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The purpose of this paper is to assess difficulties facing the unionization of foreign workers focusing on the experience of trade unionists in Union MIE, an exemplar of what in Japan is known as a community union (sometimes described as a form of Minority union – Stewart, 2006). Union MIE is characterized by its orientation to the social and political agenda of Latin American workers, among whom Brazilians form the most numerous group. The paper also addresses the precarious nature of workers’ employment including the condition of labor. The increasing significance of community unions raises the question as to the possibility of the reregulation of worker interests in ways not fully encompassed by traditional labor market-focused unions.

The paper explores unique interviews using snowball technique and direct questionnaires to union membership of community union in Japan.

The increasing significance of community unions raises the question as to the possibility of the reregulation of worker interests in ways not fully encompassed by traditional labor market-focused unions. In addition to having relevance to the wider discussion on union decline, this paper contributes to the debate on migrant workers, their condition of labor and one form of labor organization responsive to their concerns.

A comparative approach would add even more to the weight of evidence accrued in the paper.

Mainstream trade unions need to anticipate that the concerns of migrant and precarious workers will become increasingly common among their erstwhile “regularly” employed membership and so the activities of community and minority unions need to be taken on board in an organic, as opposed to an opportunistic, manner.

From unique interviews using snowball technique and direct questionnaires to union membership of community union in Japan, the paper presents original data not typically accessible in Anglo-Saxon research tradition.

Anatomy of a Murder, a beloved, highly influential, seemingly liberal 1959 classic law-film seems to appropriate some of the fading western genre’s features and social functions, intertwining the professional-plot western formula with a hero-lawyer variation on the classic western hero character, America’s 19th century archetypal True Man. In so doing, Anatomy revives the western genre’s honor code, embracing it into the hero-lawyer law-film. Concurrently, it accommodates the development of cinematic imagery of the emerging, professional elite groups, offering the public the notion of the professional super-lawyer, integrating legal professionalism with natural justice. In the course of establishing its Herculean lawyer, the film constitutes its female protagonist as a potential threat, subjecting her to a cinematic judgment of her sexual character and reinforcing the honor-based notion of woman’s sexual-guilt.

The purpose of this editorial is to introduce this special issue on “International trade union networks, European works' councils and international labour regimes”.

The editorial provides an overview and introduces the papers which make up the special issue.

These papers allow us to consider the social, political and institutional dimensions of grass roots organising across countries and continents.

The issue adds new insights into the topic in addition to the more typical focus on institutional levels of union engagement.

The purpose of this paper is to provide insight into the characteristics of working practices, in particular HRM practices in work settings in Chile, specifically the regulatory strength of organisational culture.

The paper is based on data gathered from a non-probabilistic sample of 1299 workers in the Metropolitan Region of Chile.

Findings suggest that HRM practices sustain, while restructuring, dynamics of worker monitoring and control, consistent with historical and social patterns of relationships in Chile. These relationships are sustained via status differences and operate through the development of paternalistic relationships between managers and workers.

The paper provides insight into the character of human resource management in Latin America from the perspective of workers. In addition, it highlights the impact of organisational culture on regulating workplaces and shaping HRM practices that do not challenge the socio-cultural order.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the variation in migrant labour market regimes and what these reveal about variant patterns of state and extra state regulation in two contemporary political economies.

Research based upon a participatory action research agenda in Mexico and the north of Ireland. Migrant workers and their families where involved in the project and its development. This included participation in the research design, its focus and purpose.

Migrant workers experiences of labour market subordination are part of wider processes of subordination and exclusion involving both the state, but also wider, often meta- and para-state, agents. In different locations, states and contexts, the precarity experienced by migrant workers and their families highlights the porosity of the formal rational legal state and moreover, in the current economic context, the compatibility of illegality and state sponsored neoliberal economic policies.

It is important to extend this study to other geographic and political economy spaces.

The study challenges the limits of state agency suggesting the need for extra state, i.e. civil society, participation to support and defend migrant workers.

Notwithstanding the two very different socio-economic contexts, the paper reveals that the interaction, dependence and restructuring of migrant labour markets can be understood within the context of meta- and para-state activities that link neoliberal employment insecurities. Migrants’ experiences illustrate the extent to which even formal legal employment relations can also be sustained by para- and meta- (illegal and alegal) actions and institutions.

The article aims to report on research into managerial practices at the workplace level in Britain and Italy in the automobile and aerospace industries. These are examined with regard to their impact on employees' perceptions of skill, training and their relationship to participation. Are advocates of high performance work (HPW) accurate in arguing that it can satisfy aspirations for greater employee influence in contrast to lean working?

The methodology included questionnaires and interviews with employees and union officials in four companies – two in aerospace (one in Britain and one in Italy) and two in automotive final assembly (one in Britain and one in Italy).

One of the recurrent themes to emerge from the worker interviews was that the experience of increased effort was not an inevitable outcome of the shifts in the composition of skills and tasks, but rather, a function of the workers' loss of any semblance of control over their work routines and range of responsibilities. What is distinctive about this case study analysis is that despite obvious material differences between the labour processes and working conditions of highly qualified aerospace engineers employed in HPW environments and semi‐skilled car workers employed on lean assembly lines, in two different countries, similar patterns of degradation of work were obtained. That is, technological change, such as the computerisation of design and production processes, along with various manifestations of lean staffing policies were together generating task enlargement. In micro‐political environments marked by a skewed balance of power between labour and the employer in favour of the latter, workers' autonomy had declined as had their ability to maintain some control over the pace and intensity of work. This does not sit favourably with the assumptions of those who advocate the use of “high performance work systems”.

The paper offers an in‐depth cross national sectoral analysis of claims that so‐called HPW significantly enhances workers' experiences of the workplace in contrast to workers' experiences of lean working environments.

Current debates about new management strategies exhibit a marked tendency to regard economic, political and social changes largely as though they amount to the end of an old era and the beginning of something new. New production arrangements have been envisaged before, usually with reference to the transitionary period of industrial development around the late 1960s and early 1970s. Others have described current transitions to new management arrangements variously as part of Post Fordism, of Japanisation, of Lean Production, or of Toyotaism.

The aim of this paper is to review the social and political role of labour within the evolution of new production regimes and, in particular, teamworking. It draws on various research projects regarding the development of new management practices in a key European car manufacturer. The authors are concerned with the simplistic and, indeed, problematic analysis presented by the lean production paradigm who have been unable to explain the contextual factors and historical processes that underpin the development in firms. In addition, however, whilst agreeing in broad terms with the argument that what we are seeing in Europe is the emergence of a series of hybrid forms we nevertheless express some concern with the tendency to downplay the active role of labour and industrial relations regulation within these developments. More importantly we feel that the referencing to ‘social settlements’ and to ‘industrial relations systems’, whilst on the whole should be welcomed given the limits of the managerialist literature, tends to be done in such a manner that it draws attention away from the active and dynamic role of labour difference and conflict in conditioning management developments. Hence this discussion paper will present some preliminary insights based on a range of research projects that have been executed in recent years.

The purpose of this chapter is to analyze ethical issues and current trends of major college athletics in relationship to Black males in society. The focus of this chapter is on identity and how higher education institutions can cultivate a more balanced student-athlete mindset through images and representations. In addition to a review of relevant literature, a content analysis of six State Farm Insurance Cliff and Chris Paul commercials was conducted so that new knowledge is applied to the constructs of academic and athletic identity. Commercial and advertisement content analysis was utilized to address student-athlete life skills issues in terms of transferable attributes from sport to life. College athletics programs need to develop systemic and culturally relevant strategies that enable Black males to transfer skill sets developed through participation in intercollegiate athletics to future occupational endeavors. The chapter concludes with a recommendation section for education research, practice, and policy.