On 24 November 2009 the European Commission published its consultation paper on the EU 2020 strategy. This paper analyses European trade union responses, and contrasts the very limited participation in the exercise with the greater response to the Green Paper Modernising Labour Law three years...

Can industrial relations be successfully transferred between countries. Thispaper reviews experience in eastern Germany since unification in 1990. Theevidence is that the close integration in western Germany between the twoelements of the dual system of interest representation trade unions...

On 24 November 2009 the European Commission published its consultation paper on the EU 2020 strategy. This paper analyses European trade union responses, and contrasts the very limited participation in the exercise with the greater response to the Green Paper Modernising Labour Law three years...

This article is concerned with problems of comparative research and analysis in industrial relations, and in particular with cross-national comparison of trade unions. Comparison is of both practical and theoretical importance, but is fraught with difficulties, in part because of the paradox...

The ‘no’ vote in the Irish referendum of June 2008 on the Lisbon Treaty – reversed in October 2009 – threw the European Union into crisis. Yet it reflected a familiar pattern of popular rejection of initiatives on European integration. This article provides an overview of such...

The 2008 financial crisis marked the beginning of a prolonged and ongoing period of extreme economic turbulence that has created multiple challenges for both governments and national systems of labour administration. Difficult economic conditions are encouraging a reevaluation of established...

The literature on and for management makes increasing use of notions of strategy. Is such an approach compatible with analyses of capitalism as structurally determined? The first part of the paper argues that contradictions within capitalist enterprise both create openings for strategic choice,...