The Europeanization of Industrial Relations in the Service Sector: Problems and Perspectives in a Heterogeneous Field, by Stefan Rüb and Hans‐Wolfgang Platzer (trans. P. Burgess). Peter Lang, New York, 2015, 244 pp., ISBN: 978‐3‐0343‐1967‐6, $64.95, paperback.
| Published date | 01 September 2016 |
| Author | Stan De Spiegelaere |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12191 |
| Date | 01 September 2016 |
Book Reviews 677
presentation of data, whichcould form the basis for further research aiming to explain
the causes of and mechanisms behind the phenomena and assertions presented here.
JONATHAN PREMINGER
Cardi University
The Europeanization of Industrial Relations in the Service Sector: Problems and
Perspectivesin a Heterogeneous Field, by Stefan R¨
ub and Hans-Wolfgang Platzer
(trans. P. Burgess). Peter Lang, New York, 2015, 244 pp., ISBN: 978-3-0343-
1967-6, $64.95, paperback.
Together with the political and economic integration of the European Union, the
political and economic decision-making powers are moving beyond the nation states.
If trade unions and employee representatives wish to conserve their influence on
decision making in the social field, they will need to work towards a kind of
Europeanization of industrial relations. The book by R¨
ub and Platzer studies how
such a Europeanization comes about, what factors are at play and, eventually, what
challenges and opportunities trade unions are likely to face in its further development.
In doing so, the authors focus on company-level industrial relations in the services
industry. As a consequence, they talk about the development of European works
councils (EWCs), trade union alliances, transnational collective bargaining and
transnational company-level trade union activism. The book is based on a thorough
study of six case studies in companies from the insurance, retail and paper and
cardboard packaging sectors.
While the selection of the cases is focused on one industry (services), the selected
companies could hardly be more dierent. As the authors state,services are essentially
negativelydefined as everything which is not industry or agriculture.This heterogeneity
is, however, a serious advantage as it gives a quite remarkable diversity of how this
Europeanization of industrial relations can come about.
In exploring the case studies, the reader receives a lively image of the diculties
and challenges employee representatives and trade unions face in developing genuine
European industrial relations. This is remarkable as the cases should reflect some of
the better, rather than the worst practices. Indeed, the six cases were selected because
they have a proven track record of European or group-levelindustrial relations.
Without going into a detailed overview of all the findings, I would like to focus
on two issues that attracted my attention. The first refers to a structural aspect
that influences the development of European industrial relations: the company
characteristics.As is well known, organizing industrial relations in companies with lots
of small dispersed establishments is considerably more challenging than in companies
with employees concentrated in severalfactories. What holds on the local level equally
holds on the European level. However, those multinationalsare also the ones working
towardsa certain centralization of management. The establishment might be dispersed,
but from a company perspective, it is important that they are all rather similar and
represent a single-company identity towards the customer. An extreme example is
IKEA which has lots of small (in terms of employees) establishments, but the way
they are organized is almost identical everywhere. All employees consequently face the
same problems and the only appropriate and eective level to discuss those problems
is the transnational one, because that is where the company’s policies are made. So
what seems to be a serious obstacle for genuine industrial relations on the local level
C
2016 John Wiley& Sons Ltd/London School of Economics.
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