufficiently contribute to the reduction of mass unemployment. Apart from the lack of any serious empirical confirmation for that hypothesis the critical perception eclipses important functions and effects of labour courts regarding employment and fairness conditions. On the basis of recent socio-legal research on labour courts and unfair dismissals the paper shall discuss some major findings and effects. The analysis shall start with (1) the contribution of labour courts to basic requirements of fairness in a modern labour society, discuss (2) fairness issues in dismissal cases brought before labour courts, describe and analyse (3) the opening of a judicially supervised floor in the court-room for dispute resolving negotiations and for achieving an amicable settlement, ask for the effects of the intervention of third parties (4) regarding the safeguard of procedural justice, and conclude with remarks (5) on the effects of rationalising human resources management and dismissal decisions by systematizing and communicating case-law regarding the termination of employment.

The Micro-Politics of the OMC Process: NGO Activities and the Social Inclusion Process in Sweden

Kerstin Jacobsson et al. — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 07:03:33 PDT

Free Movement vs. Social Rights in an Enlarged Union - the Laval and Viking Cases before the ECJ

Norbert Reich — Wed, 30 May 2007 08:58:23 PDT

The paper discusses two references before the ECJ concerning the right of social action of labour unions in “old” Member countries (Sweden and Finland) against posting of workers from a company of a “new” Member state (Laval from Latvia) respectively re-flagging a ferry (“Rosella” owned by Viking-Finland ) to a “new” Member country (Estonia). The free movement provisions of Art. 49 and 43 EC are in principle applicable against collective action, unless justified by proportionate social policy reasons. This is denied in Laval because of discriminatory elements in Swedish labour law (Lex Britannia) and non-applicability of the posted workers directive 96/71, but confirmed in Viking which concerns a “normal” and proportional industrial conflict justified on social policy grounds.