This paper addresses the design of the machinery of collective bargaining from the perspective of the needs of microeconomic and macroeconomic flexibility. In the former context, greater attention is given over to enterprise flexibility than external adjustment. In the latter context, close...

This paper present paper provides the first results for Germany on the impact of works councils and collective agreements on plant closings, using data from the IAB establishment panel. We find evidence of a robust positive association between works council presence and plant closures. The...

An interesting aspect of British research on unions based on the Workplace Industrial/ Employment Relations Surveys has been the apparent shift in union impact on establishment performance in the decade of the 1990s compared with the 1980s – and the recent scramble to explain the phenomenon....

Perhaps no other country in recent years has witnessed greater change in its collective bargaining framework than the UK. This paper describes the dramatic developments and their consequences. Like Gaul, it is in three parts. The first part charts the six major pieces of legislation –...

We show that an institutional change designed expressly to heighten competition for the provision of union services can have a substantial effect on unionization and employment relations. We study a French reform of 2008 that introduced mandatory elections for representation of workers at firm,...

This survey shows that union membership and density as well as bargaining coverage have fallen in most countries and that collective bargaining has become more decentralized over the last decades. However, there is a considerable amount of variation across countries and between different...

While works councils provide a highly developed mechanism to promote workplace democracy, research on their consequences has been dominated by economic aspects. This study brings a new perspective to the understanding of works councils by examining their influence on workers’ political...

Research on the consequences of works councils has been dominated by economic aspects. Our study provides evidence that works councils have nonfinancial consequences for civic society that go beyond the narrow boundaries of the workplace. Using panel data from a large sample of male workers, the...

Till the early-1990s the collectively-bargained labor contract (between the trade-union that presented the employees, and the employer or the employers'-association) was the norm, granting salaried workers a stable and protected labor contract. Thereafter, and more significantly after 1995, the...

An interesting aspect of British research on unions based on the Workplace Industrial/ Employment Relations Surveys has been the apparent shift in union impact on establishment performance in the decade of the 1990s compared with the 1980s – and the recent scramble to explain the phenomenon....