Projects with keyword: Industrial relations

The right for European Union (EU) citizens to move freely across national borders within the EU is considered one of the EUs fundamental four freedoms and is itself a form of response to the need for regional competitiveness in the global economy. However, a possible downside of free movement is a purported downward gravitational effect on established labour standards in terms of wage levels, employment relationships and working environment conditions created by the growing availability of migrant labour originating from lower wage domains with inferior conditions and, at the same time, subject to exploitation in the labour process as vulnerable transnational workers. This project seeks an integrated theoretical and empirical approach in exploring the impact of East-West migration on the patterns of industrial relations, working environment, and welfare regimes from the point of view of both the sending and receiving countries within a regional migration complex, namely Sweden and the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

This project continues a key theme of Charles Woolfson's European Commission Marie Curie Chair Excellence Award (2004-2007) in the Baltic states - social dialogue and trade union renewal in the post-communist states. The Baltic states are among the most open new market economies and their transformation from Soviet republics to new European Union member states reveals many of the problems of European integration, not least the development of employee representational rights in the workplaces. This project comparatively examines the reasons for the very low levels of union membership and the rather weak structures of social dialogue which exist both nationally, and at workplaces in the Baltic countries. Its key findings so far are that the difficulties facing trade union renewal have as much to do with the pathway of "illusory corporatism" pursued since independence from the Soviet Union, as with the actual negative legacy of pro-regime trade unions in the previous era.

The project aims to explore the impact of foreign direct investments (FDI) on employment and human resource management practices, new organizational ethnic hierarchies, industrial relations and local communities in different national contexts. The focus is on acquisitions by multinational companies (MNCs) from emerging economies in the post-communist region of former Yugoslavia. The research is situated at the forefront of the research on globalization, migration, global workforce management and the local and transnational challenges to corporate power. An extended case study investigates the acquisition of the Bosnian Steel company by Indian Mittal Steel and its impact on industrial relations, labour standards and management practices, including Indian management relationships with the state, local management, trade unions and local community. The project is developed in collaboration with the Management School, Sheffield University. It also engages Professor Jacklyn Cock, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, planning a joint comparative study of ArcelorMittal in South Africa and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Research on trade unions has identified the crises and challenges trade unions face, not only in relation to employers and the state, but also regarding how to keep the trade union and workers together. One particular challenge is how to build solidarity in a context in which the number of migrant workers is increasing and working class support for anti-immigrant extreme right parties is growing.

The research question framing this proposal is how an important organisation for Swedish industrial relations negotiate what seems to be a fundamental contradiction among its members. The aim is to analyse the strategies and actions taken by trade unions in relation to migrant workers, ethnic diversity and members and activists displaying support for extreme right parties.

The theoretical framework is drawn from labour studies and industrial relations research along with migration and ethnic studies, supplemented with gender studies.. Methodologically, the project is an ethnographic study of five blue collar trade unions and Landsorganisationen, employing semi-structured interviews and participant observation, complemented with document analysis.

This project will explore the internationalisation of the Swedish private security industry in the contemporary period. The mixed methods research project employs qualitative and quantitative register-data research and ethnographic interviews of working private security guards, or vaktare and ‘safety-entrepeneurs,’ or trygghetsentreprenör. Looking at the internationalisation both here in Sweden in the working profession as well as the business model allows for a multilayered contextually informed project in who, how, and in what ways 'safety' and 'security' are commodified, marketed, and provided in Sweden.