ETUI Research

Edited by Aline Conchon and Marie-Noëlle Auberger

This collective book presents a little-known face among French industrial relations: company’s board-level employee representation, with a right to vote. Historical, economical, managerial and sociological analysis together shed new light on a phenomenon existing in 160 among the biggest French companies.

This paper analyses how wage policy in Austria and the Netherlands was affected by economic and monetary union (EMU). The paper concludes that EMU and the macroeconomic shifts resulting from it have had little influence on wage-setting in Austria and the Netherlands. While wage restraint outcomes did diverge for both countries after the start of EMU, this paper will argue that different wage institutions lead to this divergence. The EMU’s new macroeconomic order did not significantly change either countries microeconomic wage institutions.

This working paper presents how 'personal services' i.e. labour supplied within the home or the immediate environment of private individuals have developed in France and Belgium via a voucher system.

The working paper analyses the impact of EWCs on four different groups: shareholders, creditors, managers and employees. It argues that EWCs provide a net benefit. There are no significant negative impacts on shareholders and creditors while there are clear positive benefits for employees and managers.

This ETUI Working Paper analyses the fiscal stimulus packages implemented by EU Member States against the background of the on-going economic crisis. Alongside the overall volume of the packages, the study, which is based on a survey of national experts, considers their content and also the involvement – or lack of it – of the social partners and particularly trade unions.

In this, the fourth ETUI Policy Brief in 2009, the impact of the economic and financial crisis on Central and Eastern Europe is examined. Five years after EU enlargement, the new member states have been hit hard, contrary to initial hopes that their previous strong growth would make them immune. Bela Galgoczi, Senior researcher at the ETUI, shows that policy responses from Europe have been neither timely nor adequate and the initiative was left to a large extent to the International Monetary Fund.

This issue analyses the growing problems in private equity as the economic crisis raises the threat of bankruptcy or default over perhaps as many as one in two firms acquired by private equity funds.

The author, Sigurt Vitols, senior researcher at the WZB, Berlin and associated researcher at the ETUI, shows that the PE business model increases the vulnerability of the companies the buyout funds have taken over.