"A team of European social scientists investigated the various facets of increased militancy in the late 1960s. The results are contained in individual essays, which take account of the changes that preceded and were accentuated by the economic crisis of 1973. The first volume deals with the increase in industrial conflicts and the consequences in the major European countries; the second volume takes up the more general problems - inter alia, the role of women and immigrants, the changing role of the state and of the politics of the trade unions. A major effort at clarification and analysis"--Provided by publisher.

Comparison of recent patterns of labour relations and labour disputes in Belgium, France, Germany, Federal Republic, Italy, Netherlands and the UK - comprises an analysis of strikes, lockouts, strike frequency, civil disobedience (political problems), collective bargaining demands, trade union militancy and workers representation. References and statistical tables.

First published in 1985, Comparative Industrial Relations is a comprehensive introductory text exploring the subject of cross-national comparisons of industrial relations. The book surveys, integrates and reviews a wealth of literature and research relating to comparative industrial relations structures and procedures. It covers key themes within industrial relations and incorporates material from a wide range of areas, including Western Europe, North America, Japan, and Australia. The considerable variety of differing practices and institutions are highlighted and examined, and extensive analysis and explanation is given to their similarities and differences. Comparative Industrial Relations provides detailed and varied perspectives on the contemporary state of knowledge within this important field.

Following the death of Francisco Franco in 1975, the long repressed Spanish labor movement faced two challenges: to contribute to the transformation of the national political system, and to use newly achieved freedoms to build its own organizational presence. Focusing on areas of potential conflict between these two broad objectives, Robert Fishman here traces the development of the complex political role and organizational development of the Spanish workers' movement in the transition from dictatorship to democracy. Drawing on rich empirical data including interviews with 324 plant-level labor leaders, Fishman examines the interplay between various unions' efforts to organize labor and to deal with national politics. He shows how the workers' movement, long an advocate of a ruptura or clear break with the Francoist past, came to support a process of negotiated reform and mobilizational restraint. Labor leaders' belief in the legitimacy of the democratic state, Fishman demonstrates, can serve as a key predictor of their willingness to support negotiated wage restraint. In emphasizing the crucial role of plant-level labor leaders in national political processes, Fishman offers an innovative methodological approach to the analysis of the collective efforts of labor. Political scientists, sociologists, historians of labor movements, and observers of contemporary Western Europe and Latin America will read it with interest.

This set is designed to capture both the complexity of the field of industrial relations globally, as well as bringing out the continuing relevance of competing theoretical approaches to the subject.