Books in the Routledge Studies in Employment and Work Relations in Context series

An exploration of the interplay between employment and domestic relations within a specific group of young women, which includes single working women without children and working mothers. The text is based on actual experiences, as related in interviews.

Featuring research from Australia, Europe and North America, this collection of cutting-edge, multi-disciplinary research-based chapters on work, workers and the regulation and management of workplace health and safety explores important historical examples and emerging contemporary trends in international and historical perspectives.

In this work leading scholars take stock of the evidence and implications of the new workplace, drawing on examples from a variety of contexts, they seek to characterize the nature of contemporary workplace change, and assess its implications.

Offering a sociological analysis of trade unionism in the globalized era, this book gives a comparative analysis of the debate surrounding trade unions and their renewal. Using theory and a variety of case studies, it explores: the debate about the form of trade unionism; the bases for collective organization; and the struggle of trade unionism.

Unfree labor has not disappeared from advanced capitalist economies. It is in the context of this rapidly changing landscape that this book consolidates and expands on research designed to understand new institutions for work in the global era. This edited collection provides a theoretical and empirical exploration of the links between unfree labor, intermediation, and modes of regulation, with particular focus on the evolving institutional forms and political-economic contexts that have been implicated in, and shaped by, the ascendency of temp agencies. What is distinctive about this collection is this bi-focal lens: it makes a substantial theoretical contribution by linking disparate literatures on, and debates about, the co-evolution of contingent work and unfree labor, new forms of labor intermediation, and different regulatory approaches; but it further lays the foundation for this theory in a series of empirically rich and geographically diverse case studies. This integrative approach is grounded in a cross-national comparative framework, using this approach as the basis for assessing how, and to what extent, temporary agency work can be considered unfree wage labor.

An appraisal of current offshore industrial relations, and safety regulations instituted after the 1988 Alpha disaster in the North Sea. This text discusses the oil industry's attempts to contain subsequent, unwelcome regulatory interference, and assesses trade unionism in the offshore industry.

This book illustrates the ways in which liberalization has contributed to increasing private and foreign ownership of public services, the decentralization of labor relations has amplified pressure on wages, and decreasing employment numbers and increasing workloads have improved productivity partly at the cost of service quality. Examining diverse public-service sectors including network industries, public transportation, and hospitals, and using international case studies, Privatization of Public Services covers a wide range of aspects of service provision, with particular emphasis on companies and workers.

As the world economy is liberalized, it is vital for non-governmental organizations to create an international agenda. This title studies what makes such organizations successful on an international level. The focus is on trade unions, as a key international group of NGOs.

This book examines countries that have tried, with varying degrees of success, to use legislative strategies to encourage and support collective bargaining, including Australiäs Fair Work Act. It is the first major study of the operation and impact of the new collective bargaining framework introduced under the Fair Work Act, combining theoretical and practical perspectives. In addition, a number of comparative pieces provide rich insights into the Australian legislation¿s adaptation of concepts from overseas collective bargaining systems ¿ including good faith bargaining, and majority employee support as the basis for establishing bargaining rights. Contributors to this volume are all leading labor law, industrial relations, and human resource management scholars from Australia, and from Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States.

First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.