Strategic Unionism and Partnership: Boxing or Dancing

Strategic Unionism and Partnership: Boxing or Dancing

How do we understand ‘social partnership’? How does partnership vary across Europe and beyond? What are the implications of partnership for union renewal? This book addresses these questions by Exploring the relationship between union renewal and partnership in an international context. It focusses on experience of cooperative industrial relations, normally understood as ‘social partnership’ in eight countries. The Authors introduce and develop the terms ‘boxing’ and ‘dancing’ as metaphors for adversarial and co-operative industrial relations, and then offer an in-depth investigation of ‘dancing’ as a trade union strategy. It is argued that effective unions will need to skillfully combine both boxing and dancing activities which are interdependent and not a tradeoff.

Tony Huzzard, Denis Gregory and Regan Scott

Palgrave MacMillan

2004

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English

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