European Union - European Industrial Relations? Global Challenge, National Development and Transitional Dynamics

European Union - European Industrial Relations? Global Challenge, National Development and Transitional Dynamics

Industrial relations have traditionally been a national affair, characterized by distinct local laws, practices and cultures. The process of European integration, exemplified by the single market program, Maastricht treaty and the imminent prospect Economic Monetary Union, has created a framework within which national practices have been exposed to growing border influences – including European union legislation required European works councils to be set up in large transactional firms. Might European integration create the basis for a new distinctly European level of industrial relations? And what impact would this have on existing national systems?

European Union- European Industrial relations? Explores the prospects for the emergence of a distinctly European pattern of industrial relations, in which the European level organizations representing employers and trade unions gain in importance vis-Avis their national organizations. Individual contributions analyse the impact of the social chapter to the Maastricht treaty, which created a new institutional framework within which European level employers and trade unions can negotiate and a free European social policy. The study also considers the likelihood of European level collective bargaining, and what effect mandatory European work council might have on existing national systems of employee representation.

Wolfgang E. Lecher and Hans-Wolfgang Platzer

Routledge

1998

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English

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