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...

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...

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...

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...

Most analyses of strike activity in Western Europe suggest that it has declined quite dramatically since the early 1970s. The contention of this article is that this decline has been exaggerated, largely as a result of an inadequate recognition of the deficiencies of the statistical data on...

This article explores developments in statutory individual employment rights since the election of the Labour Government in 1997. It also discusses the mechanisms for the adjudication and enforcement of individual employment rights. There have been changes in the institutions and dispute...

This paper outlines the purpose and the economic theory underpinning the Uni‐Europa Graphical co‐ordination of collective bargaining within a European context policy. It then analyses the development of the policy in terms of its scope, its institutions and its information networks. It...

This paper investigates the operation of the National Agreement in the general printing industry at a time when the future of such agreements is in doubt. Drawing on both quantitative and qualitative data from union representatives, the paper provides insights into the workplace practices of...

Purpose – This paper aims to examine how the Slovak Labour Code has evolved as a result of the “velvet revolution” which saw Czechoslovakia begin the transition from a “command” to a “market economy, the establishment of a separate Czech Republic and a Slovak Republic and Slovakia's...

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to understand better how specific conditions such as the degree of trust developed from previous negotiations, the level of expertise/style demonstrated by the negotiators, the clarity of the bargaining issues and the ability of facilitators to use...