Industrial relations in twenty-first century Europe
| Date | 04 June 2018 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-02-2018-0057 |
| Published date | 04 June 2018 |
| Pages | 566-568 |
| Author | Holm-Detlev Köhler |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Industrial/labour relations,Employment law |
Guest editorial
Industrial relations in twenty-first century Europe
Currently, thesecond post-war generation of industrial relations(IR) researchers and activists
is retiring in a context of fundamental transformations. IR in a globalised networked service
economy will be verydifferent from the industrial Fordistpast. This implies huge challenges
for IR actors and scholars.We therefore consider thisas a convenientmoment to reflect on the
trajectories of IR in Europe since the articulation of modern IR systems in a perspective of
future challenges. A critical reconstruction of the evolution of IR and the corresponding
research traditions can open our eyes for the current interplay of continuities and changes,
to see what is really new and what are just new forms of old conflicts in the context of
capitalist development.
The purpose of this special issue is not a historical reconstruction but a critical reflection
on the variety of IR trajectories to face current challenges in a long-term view.
The re-commodification of labour force and the new dynamics of capitalist colonisation
(“Landnahme”in Rosa Luxemburgs’classical term) require a renewal of social and labour
rights struggles in defence of our societies. In clear difference to functionalist interpretations
of post-war welfare and employment regimes as intelligent technocrat social engineering, we
insist in the social struggles and political mobilisations as the driving forces of social
progress and in the de-mobilisation and weakening of the labour organisations as the main
factor explaining the current race to the bottom.
The authors followed a common agreed structure of research questions which included
the following topics and thus allow for an explicit comparative analysis:
(1) How was the IR institutional system established and what are the country-specific
features (context, actors, social and political struggles)?
(2) Which are the main academic debates and research traditions on the analysis of IR
in the country?
(3) Which periods can be distinguished in the development of IR in the country and to
which extent they correspond/differ to the general periodisation of post-war
capitalist development?
(4) What are the impacts of globalisation, financialisation and technological innovations
on the IR system and its actors?
(5) How do the IR institutions and actors face the current transformations since the
capitalist crisis?
The selection of case studies implies always some element of arbitrariness but the eight
country papers include at least one case of each cluster traditionally distinguished in the
comparativeIR literature (Eurofound, 2017).Denmark represents the “organised corporatism”
model, Germanyand Slovenia “social partnership”,France, Italy and Spain different modes of
“state-centred”types, Polandand Romania stand for “transitioneconomies”. The only missing
one is the “liberalpluralism”of the UK and Ireland,which is referred in the comparativearticle
and many contributions to recent Employee Relations issues (see Turner and Flannery, 2016;
Martínez Lucio, 2015 and the contributions to Vol. 37, No. 6). Five Western European IR
Employee Relations
Vol. 40 No. 4, 2018
pp. 566-568
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0142-5455
DOI 10.1108/ER-02-2018-0057
Paul Stewart, Professor of Sociology of Work and Employment at the University of Strathclyde,
supported with language editing of this special issue.
566
ER
40,4
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