
Editorial
Lisa Dorigatti, Roberto Pedersini
Inequality has been a growing concern in recent years. The internationalisation of production and markets, the rampant financialisation of the economy, the deregulation of labour markets, and the retrenchment of welfare systems are only some of the factors that have been feeding into increased inequality in terms of income, property, job security, and working and living conditions. The weakening of industrial relations institutions has also been regarded as part of this broad picture, since trade unions and collective bargaining have usually been considered as vehicles of fairness and capable of reducing or at least containing inequality (see for instance the recent book edited by Daniel Vaughan-Whitehead, Reducing inequalities in Europe: How industrial relations and labour policies can close the gap, Edward Elgar-ILO, 2018). This issue of Transfer intends to contribute to this strand of research by investigating the analytical premises and the empirical evidence of such claims.
The introductory article by the editors of the issue provides a framework to investigate the relationship between industrial relations and inequality. By distinguishing between the impact on inequality among workers (the intra-class dimension) and the distributional effect between workers and employers (or labour and capital, the inter-class dimension), it identifies whether, under which conditions and to what extent we should expect industrial relations to reduce inequality. After presenting this framework, it then offers an overview of the literature assessing the evidence on the actual links between industrial relations and inequality, as well as of the specific contributions of this issue read more...
The full issue can be found → here
Co-editors: Philippe Pochet, Vera Šćepanović, Maarten Keune
Contents
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Industrial relations and inequality: the many conditions of a crucial relationship - Lisa Dorigatti, Roberto Pedersini
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Inequality between capital and labour and among wage-earners: the role of collective bargaining and trade unions - Maarten Keune
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Internal devaluation and economic inequality in Portugal: challenges to industrial relations in times of crisis and recovery - Maria da Paz Campos Lima, Diogo Martins, Ana Cristina Costa, António Velez
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Negotiating wage (in)equality: changing union strategies in high-wage and low-wage sectors in Czechia and Slovakia - Monika Martišková, Marta Kahancová, Jakub Kostolný
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Who receives occupational welfare? The importance of skills across Europe’s diverse industrial relations regimes - Egidio Riva, Roberto Rizza
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Understanding the dynamics of inequity in collective bargaining: evidence from Australia, Canada, Denmark and France - Ruth Barton, Élodie Béthoux, Camille Dupuy, Anna Ilsøe, Patrice Jalette, Mélanie Laroche, Steen Erik Navrbjerg, Trine Pernille Larsen
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Book Review: Posted Work in the European Union. The Political Economy of Free Movement - Jonas Bals
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Book Review: European Labour Movements in Crisis: From indecision to indifference - Bengt Furåker
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Book Review: Exploring Trade Union Identities. Union Identity, niche identity and the problem of organising the unorganised - Thomas Klikauer, Nadine Campbell