At the time of writing, Irish unions are balloting their members about a new collective bargaining agreement for the public sector (Labour Relations Commission 2013). If a majority of union members in a majority of public sector unions within the Irish Congress of Trade Union (ICTU) endorses the...

Gumbrell-McGormick and Hyman's "Trade Unions in Western Europe" is not a textbook about national industrial relations systems, but a research monograph about the ‘hard choices' European unions face. The authors identify the challenges that unions face in these times of crisis and then review...

This article uses case study data from a major Irish city council to investigate and explain public sector worker attitudes towards social partnership at local and national level. It is argued that the more sceptical attitudes to workplace partnership reflect structural differences between local...

In April 2000, a statutory National Minimum Wage was introduced in Ireland, at around 55% of the average industrial wage. This development is notable for a number of reasons: first, the statutory minimum wage seems to contradict the voluntarist tradition of Irish industrial relations where the...

This introductory article to the special issue proposes a more encompassing view of transnational collective action in Europe, which goes beyond the classical, country by-country oriented, comparative industrial relations approach. Instead, we propose an extension of focus to capture also other...

What explains the adoption of two different policies on equal pay by gender (EPG) and by nationality (EPN) in Switzerland? And why is the liberal, litigation-based, equal pay policy regime set up by the Gender Equality Act of 1996 much less effective than the neocorporatist ‘accompanying...

Until very recently, European employers and political leaders denied the need for any coordination in industrial relations at EU level. In 2011 however, the European Parliament and the Council adopted a new European economic governance regime that makes EU member states' labor policies subject...

The Republic of Ireland belongs – together with the UK and Sweden – to the group of initially only three EU member states that did not impose any restrictions on the free movement of workers from the eight new central and east European EU member states in 2004. Following this, a number of...

Industrial relations scholars have argued that east-west labour migration may benefit trade unions in Central and Eastern Europe. By focusing on the distributional aspect of wage policies adopted by two competing Romanian trade unions in the health care sector, this article challenges the...

Since the revitalisation of the European integration process by the Delors Commission, European institutions have been encouraging social dialogue and the emergence of a European system of industrial relations. The Barroso Commission's response to the Eurozone crisis is a source of concern for...