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Purpose – Ascertaining the extent to which the generalized decline in union density, as well as the erosion in centralized bargaining structures and developments in other labor institutions, have contributed to rising within-country inequality.

Methodology – Econometric analysis of a newly developed dataset combining information on industrial relations and labor law, various dimensions of globalization, and controls for demand and supply of skilled labor for 51 Advanced, Central and Eastern European, Latin American, and Asian countries from the late 1980s to the early 2000s, followed by an analysis of 16 advanced countries over a longer time frame (from the late 1970s to the early 2000s).

Findings – In contrast to previous research, which finds labor institutions to be important determinants of more egalitarian wage or income distributions, the chapter finds that trade unionism and collective bargaining are no longer significantly associated with within-country inequality, except in the Central and Eastern European countries. These findings are interpreted as the result of trade unionism operating under more stringent structural constraints than in the past, partly as a result of globalization trends. In addition, despite much talk about welfare state crisis, welfare states, historically the result of labor's power and mobilization capacity, still play an important redistributive role, at least in advanced countries.

Practical implications – Union attempts at equalizing incomes by compressing market earnings seem ineffective and impractical in the current day and age. Unions should seek to increase the workers’ skill levels and promote an egalitarian transformation of the workplace. This type of “supply-side” egalitarianism is not a new strategy for unions, but is very much embedded in the unions’ DNA.

The chapter presents a historical and economic analysis of Nordic wage formation, with a special focus on how collective agreements really work. A stereotypical interpretation of the evolution of Nordic wage bargaining systems is that a centralised setting of wages has gradually been substituted with more decentralised pay bargaining. This overlooks the fact that central organisations could never really control wage levels, even in the golden age of centralised bargaining. Instead, central pay bargains defined minimum wage changes that ensured that local conflicts would be ruled out. Moreover, the central stipulations could often be overruled or adjusted at the local level. Following insights of Teulings and Hartog, we argue that the main function of Nordic collective agreements has always been to rule out local conflicts that would otherwise be initiated to seek local rents. Thus, collective agreements combine macroeconomic flexibility with adequate investment incentives at the local level. In this crucial sense, Nordic collective agreements are a completely stable institution. The most important transformation that has taken place is that formal peak bargaining on mean pay increases has been substituted with pattern bargaining where the manufacturing industry acts as a wage leader. Economic theory suggests that this almost amounts to centralised pay setting.

Collective bargaining significantly impacts education policies, especially at the school district level. Its reach extends to consequential issues such as teacher evaluation and pay, to name a few. Because of this close link, education stakeholders disagree about the role of bargaining in education. On the one hand, some argue for the complete elimination of bargaining rights of teachers. This, according to some, will allow administrators the freedom to implement necessary reforms without the obligation to negotiate with unions. On the other hand, some note that collective bargaining provides a channel for teachers to voice their expertise in education. Under this view, bargaining is an essential component of advancing policy initiatives. Regardless, because collective bargaining is a creature of state statute, any modifications to those rights must occur by operation of law. Put another way, the law concerning collective bargaining plays a pivotal role in moderating the influence of unions and administrators regarding education policy. Given this interrelationship, a thorough exploration of the issue is warranted. Accordingly, this chapter will: (1) discuss the historical and legal framework of collective bargaining in public education; (2) highlight the ongoing debate regarding the appropriate role, if any, of it (and unions) in education policies; (3) identify significant changes to collective bargaining statutes that have occurred or have been proposed; (4) suggest recommendations to policymakers and leaders that will assist them in understanding both the potential and the limits of collective bargaining in improving schools.

Faculty unionization is growing, and library faculty members are included in many collective bargaining units. Yet there is a dearth of information on how well collective bargaining contracts address the sometimes unique nature of library faculty work. This article explores contracts in a number of Ohio universities and from selective institutions around the country to see how well they accommodate the professional and work-related needs of librarians. Major contractual issues addressed include governance, academic freedom, workload, salary, and the retention, tenure, and promotion (RTP) of faculty, among others.

Taking an international comparative approach, this chapter investigates the variance in the adoption of employee share ownership and stock option arrangements across countries. In particular, we investigate the influence of multinational enterprises (MNEs), industrial relations factors, HRM strategies, and market economies on the adoption and spread of the arrangements across countries. We find that industrial relations factors do not explain the variance in adoption by companies in their respective countries. MNEs and HRM strategies are important drivers of adoption. Market economy does not moderate the influence of MNEs on adoption, suggesting that MNEs universally apply the arrangements across borders.

This paper proposes a new theoretical framework to explain enterprise unionism and conducts the first systematic comparative study of union structure in nine Asian countries. Our framework emphasizes political dynamics and the role of the state in labor relations and argues that the initial period of the collective bargaining era constituted a critical juncture (state labor policy) that occurred in distinctive ways in different countries and that these differences played a central role in shaping the different union structures in the following decades. The nine countries are mainly divided into three groups, depending on the type of state labor policy: enforcement of enterprise unionism; centralization/laissez-faire (non-enterprise unionism); and dual unionism/gradual transition (middle-ground). Governmental data were used for the study. A clear correspondence between state labor policy and union structure in each of these groups was found. We believe that our framework significantly enhances our understanding of the Asian cases. Future research should explore the validity of the proposed framework through comparative studies of Latin American cases where enterprise unions have also been observed.

In this paper, we build a complete information bargaining model of collective negotiation that can explain delays in reaching agreements. We structurally estimate the model using firm-level data for large Spanish firms. For this type of firm, the assumption of complete information seems a sensible one, and it matches the collective bargaining environment better than the one provided by private information models. The specification of the model with players having different discount factors allows us to measure their relative bargaining power, a recurrent question in the theory of bargaining. Our model replicates the data on delays at the sectoral and aggregate level. We also find that both entrepreneurs and workers have high discount factors, and no evidence that entrepreneurs have greater bargaining power, as usually assumed.

Industrialization in capitalist societies ushered in the growth of trade unions and the development of union activities of industrial workers. In the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries in the West when unionism began, trade unions took diverse forms. These forms varied by society and were significantly influenced by the country’s specific historical background and socioeconomic and cultural conditions. Yet such diverse union structures began to merge into “industrial unionism” in the late nineteenth century, which embraced all types of workers within the boundaries of an industry. Industrial unionism has been considered the organizational form that most effectively ensures the collective power of trade unions and their sociopolitical sway over contending forces, notably, the state and employers’ associations, and thus has remained a prototypical union system. Accordingly, nonwestern societies and latecomers to unionism in the West have modeled their unions on the basis of the industrial union structure.

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.