This revised edition of Industrial Relations: Theory and Practice follows the approach established successfully in preceding volumes edited by Paul Edwards. The focus is on Britain after a decade of public policy which has once again altered the terrain on which employment relations develop. Government has attempted to balance flexibility with fairness, preserving light-touch regulation whilst introducing rights to minimum wages and to employee representation in the workplace. Yet this is an open economy, conditioned significantly by developing patterns of international trade and by European Union policy initiatives. This interaction of domestic and cross-national influences in analysis of changes in employment relations runs throughout the volume.

This book examines changing work relationships in industrialized economies within the context of economic restructuring and demographic variables. The goal of this book is to examine experiences of industrialized economies in dealing with changing work relationships and discuss policy implications of creating such work relationships. The thesis of the book is that non-standard employment forms in restructuring economies affected all workers, but particularly females and the youth. Other demographic variables of education level, race/ethnicity/immigrant status, ability, and economic class were also underlying forces in the construction and arrangements of non-standard work. Research shows both positive and negative effects of changing work relationships on workers, though there is no conclusive result whether one or the other affect is stronger. The discussion in this book pays attention to this debate and sheds light on it. This book differs from others in its comprehensiveness of the coverage of work relationships, referring to part-time, temporary/casual, telework and self-employment without employees; in its examination of a variety of variables including gender, age, race/ethnicity/immigrant status, ability, education level, and economic class; in the analysis of the topic in relation with the economic restructuring; and in its initiative in collaboration of researchers from a variety of backgrounds and regions of the world that have expertise on changing work relationships.

The Politics of Labor in a Global Age is one of the first works to analyse and compare recent shifts in patterns of industrial relations across late-industrializing and post-socialist economies. The volume features original and timely essays on labor relations at national, local, and workplace levels, as economic and politicla actors cope with the similar challenges associated with economic adjustment measures and the impact of 'globalization'. The authors reveal that while globalization has threatened the position of organized labor and prompted business and state elites to accommodate greater labor market flexibility, the legacies of past institutions remain evident in destinctive trends in labor politics within and across late-industrializing and post-socialist settings. The comparisons suggest that globalization is best understood not as a source of covergence but as a set of common pressures that are mediated by specific historical inheritances, that spur varied responses on the part of industrial relations actors, and that facilitate quite diverse institutional outcomes.

Economic Restructuring and Political Response, clarifies theoretical issues of economic restructuring, developed as a result of the economic upheavels which began in the early seventies and have had major social and political consequences. It explores the theoretical nature of economic restructuring in the postwar period and examines actual qualitative transformations in capitalistic social formation. It then focuses on the political response to these transformations, considering the influence of economic restructuring on political action.

Since the beginning of the 1980s, British trade unions have experienced a dramatic retreat, marked by rapidly falling membership and declining industrial power. The authors examine the regional dimensions of this retreat of organised labour, paying particular attention to: The resilience of the unions' historical heartland areas. The impact of economic restructuring on local union traditions. The shrinking landscape of industrial militancy. The geographical decentralization of the new industrial relations. The link between these factors and the more general debate on regional development and regional labour markets. An important synthesis of economic geography and industrial relations work, this book marks a major contribution towards the newly emerging field of labour geography