Employee Relations: An International Journal

Gregor Gall

2011 Employee Relations: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/01425451111174148

Purpose – The purpose of this editorial is to introduce the special issue on “Collective worker responses to redundancy and restructuring”. Design/methodology/approach – The editorial provides an overview and introduces the papers which make up the special issue. Findings – The six papers facilitate a deeper understanding of the issues and dynamics involved in worker resistance and response to the crisis of neo‐liberal capitalism. Originality/value – The paper highlights how the papers in the special issue add new insights into the topics at hand.

Vickie Dekocker; Valeria Pulignano; Albert Martens

2011 Employee Relations: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/01425451111174085

Purpose – Restructuring has assumed a significant importance across Europe due to the growing pressures of internationalisation affecting transnational capital. By drawing from two case‐studies in the public health service and the manufacturing sector in Belgium, this paper aims to present evidence of the local unions' capacity to strategically use the industrial relations institutional framework, which foresees the rights of employee representatives to make a proposal for an alternative plan to restructuring, in order to fight redundancy at the workplace. Design/methodology/approach – The study uses a new institutionalist approach in social science and political economy which emphasises social agency and actor capacity to influence and shape their institutional context. The research design was based on two case studies. The methodology was qualitative and comparative. Findings – There is diversity in the process of collective resistance to company restructuring, highlighting different combinations of external and internal union capabilities at the core of such diversity. However, the study also illustrates commonality regarding union strategy to manipulate the national legal framework in order to combat collective redundancy. Practical implications – The research results inform unions' practices and policy making with regard to the social process and the outcomes of company restructuring. Social implications – The paper has important social implications with regard to unions' strategies of resistance and bargaining processes in situations of company restructuring. Originality/value – The paper provides support for neo‐institutionalism as an insightful way of understanding local unions' responses to collective redundancy in Belgium.

Gregor Gall

2011 Employee Relations: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/01425451111174094

Purpose – This paper aims to examine the more militant response of a minority of workers to collective redundancy and restructuring in Britain since 2007. Design/methodology/approach – The paper deploys secondary sources to develop a series of grounded micro‐factors to help explain the presence and absence of the deployment of the occupation tactic. Findings – Some headway is made in explaining why only a limited number of occupations took place against redundancy and restructuring. Practical implications – The method of occupation was not shown to be as effective as might have been thought in opposing redundancies. Social implications – These concern union strategies and tactics for resistance to redundancy and restructuring. Originality/value – The paper provides a grounded explanation of the phenomenon and incidence of worker occupations against collective redundancy and closure.

Niall Cullinane; Tony Dundon

2011 Employee Relations: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/01425451111174102

Purpose – This paper aims to examine the antecedent influences and merits of workplace occupations as a tactical response to employer redundancy initiatives. Design/methodology/approach – The data are based on analysis of secondary documentary material reporting on three workplace occupations in the Republic of Ireland during 2009. Findings – Perceptions of both procedural (e.g. employer unilateral action) and substantive (e.g. pay and entitlements) justice appear pivotal influences. Spillover effects from other known occupations may also be influential. Workplace occupations were found to produce some modest substantive gains, such as enhancing redundancy payments. The tactic of workplace occupation was also found to transform unilateral employer action into scenarios based upon negotiated settlement supported by third‐party mediation. However the tactic of workplace occupation in response to redundancy runs the risks of potential judicial injunction and sanction. Research limitations/implications – Although operationally difficult, future studies should strive to collect primary data workplace occupations as they occur. Originality/value – The paper identifies conditions conducive to the genesis of workplace occupations and the extent to which the tactic may be of benefit in particular circumstances to workers facing redundancy. It also contextualises the tactic in relation to both collective mobilisation and bargaining theories in employment relations.

Sylvie Contrepois

2011 Employee Relations: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/01425451111174111

Purpose – This article aims to examine recent labour struggles against mass redundancies in France. It seeks to understand the well reported incidences of direct action within the terrain of how industrial relations operate and are governed. Design/methodology/approach – Primary and secondary data sources are deployed to build and understand, in a grounded way, a case study of an industrial conflict. Findings – The weakness of the regulation of employers, when allied to a number of considerations like union presence, has led to radical, direct actions. This highlights that overall the source of stimulus for action is worker weakness vis‐à‐vis the employer and not strength. Social implications – To aid social peace in the workplace, further regulation of employer behaviour by the state is needed given the weakness of union regulation. Originality/value – The article highlights that conflict takes place primarily in contexts where the institutions of the French republic are shown to be incapable of forcing employers to respect employment laws.

Miguel Martínez Lucio

2011 Employee Relations: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/01425451111174120

Purpose – The relative absence of worker occupations in recent years in a context of major restructuring and unemployment has raised issues in Spain as to the changing nature of specific forms of direct action. This paper seeks to argue that it is important, in the case of Spain, to discuss how worker occupations have been changing and developing over time if the changing pattern, character and impact of worker unrest and direct action is to be understood. Design/methodology/approach – The research materials for this paper are based on a series of meetings and interviews with union officers and activists that draw on various projects on union development in Spain during the years 1983‐1988, 2000‐2002 and 2009‐2010, and the study of a range of secondary texts. Findings – The paper suggests that, as well as discussing questions of motives, whether economic or political, accounting for the socio‐economic context and the changing nature of the workforce in terms of its degree of concentration, the changing nature of labour market stability, and the relationship of workers to “stable” workplaces and work is required. Additionally, there is a need to account for how workers reference and recall (or not) previous modes of mobilising and actions. Practical implications – Discussing worker occupations should involve issues of political purpose, economic context, the changing nature of work and workers, and the role of memory and historical framing if an appreciation of their varying nature and presence within the landscape of labour relations is to be made. Hence, a multi‐dimensional understanding of the context of worker action is required. Social implications – The implications of the paper are that conflict of work needs to be understood in broader terms, and that worker related activities can be highly innovative. Originality/value – The paper examines union and worker responses to the current recession in Spain and focuses on the role and context of unofficial approaches, especially worker occupations, to the changing workplace.

Steve Jefferys

2011 Employee Relations: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/01425451111174139

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore comparatively the relationship between the employment relations contexts and trends in collective conflicts based at the workplace and conflicts handled individually in employment tribunals outside the workplace. Design/methodology/approach – The paper employs an international comparative approach comparing conflict data and employment relations models in Britain, France, Italy, Portugal and Poland. Findings – Collective disputes are at lower levels in the 2000s than in earlier periods in each of the countries studied, while accessing employment courts appears to be as or more frequent than in the past. In France and Italy, conflict appears to be more systematically legitimated in defence of citizenship rights than elsewhere. Both individual and collective conflicts are more common than in Poland and Portugal where labour regulation and employee rights appear either less effectively enforced or, as in Britain, only weakly embedded. Practical implications – Unions in France and Italy appear more successful in focusing media attention on their collective conflicts, and in securing somewhat more positive state intervention than in the other countries, while at the same time supporting individuals taking cases to the courts. In Poland and Portugal, there are very high levels of individual employment complaints taken to the courts, and little collective strike action, while in Britain unions find it difficult to mobilise action at both collective and individual levels. Social implications – Unions will have to become more aware of the need to win public legitimacy for resistance if they are to continue to be able to defend workers' interests both collectively and individually. Originality/value – The paper considers whether different national institutional frameworks are presenting similar shifts from collective‐based to individual‐based resistance in workplace disputes.