British Journal of Industrial Relations

Issue Number

Latest documents

• Health Effects of Risky Lifestyles and Adverse Working Conditions: Are Older Individuals More Penalized?

  Using unusually rich panel data from Denmark, we investigate differences by age in the health implications of risky lifestyles and adverse working conditions. Accounting for time‐invariant unobserved heterogeneity, overall, we find no health penalties for older workers (55 and over) compared to younger ones (18–34; 35–54). However, the former suffer more from the health consequences of risky lifestyles — especially the lack of consumption of fruit and vegetables and physical inactivity. Working conditions negatively relate with health, but fewer differences across age groups exist. Selection bias, namely the healthy worker effect, does not alter our results.

• Employment and Disability: Issues, Innovations, and Opportunities, edited by Susanne Bruyère, Labor and Employment Relations Series, Illinois, USA, 2019. 346 pp., ISBN 978‐0‐913447‐18‐5, Price $34.95 paperback
• Migration, Ethnicity and Solidarity: ‘Multinational Workers’ in the Former Soviet Union

  We investigate migrant construction workers’ experiences in the Former Soviet Union, examining their attitudes to other ethno‐national groups, unions and collective action. Industrial relations and migration studies view migrant workers’ hypermobility and diversity, under conditions of low union coverage and rising nationalism, as potentially obstructing consciousness‐raising and mobilizing. Workers in our study faced union indifference, ethno‐national segregation and discrimination. However, managerial abuses, informality and contestation from below led to spontaneous mobilization. Lack of institutional channels to solve these disputes drove workers’ further mobility. Complex mobility trajectories and collective action translated into increased awareness of collective interests and rejection of nationalist ideologies. The outcome is ‘multinational workers’ potentially resistant to nation‐state politics and capital's logics but also aware of the value and usefulness of collective solidarities. Thus, previous arguments solely associating exit with individualistic attitudes, and post‐socialist legacies with workers’ quiescence present only partial pictures.

• Divided Unions: The Wagner Act, Federalism, and Organized Labor, by Alexis N. Walker. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2020, 184 pp, ISBN: 9780812251821, Price £59.25, hardback.
• Workers Without Borders. Posted Work and Precarity in the EU. Ines Wagner
• Gender, Ageing and Extended Working Life: Cross‐National Perspectives, by Áine Ní Léim, Debra Street, Sarah Vickerstaff, Clary Krekula and Wendy Loretto. Policy Press, UK, 2019, 256pp., ISBN: 978‐1447325116, Price 21.59, h/b
• Research Handbook on Labour, Business and Human Rights Law, edited by Janice R. Bellace and Beryl ter Haar. Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham, UK, 2019, 528 pp., ISBN: 978‐1‐78642‐310‐7, £195.00 (US$290.00)
• The Wealth of (Some) Nations. Imperialism and the Mechanics of Value Transfer, by ZakCope. Pluto Press, London, 2019, 272 pp., ISBN 978 0 74533 8859, £9.99, paperback.
• Productivity and Wage Effects of Firm‐Level Collective Agreements: Evidence from Belgian Linked Panel Data

  How do firm‐level collective agreements affect firm performance in a multi‐level bargaining system? Using detailed Belgian‐linked employer–employee panel data, our findings show that firm‐level agreements increase both wage costs and labour productivity (with respect to sector‐level agreements). Relying on approaches developed by Bartolucci and Hellerstein et al., they also indicate that firm‐level agreements exert a stronger impact on wages than on productivity, so that profitability is hampered. However, this rent‐sharing effect mostly holds in sectors where firms are more concentrated or less exposed to international competition. Firm agreements are thus mainly found to raise wages beyond labour productivity when the rents to be shared between workers and firms are relatively big. Overall, this suggests that firm‐level agreements benefit both employers and employees — through higher productivity and wages — without being very detrimental to firms’ performance.

• Women and Work: Feminism, Labour and Social Reproduction, by SusanFerguson. Pluto Press, 2020

Featured documents

• A Cross‐Country Comparison of Gender Differences in Job‐Related Training: The Role of Working Hours and the Household Context

  Theory suggests that in a partnership, the individual with the lower working hours and earnings position should exhibit lower training participation rates. Since women are more likely to match this description, we investigate whether systematic group differences in earnings position and working...

• A New Theory of Industrial Relations: People, Markets and Organizations after Neoliberalism, by Conor Cradden. Routledge, London, 2017, 208 pp., ISBN: 9781138124615, £105.00, hardback.
• A Review and Critique of Research on Developments in Joint Consultation1
• A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book about Employment Relations, by Tony Dundon, Niall Cullinane and Adrian Wilkinson. Sage Publications, London, 2017, 154 pp., ISBN: 978‐1‐44629‐410‐9, $21, paperback.
• African Employment Relationships and the Future of Trade Unions
• An Attitudinal Revolution in Irish Industrial Relations: The End of ‘Them and Us’?

  Intensified international competition and high unemployment have characterized many Western economies since 1980. A firm’s survival in such an environment demands a flexible and co‐operative work‐force, a requirement incompatible with traditional adversarial industrial relations. Drawing on a...

• Annual Review Article 1990

  This personal annual review examines recent events, particularly in the trade unions but also among employers, in the context of the changed environment of the last decade. It finds that unions have emerged both strengthened and weakened from their experiences, but that they have some reasons for...

• Are Worker Rights Human Rights? – By Richard P. McIntyre
• Bargaining (De)centralization, Macroeconomic Performance and Control over the Employment Relationship

  Based on data for 20 OECD countries, this paper analyses the effect of bargaining centralization on performance and control over the employment relationship. Rejecting both the corporatist thesis and the hump–shape thesis, the paper finds that performance either increases or decreases with...

• Beyond the High‐Performance Paradigm: Exploring the Curvilinear Relationship between High‐Performance Work Systems and Organizational Performance in Taiwanese Manufacturing Firms

  In this study, we explore the potential downside of the ‘high‐performance’ paradigm by examining the curvilinear relationship between high‐performance work systems (HPWS) and organizational performance and the moderating effects of the industry type. Using data from Taiwanese manufacturing firms,...