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Investigates what is happening in North America with regard to labour relations law. Examines, first, collective labour relations and labour law and, second, focuses on the legal regulation of the individual relationship, also known as employment law. Goes on to cover these two separate, but intertwined, entities in depth and as they are interpreted in both Canada and the USA. Concludes that labour law is changing and moving toward contractualization and proceduralization. Wonders whether labour law will be able to continue to play the role of protecting wage earners for which it was originally developed.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the special issue by problematising labour agency, precariousness, and labour fragmentation as defining themes of the interplay between employment relations, migration and mobility.

Drawing from discussions about the impact of globalisation on changes in features of work and employment, and bringing together theory and research on employment relations and labour migration, the paper discusses the relational spatial and temporal nature of agency, the diverse features of worker experiences of precariousness, and the resulting fragmentation in labour solidarity.

Labour agency, precariousness and labour fragmentation intersect to create the axis of dynamics of hardship and abuse that dominate work experiences of migrant workers in the global labour market. Globalisation has a pervasive impact in articulating and perpetuating systemic processes of closure, entrapment and containment, which are triggered by migration and legitimised by dynamics of employment relations.

The paper contributes to current discussions about the interplay between migration, mobility and employment relations and sets out future directions of research to enhance our understanding of the role of employment relations to perpetuate, legitimise and normalise dynamics of globalisation that promote the migrant division of labour and create contradictory labour demands and displacements in the global labour market.

This introductory chapter surveys institutional experimentation that has emerged internationally in response to the contraction of the traditional model of employment protection. Various initiatives are discussed according to the particular challenges they are designed to address: the emergence of non-standard employment contracts; increasing sources of labour supply engaging in non-standard work; intensification of exogenous pressures on the employment relationship; the growth of intermediaries that separate the management from the control of labour; and the emergence of entities that subvert the employment relationship entirely. Whereas post-war industrial relations scholars characterised the traditional regulatory model as a ‘web of rules’, we argue that nascent institutional experimentation is indicative of an emergent ‘patchwork of rules’. The identification of such experimentation is instructive for scholars, policymakers, workers’ representatives and employers seeking solutions to the contraction of the traditional regulatory model.

Discusses the employment relations (ER) of seven countries: Australia, New Zealand and Japan have in different ways been restructuring their ER for increased flexibility. The South Korean process of democratisation has included a reduction in state regulation of unions. Taiwan’s democratisation has led its government to become more active in ER. The People’s Republic of China’s transition from a highly regulated to a “socialist market” economy has had significant implications for ER. In Indonesia, the end of the Soharto regime offered opportunities for greater recognition of workers’ interests, but these were checked initially by political instabilities and the 1997 Asian economic crisis.

This research contributes to current debates on automation and the future of work, a much-hyped but under researched area, in emerging economies through a particular focus on India. It assesses the national strategy on artificial intelligence and explores the impact of automation on the Indian labour market, work and employment to inform policy.

The article critically assesses the National Strategy on AI, promulgated by NITI Aayog (a national policy think tank), supported by the government of India and top industry associations, through a sectoral analysis. The key dimensions of the national strategy are examined against scholarship on the political economy of work in India to better understand the possible impact of automation on work.

The study shows that technology is not free from the wider dynamics that surround the world of work. The adoption of new technologies is likely to occur in niches in the manufacturing and services sectors, while its impact on employment and the labour market more broadly, and in addressing societal inequalities will be limited. The national strategy, however, does not take into account the nature of capital accumulation and structural inequalities that stem from a large informal economy and surplus labour context with limited upskilling opportunities. This raises doubts about the effectiveness of the current policy.

The critical assessment of new technologies and work has two implications: first, it underscores the need for situated analyses of social and material relations of work in formulating and assessing strategies and policies; second, it highlights the necessity of qualitative workplace studies that examine the relationship between technology and the future of work.

The article assesses an influential state policy in a key aspect of future of work–automation.

The policy assessed in this study would have significant social and economic outcomes for labour, work and employment in India. The study highlights the limitations of the state policy in addressing key labour market dimensions and work and employment relations in its formulation and implementation.

This study is the first to examine the impact of automation on work and employment in India. It provides a critical intervention in current debates on future of work from the point of view of an important emerging economy defined by labour surplus and a large informal economy.

France has a long tradition of research on labor and employment issues dating back to the emergence of the “Social Question” in the 1830s. Yet, the field identified as industrial relations (IR) emerged slowly in France and has not achieved the institutional status it did in Anglo-Saxon countries. French universities have no IR departments and there are no academic journals with IR on the title. Teaching takes place within different disciplines and research produces an abundant literature, which does not always claim the IR label.

The concept of “industrial relations”, translated as “relations professionnelles”, started to be used in France only after World War II (WWII). The terms commonly used both before WWII and even nowadays alongside IR are “relations du travail” (labor relations) or “relations sociales” (social relations). Even though “industrial relations” might not always be the label used, a distinctive French IR tradition exists nonetheless which this paper identifies and presents.

The paper starts with the forerunners at the origins of the field of IR in France, high ranking civil servants who played a role not only in the development of French but even of international industrial relations, and represented a “problem-solving” approach to IR. The emergence of IR as a field of research with a self-recognized academic community bent on “science building”, however, mostly followed the evolution of IR practice in France in the post-WWII period, which the paper then analyzes, presenting the IR milieu in France through its research structures, theoretical debates and challenging prospects.

The purpose of this paper is to review “institutional experimentation” for protecting workers in response to the contraction of the standard employment relationship and the corresponding rise of “non-standard” forms of paid work.

The paper draws on the existing research and knowledge base of the authors as well as a thorough review of the extant literature relating to: non-standard employment contracts; sources of labour supply engaging in non-standard work; exogenous pressures on the employment relationship; intermediaries that separate the management from the control of labour; and entities that subvert the employment relationship.

Post-war industrial relations scholars characterised the traditional regulatory model of collective bargaining and the standard employment contract as a “web of rules”. As work relations have become more market mediated, new institutional arrangements have developed to govern these relations and regulate the terms of engagement. The paper argues that these are indicative of an emergent “patchwork of rules” which are instructive for scholars, policymakers, workers’ representatives and employers seeking solutions to the contraction of the traditional regulatory model.

While the review of the institutional experimentation is potentially instructive for developing solutions to gaps in labour regulation, a drawback of this approach is that there are limits to the realisation of policy transfer. Some of the initiatives discussed in the paper may be more effective than others for protecting workers on non-standard contracts, but further research is necessary to test their effectiveness including in different contexts.

The findings indicate that a task ahead for the representatives of government, labour and business is to determine how to adapt the emergent patchwork of rules to protect workers from the new vulnerabilities created by, for example, employer extraction and exploitation of their individual bio data, social media data and, not far off, their personal genome sequence.

The paper addresses calls to examine the “institutional intersections” that have informed the changing ways that work is conducted and regulated. These intersections transcend international, national, sectoral and local units of analysis, as well as supply chains, fissured organisational dynamics, intermediaries and online platforms. The analysis also encompasses the broad range of stakeholders including businesses, labour and community groups, nongovernmental organisations and online communities that have influenced changing institutional approaches to employment protection.

The purpose of the paper is to compare employment relations in the hotel industry in Australia and the UK. Australian industry employment is regulated by the state and union recognition is enshrined. A substantial proportion of Australian hotel employers engage directly in firm‐level bargaining with trade unions, with unionisation rates across the industry far higher than in the UK. The analysis focuses on employment strategies emphasising numerical/temporal and functional flexibility since efforts to enhance workplace flexibility underpin employment regulation in Australia.

The paper draws on interviews conducted in 13 exclusive, luxury hotels in Australia. Interviewees consisted of HR and departmental managers, employees across all hotel departments and relevant union officials.

Labour utilisation practices in Australian luxury hotels reflect relatively sophisticated and systematic endeavours on the part of employers. The specific content and effect of these strategies varies in accordance with hotels' bargaining arrangements. Whilst employee relations outcomes were not entirely without problems in Australian luxury hotels, they do signify that regulation and trade union recognition can produce substantial benefits for employers and employees.

Recognition of potentially positive employment relations outcomes in Australia points to the need for further research in the UK to reassess employers' attitudes to trade unions in a changing employment relations landscape.

The paper offers a comparison between Australia and the UK in an area that is still relatively under‐researched.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the unexplored characteristics of labor relations in Nepal against the backdrop of social exchange theory as it relates to labor relations.

The paper considers the psychological contract of promises and expectations from the social exchange theory on the ground in Nepal. To do so, the paper adopts an inductive method of investigation and reviews dispersed and unstructured archival data.

In terms of the psychological contract of promises and expectations, Nepalese workers and trade unions appear to have constituted a pressure group since they aligned themselves with Nepal's political parties. Consequently, the legal labor framework and behaviors of trade unions have produced highly politicized labor relations; very high and dense union memberships; vocal unions; a labor-supportive legal framework; union-influenced government and union-driven enterprise-level collective bargaining and collective dispute settlement.

The paper claims that although the system framework has flimsy prospects elsewhere in the world, it is strong in Nepal as a result of the recent Labor Act of 2017. For this very reason, the paper argues that Nepal's trade unions are in their sturdiest position ever and, therefore, that the country has evaded the crisis experienced in advanced and emerging economies in other parts of world. In theoretical terms, the article contributes from the social exchange theoretical perspective to the literature on the psychological contract of promises and expectations. It also has a bearing on emerging discourses and debates about the revitalization or reshaping of traditional industrial relations.

This chapter discusses the adoption by Brazilian companies of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) methods for individual workplace conflicts. Brazil is an interesting case to study ADR due to its high level of institutionalized individual workplace conflicts and its extensive workplace statutory regulation. Investigating the case of three Brazilian private companies of different sectors and sizes, I found that Brazilian companies are developing their own ADR practices, focusing on ombudsman offices (OOs), instead of using the mediation and arbitration methods that are predominant in the United States. I argue that the adoption of the ombudsman can be explained by institutional and workplace level factors, which include the characteristics of Brazilian industrial relations system, each company’s human resources (HRs) strategy, and the relationship between companies and unions. Furthermore, I discuss how the usage rate of the OOs might vary according to the OO’s internal structure and its functioning rules. The cases provide important insights for scholars interested in ADR in general and in Brazilian industrial relations system, as well as union leaders, HR managers, and other practitioners dealing with workplace conflicts globally.