This paper investigates how interest groups in France and Germany communicate information about Industry 4.0 technologies and approaches. Specifically, this explanatory study employs cutting-edge big-data-type tools and machine-based automatic text processing to delve into the topics, arguments, and postulates related to Industry 4.0 strategies by trade unions and employers’ organisations. The goal is to determine which of these factors have been pivotal in shaping social dialogue in France and Germany. The findings reveal that social partners in both countries are involved in similar digitalisation-related initiatives and express predominantly favourable viewpoints regarding Industry 4.0 technologies. Key themes in the dialogues of both France and Germany centre around workers’ rights, working conditions, and skills training.

For migrant workers who do not have access to other means of income, the platform economy offers a viable yet exploitative alternative to the conventional labour market. Migrant workers are used as a source of cheap labour by platforms – and yet, they are not disempowered. They are at the heart of a growing platform worker movement. Across different international contexts, migrants have played a key role in leading strikes and other forms of collective action. This article traces the struggles of migrant platform workers in Berlin and London to explore how working conditions, work experiences, and strategies for collective action are shaped at the intersection of multiple precarities along lines of employment and migration status. Combining data collected through research by the Fairwork project with participant observation and ethnography, the article argues that migrant workers are more than an exploitable resource: they are harbingers of change.

This paper presents the results of research, which highlights the situation during the pandemic in sectors characterised by low wages and a high turnover of workers. The empirical basis is formed by company case studies in the meat industry, postal services, and mask production in Germany and Austria. This paper discusses the significance of different locations (at and beyond the workplace) and forms (‘exit’ and ‘voice’) of labour unrest in sectors of the economy that are characterised by a predominance of the use of migrant labour. It questions how conflicts over migrant labour have been articulated and possibly changed in the pandemic, and what factors may have contributed not only to an upsurge but also to the containment, regulation, and repression, of labour unrest.

The study looks at the defining features of various labour dispute resolution modes and their appropriateness in Zimbabwe. Researchers used a qualitative approach to collect and analyse data, drawing on a purposive sampling method to select and distribute open-ended questionnaires to 38 participants. The study established that the alternative dispute resolution (ADR) modes used in Zimbabwe are collective bargaining, conciliation, and arbitration, all formalised and regulated by the Labour Act (2015). Nevertheless, these ADR mechanisms have numerous flaws including, that they are not ‘culturally’ close to citizens, and as a result, access to justice is still a challenge, they are also expensive and cannot be easily understood by ordinary employees. Accordingly, the study recommends that the government amend the Labour Act (2015) to return to the old conciliation and arbitration system which was decentralised to the districts. When making the amendments to the Labour Act, the government should also consult with general employees and employers, because they are the victims of the current system. Furthermore, workers’ committees and trade unions should also be empowered to support and educate employees.

This case study finds that disrespect by international expatriate managers towards local employees triggered long-term industrial unrest in the Indian subsidiary of the global car maker Toyota. Whilst innovative production models and their tools provide economic advantage to the company, the interaction of the application of the lean production model within the context of host country institutions often creates workplace disputation and unrest due to unilateralism and managerial hegemonies that overrides local customs and norms. The power of multinational enterprises to override or ignore institutional resistance and to inflict disrespect towards the local workforce can result in worker resistance, a lack of trust, and ongoing industrial unrest. This case study demonstrates how a lack of respect of local customs and workers grievances had long-lasting consequences in terms of the subsequent conflict and a poor industrial relations climate at the production plant in India.

In the absence of government safety regulation in the field of nanotechnology, ISO standards are being used as the basis for establishing technical and management guidelines at an international level. There are more than 50 current ISO standards on nanotechnology. Some of these relate to the working environment and occupational risk management. In Latin America, entities that are members of ISO are enunciating national versions of the international standards. In this article, this context is analysed critically, starting from the Mexican standard on occupational risk management in the working environment. Even though risk management standards may guarantee better and safer working conditions, in the field of nanotechnology, they simultaneously unlock detrimental implications for workers and society. Reliance on such private and voluntary forms of industry self-regulation is identified as a by-product of global neoliberalism.

Although collective bargaining is essentially a communication process, the role of language (as distinguished from discourse) in bargaining exchanges has received little attention from industrial relations scholars. Building on the work of Karl Popper, this article proposes a decomposition of language into functions and values and analyses their relevance when parties to a collective bargaining encounter engage in an integrative process. The proposed framework provides labour negotiators seeking integrative outcomes with linguistic guidelines and scholars with a tool to analyse bargaining exchanges.

In the period leading up to the federal government’s May 2009 announcement of a paid parental leave scheme, there was a surge in community and media debate about the absence of such a scheme in Australia. This article explores whether this context had some bearing on bargaining outcomes during that time. We analyse data from the Australian Workplace Agreements Database to determine the incidence and length of paid parental leave in collective agreements registered between 2005 and 2010. The results show an increase in the number of agreements that included paid parental leave clauses in the period, with just over 14% of all current agreements including a paid parental leave clause by 2010. Moreover, 18% of all agreements lodged in 2010 included a paid parental leave clause, suggesting an increase in bargaining outcomes over time. We also find a slight increase in the average duration of paid parental leave in collective agreements. A leave of 14 weeks is most common in public sector agreements but less than 3% of agreements in the private sector provide for 14 weeks or more. These marked differences between the public and private sectors suggest minimal change in private sector bargaining outcomes. We conclude that the legislative context does influence bargaining outcomes, but that this effect is felt more in public sector than private sector bargaining.

This research analyses the effect of a ‘two-tier’ system of collective bargaining (firm bargaining and multi-employer bargaining levels) on wage dispersion in Spain. The effect of collective bargaining on the two main concepts that make up wages (the contractual or basic-bargained wage, and the wage cushion) are analysed during the last period of the upward cycle (2002–2006) and the beginning of the global financial crisis (2006–2010). The wage cushion is defined as the difference between the earned wage and the basic-bargained wage. The results show that workers covered by firm bargaining experienced greater wage dispersion than workers covered by multi-employer bargaining. On the other hand, wage dispersion for all workers decreased during the analysis period, mainly during the first stage of the current economic crisis, and particularly among workers covered by multi-employer bargaining. Both the decreasing relevance of the wage cushion in actual wage formation and its reduced dispersion make it possible to explain this wage compression.

Irresponsible lending practices on the part of financial institutions and proliferation of tradable derivatives were key causal agents of the 2008 financial crisis. However, it is less clear why, historically, loose credit arrangements were so widespread. Somewhat misleadingly, much conjecture has laid blame at the feet of financial institutions themselves. While it is true that duplicitous and even corrupt lending practices were consequential antecedents of the crisis, a legacy commitment to certain – laudable – elements of New-Dealism created context for these elements to become established. To understand really what went wrong, it is necessary to look back before the 2000s and appreciate the interaction that was occurring between a long-term policy commitment to neoliberalism and piecemeal/fragmented application of approaches that aimed to assist financially disadvantaged people. Using the analogy of heart-attack pathology to guide some of its analysis, this essay argues for better policy-integration.

In 1969, construction began on Conzinc Riotinto Australia’s huge copper and gold mine at Panguna on the island of Bougainville in what was then the Australian-administered Territory of Papua New Guinea. The mining project was unlike any Australians had previously undertaken, and its construction created complexities which Australian managers and industrial relations systems had not previously encountered. The complexity of employment relations on this project was increased by the political environment of colonial rule and the responses of Australian workers and unions. This article looks at the development of the first industrial agreement during the mine’s construction phase and places it in the context of the creation of a sustainable bargaining structure, which succeeded in mitigating industrial conflict for two decades before the outbreak of a wider armed conflict.

The coronavirus pandemic has brought industrial relations policy to the centre of attention in many countries. In 2020, the Australian government convened tripartite bodies to address policy in several areas, one being for agreement-making to cover labour on ‘megaprojects’. This initiative revisited criticisms of unions for driving costs up and productivity down on these worksites, the most expensive of which had been Chevron’s Gorgon site, a liquefied natural gas project off the north-west Australian coast. Drawing on four usually siloed literatures – on industrial relations policy, megaprojects, the economic geography of resources and labour process – this article explains concerns about costs, delays and productivity in terms of project work itself. This approach leads to a different understanding of the merits of changing policy to address megaproject’s problems and productivity more broadly.

Platform work is often advocated as offering freedom of work to labour. Contesting this claim, this article undertakes a comparative analysis of the pros and cons of food delivery platform work prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic, and argues that the freedom of food delivery platform workers is essentially an ‘illusory freedom’. In reality, platform work has only changed mechanisms through which companies can exercise control over labour and evade their employer obligations. As a case, the article examines the illusory freedom of food delivery platform workers associated to Uber Eats in Japan. The collective bargaining efforts of food delivery workers against the excessive control of Uber Eats and the extent of success of these efforts are also examined. The article concludes by discussing the possible factors that have undermined the effectiveness of the collective bargaining efforts of the labour union.

For a two-period screening model of strikes it is shown that joint bargaining instead of enterprise negotiations lowers wages and implies more strikes. These results hold irrespective of the party possessing private information. The sensitivity of strike models to procedural assumptions thus seems less problematic than it may be conjectured.