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 – 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...

Purpose – This paper examines the attempts by trade unions in Britain to gain organisational rights for their members and for workers in organisations operating within the hitherto non‐unionised “new economy”. Design/methodology/approach – By using data drawn from fieldwork interviews...

Purpose – This paper seeks to examine the intriguing juxtaposition of a bona fide independent union for journalists in the UK, which is vocal about editorial standards and interference, yet has seldom taken collective action to respond to such instances. Design/methodology/approach – A...

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 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...

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...

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 –...

Over 80 companies and organizations have recently changed their collective bargaining arrangements to introduce “single table bargaining” (STB). This sharp rise follows on from only a small umber of companies introducing this change in the 1980s. Under STB all the different unions and grades...