This article argues that, despite pessimistic forecasts for their future, social pacts remain a central element of industrial relations across many member states of the European Union. Social pacts provide a mechanism of pragmatic adaptation to the trilemma of reconciling market integration,...

The German high-skills/high value-added economy has long been the Mecca for supporters of the European social model. So long as Model Deutschland was thriving the notion of Social Europe was a plausible political project. But Germany is facing a range of economic problems - the aftershock of...

This paper argues that a range of economic and social developments are creating new employment times that are in turn obliging a rethink of established approaches to settling employment grievances in Ireland. In particular, it suggests that the triple influences of social partnership, declining...

This paper argues that European integration has constrained the discretion of industrial relations actors. The result has been not the widely predicted institutional fragmentation of collective bargaining, but a change in the functioning of these systems. At the same time, widespread "social...

This article examines the effect which the evolving system of European Economic government is having on national corporatist type deals. This is done by first outlining the institutional formation of European Economic government and second examining two case studies - one from Finland and one...