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Trends in union membership between 1990 and 2000 indicate the increasing feminization of the Irish trade union movement in terms of membership. The historical experience in industrialised nations is for much of women’s work to be relatively short‐term and marginal to the main labour force. This, it has been suggested, has tended to discourage women workers from adopting a collectivist response to the issues of pay and conditions and so weakening their level of participation in union activities. However, the evidence from a survey of the membership in a general union revealed little difference in the attitudes of men and women in relation to levels of group solidarity, wage earner solidarity and union orientation. On the evidence of this paper there is no indication that the increasing feminization of the Irish trade union movement is having an adverse effect on union activism and solidarity.

The paper's purpose is to examine the propensity of recent immigrants to join Irish trade unions compared to Irish workers.

The analysis is based on the 2005 Quarterly National Household Survey (QNHS), a quarterly survey carried out by the Central Statistics Office.

Results show that immigrant workers are less likely to join Irish trade unions than comparable native workers. Length of residency is an important factor in the likelihood of immigrants being unionised but employment in the public or private sector assumes even greater importance than nationality in determining union membership.

While the QNHS is generally a robust representative sample survey of the population, errors may occur in the proportion of non‐Irish nationals surveyed due to difficulties of ensuring their inclusion in the sample population. Language may also be an obstacle, particularly for recently arrived immigrants.

From a trade union perspective the results highlight the need for trade unions to regularly conduct organising campaigns targeted at immigrants. Government policy aimed at integrating immigrants into the Irish labour force and ensuring adequate labour standards would be well served by ensuring greater union availability to immigrant workers.

The paper provides a profile and analysis of the extent to which immigrants are joining trade unions compared to Irish workers.

Schemes of profit sharing and employee share‐holding have a 19th century origin. The objects of profit sharing vary according to its proponents. The primary focus of this paper will be on managerial schemes of financial participation and the expectations that their installation will lead to an improvement in organizational performance and employee behaviour. Using a survey of 2,827 private sector firms in 11 European countries we test for the effect of profit sharing on profitability, productivity and employee turnover and absenteeism. In addition, the effect of profit sharing on union influence is examined. In common, with other research in this area, our results show that while there is some evidence of a positive relationship between profit sharing and organizational performance, this was not definitive. In the case of union influence, there was some evidence of an adverse effect of these schemes on the solidarity of the collective.

This paper seeks to explore the recruiting and organising methods used by Irish full‐time union officials to recruit new members in the private sector of the economy.

The analysis is based on a survey of full‐time union officials in eight Irish trade unions.

Results indicate that the use of organising techniques by officials had no significant impact on changes in membership numbers but did have a significant and positive impact on reported changes in new members. However, the variance explained was extremely modest.

A potential limitation is that the organising model is assessed solely from the perspective of full‐time union officials. An area for future research would be to capture the attitudes and experiences of local activists involved in organising.

The demands of the organising approach require great commitment in terms of time and financial resources for unions. Yet the returns from this investment may be slight as only a relatively weak relationship was found between the number of organising methods used and changes in membership numbers and the recruitment of new members.

To date there has been little systematic study of either the recruitment methods used by Irish trade unions or the relative success of different approaches. Based on a survey of Irish full‐time union officials, this paper attempts to address this lacuna.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of the substantial expansion in the labour force between 1997 and 2004 on the proportion of the Irish workforce that can be categorised as working in knowledge occupations.

The Quarterly National Household Survey was used to estimate the trend in knowledge type work at the national level for the period 1997 to 2004, specifically examining which specific occupations are increasing over this period.

Employment growth occurred relatively equally at the high‐, middle‐ and low‐skill occupational levels, indicating the continuing importance of intermediate and particularly low‐skill occupations in the structure and expansion of the Irish labour force.

There are substantial problems with the use of broad occupational level data as a proxy to measure the extent of knowledge occupations. It would be useful to consider adopting the Australian Standard Classification of Occupations as it includes the complexity of the set of tasks involved in a job, formal education, training and previous experience.

The findings indicate the continuing importance of intermediate and low‐skill occupations as well as high‐skill occupations in the structure and expansion of the Irish labour force. Government training and education policy needs to target resources across a broad range of skills and occupations.

The paper provides a profile and analysis of occupational changes in the Irish labour market.

Following Marx and Engels' identification of the “essential condition of capital”, the purpose of this paper is to begin an initial critical exploration of the essential condition of intellectual capital, particularly the ownership rights of labour.

Adopting a critically modernist stance on unitarist HR and OB discourse, and contextualised within a background on the stock option phenomenon and recent accounting regulation, the paper argues that the fundamental nature of the capital‐labour relation continues resiliently into the IC labour (intellectual capital‐labour) relation.

There is strong evidence that broad‐based employee stock options (ESOPs) have become institutionalised in certain firms and sectors – but the future of such schemes is very uncertain (post 2005 accounting regulation). Overly unitarist HR/OB arguments are challenged here with empirical evidence on capital's more latently strategic purposes such as conserving cash, reducing reported accounting expense in order to boost reported earnings, deferring taxes, and attracting, retaining and exploiting key elements of labour.

Research supports the positive benefits of broad‐based employee stock ownership schemes. Further research on the benefits of such schemes and the reasons why they are or are not implemented is now required.

From the perspective of labour, nothing appears to have really changed (yet) in terms of the essential condition of intellectual capital.

This paper explicitly raises the issue of the ownership rights of labour to intellectual capital.

Presents 35 abstracts from the 2001 Employment Research Unit Annual conference held at Cardiff Business School in September 2001. Attempts to explore the theme of changing politics of employment relations beyond and within the nation state, against a background of concern in the developed economies at the erosion of relatively advanced conditions of work and social welfare through increasing competition and international agitation for more effective global labour standards. Divides this concept into two areas, addressing the erosion of employment standards through processes of restructuring and examining attempts by governments, trade unions and agencies to re‐create effective systems of regulation. Gives case examples from areas such as India, Wales, London, Ireland, South Africa, Europe and Japan. Covers subjects such as the Disability Discrimination Act, minimum wage, training, contract workers and managing change.