Employee Relations: An International Journal

Paul Teague

2003 Employee Relations: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/01425450310490156

This paper examines the labour‐standard‐setting institution associated with NAFTA, the North American Agreement on Labour Cooperation (NAALC), sometimes referred to as the Labour Side Accord. The agreement is best described as a tri‐national institutional arrangement that grafts formal international procedures onto domestic labour market regimes. This feature ensures that it stands apart from the EU social policy, which is best seen as a supranational deliberative governance arrangement. The manner in which NAALC procedures have been used is documented and the main discernible pattern of action explained. The paper argues that NAALC is cumbersome and convoluted to operate. Yet it also argues that NAALC holds out interesting lessons for other regional trading blocs and other global experiments in labour market standard setting as its decentralised and “horizontal” character is more in keeping with the broad institutional design of such arrangements. The paper concludes by suggesting that NAALC will only reach its full potential when organised labour in the three participating countries adopt a more active approach to transnational collaboration inside NAFTA.

Frederick Guy

2003 Employee Relations: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/01425450310490165

High involvement work practices (HIWPs) may empower employees to do their jobs better, and also empower them at the bargaining table. This paper considers whether non‐universal adoption of productivity‐enhancing work practices may, at least in part, be explained by this dual nature of empowerment. It examines the case of a customer service programme in the Northern California division of Safeway stores, its affect on the outcome of a strike against Safeway, and the subsequent pattern of adoption (and non‐adoption) of similar programmes among Safeway's competitors. It concludes that the dual nature of empowerment can help explain the apparent paradox posed by empirical studies; that although HIWPs improve the performance of all sorts of organisations, most organisations do not adopt HIWPs.

Dimitrios M. Mihail

2003 Employee Relations: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/01425450310490174

The issue of non‐standard forms of employment has sparked controversy in Greece. At the same time the expansion of atypical employment has been identified by policy makers as a central component of economic policy in combating high unemployment. However, there is a marked absence of empirical studies on this issue. This study sheds light on contractual flexibility surveying thirty establishments. The survey used an employer questionnaire to assess the extent to which Greek employers have engaged in various forms of atypical employment as well as the driving forces and managerial perceptions of the pertinent institutional framework. Results reveal that temporary work is the primary source of contractual flexibility, and that this is mainly used to adjust corporate capacity to demand variations, not to cut labour costs. Managerial discontent with governmental legislation on working time flexibility has led employers to embrace the EU's flexibility‐security approach through collective bargaining.

L.H. Vassie; C.W. Fuller

2003 Employee Relations: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/01425450310490183

Partnerships have the potential to create significant benefits for all participants provided that there is a mutual understanding of and respect for the inputs required and the outputs sought from the arrangements by each party. The aim of this study was to explore the inputs required and the outputs achieved by partners as a function of the level of involvement required within the partnership arrangement. The study has investigated the extent to which the input criteria defined by the DTI and the output criteria defined by Kanter, within three health and safety initiatives involving homeworker‐employer, employee‐employer, and contractor‐employer partnerships varied, as a function of the level of partnership defined by Thompson and Sanders. The examination of the partnership arrangements within the three case studies demonstrated that the inputs were very similar whether the arrangements were classified as co‐operation, collaboration or coalescence, although the extent of the output criteria was greatest in the case of the coalescence partnership. The results illustrated the level of inputs required within a range of partnership arrangements in the context of health and safety management and the range of outputs that might be anticipated.

Susan Corby; Geoff White; Louise Millward; Elizabeth Meerabeau; Jan Druker

2003 Employee Relations: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/01425450310490192

This paper explores the consequences of the introduction by National Health Service (NHS) trusts (i.e. hospitals) of their own pay systems. It is based on case studies of ten NHS trusts and involved 73 interview sessions with a variety of stakeholders and the examination of employment data and performance indicators. The research revealed the tensions and countervailing forces inherent in NHS pay: the tension between national and local pay; the tension between simplification and the need to address the different requirements of the many occupational groups in the NHS; the tension between performance pay and feelings of equity; and the tension between equal pay and the traditional pay determination arrangements. These findings are discussed in the context of the proposed new NHS pay system.