This paper explores the link between employee perceptions of working conditions and the desire for worker representation in Britain and the US. We find that the distribution of employee perceptions of poor working conditions is similar in Britain and the US; similar factors affect the number of...

There is a consensus among European trade unions that economic integration should be complemented by a strong ‘social dimension’. What is far less clearly agreed is what ‘Social Europe’ means, and how it should be defended against the challenges inherent in a neoliberal approach to...

Using nationally representative workplace data for Britain we show that over the last quarter century union voice – especially union-only voice – has been associated with poorer climate, more industrial action, poorer financial performance and poorer labour productivity than nonunion voice...

China has, apparently, more trade union members than the rest of the world put together. But the unions do not function in the same way as western trade unions. In particular Chinese unions are subservient to the Partystate. The theme of the paper is the gap between rhetoric and reality. Issues...

In 2000 the UK government introduced, under the Employment Relations Act of 1999, a new statutory union recognition procedure, while in 2003 it published a consultation document on its Review of the Act. The document concluded that th eunion procedure was broadly working and confirmed that the...

In this paper we seek to explain the emergence of different voice regimes, and to do so by using approaches from institutional economics. In particular we analyse the emergence of different voice regimes as a contracting problem; a ¿make¿ or ¿buy¿ decision on the part of the employer. A...

Using data from the Workplace Employment Relations Survey 1998, this paper shows that unionisation increased the probability of within-workplace job cuts and the incidence of job security guarantees. As theory predicts, both are more prevalent among market-sector workplaces with higher union...

Equal opportunities policies and family-friendly practices are examined using data from the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey in order to assess (i) their associations with union recognition and strategic human resource management and (ii) the outcomes of what has recently been described...

We explore the effects of management innovations on worker well-being using private sector linked employer-employee data for Britain. We find management innovations are associated with lower worker well-being and lower job satisfaction, an effect which becomes more pronounced when we account for...

Do variations in labor market institutions across countries affect the cross-border organization of the firm? Using firm-level data on multinationals located in France, we show that firms are more likely to outsource the production of intermediate inputs to external suppliers when importing from...