The Role of the State and Industrial Relations

The Role of the State and Industrial Relations

Edited by Adalberto Perulli & Tiziano Treu

The new era of industrial relations that has been stealthily changing the world of work in recent decades seems to have reached a stage where it can be systematically monitored and analyzed, in great part because the “creeping renationalization” that has been noted since the financial crisis of 2008 has reinvigorated state intervention in essential economic structures. The contributions in this unrivalled book provide important new perspectives on the many challenges inherent in the present and future of the relationship between industrial relations and the state.

Analyzing industrial relations systems from international, supranational, European and national points of view—and with an interdisciplinary approach connecting labour law, commercial law, corporate governance and international law—this one-of-kind book examines such salient aspects of the subject as the following:

• cooperative versus conflictual industrial relations systems;
• phenomenon of constitutionalization of power by multinational enterprises;
• competitive, illiberal and protectionist patterns of state regulation;
• freedom of association and industrial relations;
• potential power of transnational collective bargaining;
• impact of worktime arrangements;
• role of European Works Councils;
• exemplary value of the German system of workers’ participation; and
• global framework agreements.

Using a comparative approach (the European Union, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Japan, China, the United States, Brazil, South Africa, India), the book reconstructs the general framework of global industrial relations, considering challenges and future prospects and proposing a new agenda for the state. Contributors include widely renowned professors of labour, commercial and international law, as well as experts from the International Labour Organization and the International Society for Labour and Social Security Law.

The debate about industrial relations and the state in our globalized world is of major concern for practitioners in governments, companies, employers’ associations and trade unions, as well as for company managers, entrepreneurs, consultants, judges, human rights lawyers and academics interested in labour, industrial relations and social rights in European and international contexts.