THELABOURDEBATE: AN INVESTIGATION INTO THETHEORY AND REALITY OFCAPITALISTWORK
Edited by Ana C. Dinerstein and Michael Neary. Ashgate, Aldershot, 2002, x + 245 pp., £42.50 (hardback)
This book is a collection of papers written from a Marxist perspective on theories of capitalist work and resistance. It seeks to progress the Enlightenment inquiry (allegedly originating with Thomas More) into labour as a process that produces value and, at the same time, produces individuals and society. As such, it is an interesting counter-point to the mainstream industrial relations literature. Although it nominally treats the same raw materials—social relations at work, the deployment of labour power, workers’ consciousness and the global restruc-turing of capitalist production—both the level of abstraction and the questions posed create a book that is radically different from the type of industrial relations literature most of us are familiar with. The entire book is interesting and relatively clearly written, though some may find the specialised Marxian language forbidding. Not all readers will find the material to be directly relevant and useful to their immediate concerns, but The Labour Debateoffers a welcome chance to consider industrial relations phenomena from an abstract perspective.
Many of the chapters are situated within current debates between neo-Marxists and post-modernists about the centrality of capitalist work to human existence, and about the relationship of workers’ collective organisation to so-called ‘social movements’. As a result, the book constitutes an excellent introduction and up-date on recent theoretical developments in Marxism, and on the writings of people such as Kelly, Moody, Waterman, Postone and Negri, as well as those of the contributors themselves.
The first three sections comprise a debate between John Holloway and Simon Clarke. It concerns the issues of how central Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism is to the development of a critique of capitalism as a whole, and (following from this) how best to conceive the role of intellectuals vis-à-vis the working class in producing critique. Werner Bonefeld’s Chapter 2 is a discussion of ontology in the context of theorising class relations. He argues that class is ‘not an affirmative category but a critical concept’ and rejects definitional approaches such as ‘sociology dressed up as Marxism’ (page 67) that lead to an objectification of ‘the working class’.
Chapter 3 deals with the much-treated ‘problem’ of working class subjectivity under capitalism. How is it that, subject to the alienating and oppressive conditions of capitalism, workers develop only partial and contradictory critiques of their conditions? Graham Taylor’s answer is that separation
between objective reality and subjective consciousness is an essential product of the social form of labour in capitalism. Therefore, the Leninist aim to effect transcendence of partial or fragmentary consciousness is idealist; the struggle rather is to ‘abolish labour as the central mediating category of the social constitution’ (page 105). More concretely, Taylor points hopefully to the new anti-capitalist alliances formed between workers and other marginalised or disadvantaged groups, especially where these have taken an internationalist form.
Massimo de Angelis’ chapter ‘the Global Work Machine’ is one of the most interesting and original. It addresses the commodification of ever greater aspects of everyday life under capitalism, and in particular what he calls the ‘imposition of work’ in the face of the incipient ‘refusal of work’ by workers and students in the 1960s and 1970s. The originality lies in the combination of metaphors he uses to interrogate this phenomenon: namely, Jeremy Bentham’s panoptican and Hayek’s free market. Drawing on Foucault’s well-known work on the panoptican, de Angelis argues that the free market is a strikingly similar ‘mechanism of coordination’ that relies on individual free choice but within a very rigid and given set of constraints (about which there is no choice). With globalisation, according to de Angelis, has come an intensification of the role of markets that assume the place of Bentham’s watchtowers within a global panoptic structure—devices to inspect and enforce labour discipline in increasingly dispersed locations.
Rikowski’s chapter on labour power (‘the fuel for the living fire’) mounts an argument for repositioning our understanding of education and training systems to see them as systems for producing capitalist labour-power, with the inherent contradictions this entails. Resistance to schooling is, in this argument, ‘a resistance to becoming capital, human-capital’—and highlights the all-encompassing way that education has today become focused on producing power. The treatment in this chapter of the special properties of labour-power as a commodity, and the (often contradictory) pressures on capitalists to maximise both the quality and the quantity of actual labour that workers produce is of direct relevance to those working on or within a human resource management paradigm.
capitalist social relations, despite their heroic resistance to them (which he chronicles).
The focus of Dinerstein’s elegant chapter is on unemployment, rather than work, and seeks to challenge the idea of unemployment as a form of social exclusion. She does this theoretically by drawing on Marx’s distinction between the formal and the real subsumption of labour under capitalism. Metaphorically, Dinerstein evokes the ‘roadblock’ struggles undertaken by the Argentinians marginalised during the 1990s in their fight against the effects of neo-liberal economic ‘stability’. Unemployed workers are not excluded from capitalist production, but rather are experiencing the full effects of capitalism’s form of existence—the fact that they can be defined as ‘surplus labour’ is itself due to the dominance of capitalist logic in society, subjecting people whose labour is not useful on the market to feeling that they are in a no man’s land. This recognition is important for Dinerstein in ‘regaining materiality’—making the link between abstract economic requirements and concrete people. In the same way, she argues, the Argentinian roadblocks were a physical representation of the fact that although the IMF-imposed neo-liberal order produced temporary ‘stability’ for capital, for people, it ‘created the most unstable forms of existence with no future’ (page 220).
The book ends with a post-script by the editors attempting to theorise anti-capitalist and globalisation movements and, in so doing, establishing a position different from those of other ‘globalisation’ theorists and commentators such as Giddens, Bourdieu, Bauman, Touraine and Naomi Klein. The Labour Debateis a relatively brief, tightly argued compilation of papers made internally coherent by the fact that they share a common theoretical language and ideas. It is well worth reading and studying, and not just for nostalgic reasons.
ACIRRT, SYDNEY CAROLINEALCORSO
NEGOTIATIONS ANDCHANGE: FROM THEWORKPLACE TOSOCIETY
Edited by Thomas A. Kochan and David B. Lipsky. Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London, 2003, xi + 353 pp., US$35 (hardback)
This book arose from a conference held in honour of Robert McKersie, the co-author of the seminal text, A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations(New York, McGraw-Hill, 1965), and author of much more besides. The papers, which are conveniently summarised in the editors’ introduction, start with the negotiation model developed by Walton and McKersie, proceed to a number of papers on workplace change issues, then broaden further to see how the Walton and McKersie model might be applied in other contexts. Given the focus of this Journal, the concluding chapters which explore negotiation in other arenas have not been included in this review.
attention in recognition of the relational context of a negotiation being as important as the substantive transaction. Cutcher-Gershenfeld provides practical insights into the interest-based bargaining model which is akin to Walton and McKersie’s integrative bargaining approach. They got it right in 1965; we just use different terminology now.
However, this is not really a book about negotiation. Rather it is a collection of papers examining issues, particularly workplace issues, where negotiation might be an appropriate process. There is an underlying premise here that the workplace is a place of teams, and therefore managers, supervisors—indeed all employees—have to be negotiators. For example, Klein argues that supervisors need to be rather more strategic in their relationships with their employees in contrast to the older style of deal-making supervision, and Rousseau suggests that evolving forms of psychological contracts will call for far more negotiation skills than traditional ‘work for wages’ or lifetime employment arrangements. We are aware that the workplace, with or without teams, is a ‘negotiated order’; what might have been a useful addition here would have been a chapter on compliance gaining techniques used by managers. What we do have in this section of the book is a chapter on even more flexible forms of teams by Goodman and Wilson and an overview by MacDuffie of the spread of teams and other work forms in the auto industry, both of which will be a valuable resource for HRM and IR practitioners and academics. Coming from a different angle, Rowe and Bendersky’s chapter on developing processes for maintaining workplace justice focuses more clearly on life in the workplace from the employee’s perspective and argues for a range of procedural options, in effect giving the employee the opportunity to negotiate their way through to a fair and just outcome.
A contribution from Europe exploring the dynamics of management-union relations in the context of social partners legislation might have been instructive here. However, even this might not have provided the positive answer that some look for if the chapter by Wever is any indication. In a short but challenging chapter she reflects upon the failure of the European system (the legislative frame-work and unions) to deliver equality in the frame-workplace, arguing that the processes of political lobbying and collective bargaining need to be more coordinated if progress is to be made on this issue.
Given the acknowledged problematic nature of partnership type relationships it is appropriate to consider the scope for unions to have influence at the higher level of strategic organisational decision making. Preston’s chapter outlines the possible structural frameworks while McKersie’s own chapter on union nominated directors is full of practical insight. McKersie makes an interesting point about company boards not wanting to proceed unless they are unanimous, a notion of decision making perhaps more familiar in Japanese rather than Australian or American workplaces, even team-based ones.
To summarise, what we have in this book are some useful chapters which cover a wide range of workplace issues: the form of the employment contract, the nature of supervision, the evolution of teams and other forms of work organisation, the management of grievances, interest based bargaining, management-union partnerships, and union nominated board members. This list looks like the topics for an HRM or workplace relations course. The underlying theme that negotiation is tacit in the outworking of many of these issues (which indeed it is) becomes equally tacit in many of the chapters themselves. They are no less useful for that but the up-front emphasis on negotiation may mean the book gets bypassed by potential readers who do not realise that it has a lot to offer through its review of current changes in the workplace. There are no startling insights into theory, nothing on Australia but certainly a fertile ground for comparative material, for practical insights and for generating useful research topics into the evolution of Australian workplaces.
UNIVERSITY OFWESTERNAUSTRALIA RAYFELLS
INDUSTRIALRELATIONS: THEORY ANDPRACTICE(2ND EDITION)
Edited by Paul Edwards. Blackwell, Oxford, 2003, xiv + 538 pp., $96.80 (paperback)
of the field to practitioners as well as students, and will undoubtedly be widely studied and cited.
Hugh Clegg is said to have once remarked that there are no industrial relations in non-union settings. The organisation of the current work reflects the many changes of the last 25 years, taking as its point of departure the nature and manage-ment of the employmanage-ment relationship more generally. Thus, in addition to an analysis of the institutions of collective bargaining, significant space is given to the management of labour and pay with or without unions, and the consequences of the long decline in voluntarism. Throughout, attention is given to the implic-ations of supra-national regulation and the debates generated by ‘globalisation’, the impact of inward investment (though less on the outward kind), the develop-ment of HRM, and a renewed emphasis on the underlying forces of the labour market.
The picture that emerges is necessarily complex, and a brief review cannot cover adequately all the themes in the book, not least because such a large collection of essays makes a unifying narrative difficult. Nevertheless, the whole can be characterised by a cautious reaffirmation of the pluralist perspective that has been the dominant mode in British industrial relations scholarship. Edwards’ introductory chapter provides a useful map of the contributions, and argues that industrial relations remains rooted in the ‘demonstrable character-istic’ of an exploitative employment relationship, and thus better able to analyse the changing world of work than the broadly unitary assumptions underlying writings in the field of HRM that neglect the ‘dynamic interplay between the state, employers, unions and employees’ (page 26).
A striking feature of the whole work is the degree to which many of the individual essays depict what can best be described as the consequences of class conflict. To be sure, this conflict often bears little relation to more familiar concerns of collective action and ‘disorder’ in industrial relations, but it has long been a failure of the pluralist view that class struggle is seen as something done by workers to employers. It is equally something done by employers to workers.
In Chapter 19, Nolan and O’Donnell confront the argument about the role of unions in a detailed and highly critical analysis of the links between industrial relations, HRM and economic performance. They proceed by an assault on the theoretical assumptions and empirical ‘evidence’ used to accuse unions of being ‘the prime cause of underperformance’, and question how workplace bargaining in particular could be such a deadly ‘blocking power’ for, in some accounts, over a century. Instead of attributing blame to unions or the system of collective bargaining they highlight the investment, management and other failings of British capital, and argue, following the Chicago School (and Donovan too, in one reading) that these failures include the limited ‘voice’ afforded to employees, a limitation set to become worse to the extent that unionisation falters.
It is a pity that this analysis is separated from Nolan and Slater’s account (Chapter 3) of changing labour markets. This chapter is important not only for its systematic analysis of changing patterns of employment and their link to economic performance, but also for its rejection of the comfortable ideology of the ‘new economy’ and the dissolution of ‘long-standing hierarchical and conflictual employment relations’ (page 77) said to accompany it. In addition, their treatment of the balance between internal and external labour markets highlights the ambiguous approach of employers, and the experience of workers subject to increasing pressures for deregulation and flexibility. The results are shown to have eroded many of the social and economic gains obtained by workers in the early post-war period, as well as an increasing gap between the life experience of those at the top end of the jobs hierarchy and the growth of low-paid and unskilled employment at the bottom.
Colling (Chapter 14) adds to this picture in his discussion of collective identity and changing employment patterns. He rejects the idea that the changing occu-pational and sectoral distribution of work automatically ensures a secular decline in workers’ attachment to collective organisation. Instead he makes two important points. Firstly, that workers’ connection to both union and employer is complex and contingent, even in ‘old labour’ strongholds. Secondly, he denies the view that the decline of manufacturing in general, and of manual work in particular, have led to the empowerment of individual workers, and thus a realisation of a benign individualism. His refusal to be ‘dazzled by the shift to service sector working’ (page 387) echoes Nolan and Slater, making the point that service work may depend on manufacturing, includes manual labour, and is subject to the same labour process pressures as manufacturing. The consequences for joint regulation are thus to be found in both labour and product markets, and the attraction for managers of what Colling calls ‘procedural individualisation’ lies in the same power relationships that characterise wage labour in general.
supra-national, and their legislative interventions’ (page 282). This is problematical, not least because it neglects to identify the sources of political mobilisation required for such an outcome, given that employer hostility, and Labour as well as Conservative policy and analysis, is inimical to any but the most unitary conceptions of worker representation. Perhaps this represents a reaction to the rather uncritical treatment of shop steward organisation by many radical pluralists and Marxists in the 1970s.
Terry revisits not only the general problem of all union organisation—the tendency to identify with the interests of the individual employer in the context of capitalist competition expressed most fully in business unionism—but the particular characteristics derived from voluntarism and decentralised bargaining said to make ‘factory chauvinism’ an ‘immanent characteristic of ‘classical’ shop steward organisation’ (page 268). In the absence of embedded legal rights, shop stewards are weakened by both management preference for consultation (if that) over bargaining, and stewards’ own narrow horizons and lack of expertise. In contrast, he argues, Germany’s IG Metall has the resources to formulate union alternatives to managerial policies, and an institutional framework to pursue these in the workplace.
There are problems with this analysis. Firstly, more needs to be said about the connections between management policy, labour markets and neo-liberalism. These represent more than complementary pressures on workplace organisation; they are part of the long struggle of capital to regain control of the labour process and to reinforce the subjugation of labour. Both industry level bargaining in the UK and the Works Constitution Actin Germany were designed to insulate managerial prerogative from union influence. In Germany, under different legal structures, the same struggle appeared; even where unions ‘captured’ the Works Council system, many argued that the Works Councils had in fact ‘captured’ the unions. It was the relative failure of industry bargaining to provide this insulation that drove UK employers to a policy of decentralisation, incorporation and, where possible, neutralisation. The ‘frontier of control’ is thus both a metaphor for workplace relations and wider class relations.
This returns us to the introductory chapter. Edwards usefully characterises the ideological roots of the unitary, pluralist and radical views of the employment relationship. He places the radical perspective in an analysis of ‘shop floor discontent that seemed immune to all attempts at institutionalisation’ (page 11), but sensibly refuses to simply discard it in face of the decline of shop floor organisation. Edwards asserts that British pluralism proved flexible enough to accommodate the radical critique, and that few significant differences remain. In this he is both right and wrong.
He is right to the extent that both were concerned with the competing claims of ‘order’ and ‘welfare’, as Hyman puts it, if from different perspectives, and that the disappointment of what was in many ways a syndicalist view of steward organisation focused discussion on a common set of policy concerns, particularly in respect of labour and employment law. But he is wrong to the extent that pluralism, or even ‘an appropriately explicated radical view’ (page 11), still have fundamental differences with the Marxist approach—even though the radical view owes a huge debt to Marxism.
The difference is rooted in the understanding of the employment relationship, and the connection of this relationship to class. Pluralists agree with Marxists that conflict at work is inevitable, but the essence of pluralism is a critique of political sovereignty that replaces a ‘final authority’ with ‘continuous compromises’, in which government is seen, not as the representative of class interest, but as the arbiter between interest groups, none of which is sufficiently powerful to dominate the whole. The pluralist analysis of industrial relations both ‘borrows’ this theory for its own field of study, and assumes its truth for society as a whole. As many have argued, conflict is endemic, but the parties may have an interest in the ‘survival of the whole of which they are parts’.
How then to explain what jumps out of nearly every chapter in this book: the simultaneous itemisation of a political, institutional, and economic assault on workers with a reluctance to spell out a unified analysis, and to place this within a theoretical framework that can acknowledge the unity of the elements of that assault? What the Marxist view brings to the debate is the explicit identification not only of employer power, but of the power of the employer class, an issue that Edwards does not address. It is this analysis, of a material, political, and ideo-logical power, whatever its internal dissensions, that can provide the necessary narrative. The reliance on ‘employee voice’ as a pluralist proxy for countervailing worker power is really an insufficient tool, even to maintain the old pluralist goal of decently managed conflict.
organisation. In face of the developments of the last 25 years the often-powerful analyses in this volume are curiously undersold by its cautious pluralism.
KEELEUNIVERSITY COLINWHITSTON
STRATEGY ANDHUMANRESOURCEMANAGEMENT
By Peter Boxall and John Purcell. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2003, xii + 287 pp., £25 (paperback)
The last two decades have witnessed an enormous growth in academic and practitioner interest in strategic management and human resource management (HRM). The authors argue that this growth of interest has not been accompanied by ‘sufficient concern for integrating these two important fields of theory and practice’ (page vi). The book is concerned with the relationship between strategy and HRM, and the implications for building sustainable competitive advantage in modern organisations. The authors set out to build a framework for goal setting in HRM, arguing for the centrality of key HRM issues in any credible notion of business strategy. In this very readable book, they further set out to explore ways in which HRM can be used strategically to achieve business success. This is a novel synthesis of UK and US industrial relations, HRM and strategic management research and practice. It is refreshing to see an HRM text that is structured around contemporary HRM issues rather than the traditional personnel functions.
The central argument of the book is that HRM decisions are embedded within societies and industries. Boxall and Purcell explore the debate between the role of context (‘best fit’) and universalism (‘best practice’) schools of management thought. Despite arguing the centrality of the ‘best fit’ approach to HRM, they assert that ‘best practice’ approaches also play an important role in the theory and practice of HRM. This is because they exemplify HRM techniques that are sensible methods of generic practice as opposed to those that are dysfunctional. This argument is in line with the earlier work of others, suggesting that the two approaches are complementary. They argue that the universal approach helps researchers and practitioners document the benefits of HRM across all contexts, while the contingency perspective helps to look more deeply into organisational phenomena in order to derive more situation-specific theories. Boxall and Purcell contend that this debate is best understood by a surface and underpinning layer; that is, surface layer HRM policies are influenced by context, and generic HRM processes and general principles are best understood by an underpinning layer.
both an important and timely argument, which is generally lost in many other contemporary HRM texts. Other writers have advocated the urgent need for greater research in understanding the precise nature of fit and synergy, and how HRM practices and policies generate value. In fact, Susan Jackson and Randall Schuler, for example, have previously concluded that there is no one best way to manage an organisation’s human resources. Over time, organisations evolve practices that fit their particular situation. These findings send out a note of caution regarding the universality of policy prescriptions from an academic field, which is still ‘mapping’ the area.
Boxall and Purcell believe that there are three domains that are important in the strategic management of people: labour productivity, organisational flexibility and social legitimacy. They set out to critically analyse and review contemporary management theories, frameworks and empirical research to elucidate the relationship between strategy and HRM. As such, the book is organised in three parts: connecting strategy and human resource management, managing people and searching for general principles, and managing people in dynamic and complex business contexts. With a sound theoretical base and clear analytical structure, Boxall and Purcell set out each chapter to reflect the current issues facing management today. Each chapter is based on three interrelated elements— theory, research and illustration—bringing the story to life with an array of interesting cases and vignettes.
Strategy and Human Resource Management is extremely practical, exploring many of the fundamental challenges facing many organisations, such as the HRM implications of mergers and acquisitions, and building high performance work systems. In the final chapter, implications are drawn for the management of firm processes and the design of HRM planning principles and their imple-mentation through ‘balanced scorecards’ and ‘strategy maps’. I would like to have seen further integration of the ‘best fit’ perspective within the concluding chapter. Its importance seemed lost in the discussion of balanced scorecards and strategy maps. It would have been interesting to see the authors take their analysis a little further and integrate the ‘best fit’ approach more carefully into the design of the HRM planning process and its implementation. The authors conclude that the strategic goals of HRM should be understood in a broader sense and that the integration of strategy and HRM is crucial to building effective and sustainable organisations. Boxall and Purcell surmise that there are three critical factors associated with the business success of HRM: productive exploit-ation of current strategy, the building of organisexploit-ational flexibility, and the construction of social legitimacy.
This book is compulsory reading for a wide audience including advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students, researchers and practitioners interested in the role of strategic HRM in business success. The analytical and multi-disciplinary approach of this book is an important contribution to the field of HRM.
THECHANGINGPATTERNS OFHUMANRESOURCEMANAGEMENT
Edited by Farhad Analoui. Ashgate, Aldershot, 2002, xi + 283 pp., £42.50 (hardback)
This publication is the result of a conference on human resource management (HRM) organised by Farhad Analoui at the University of Bradford. The focus of this edited volume is the changing nature of HRM and the challenges faced by organisations in its transformation from personnel management. The aims of the book were to compare HRM from the organisational and national perspectives in relation to ‘the international perception of its roles’ and to ‘provide the very challenge of defining its boundaries and ultimately how HRM can realistically benefit the people and organisations as a whole’ (page x). The contributors in this book adopted a critical perspective in their assessment of HRM in both public and private-sector organisations in regions as diverse as South East Asia, the United Kingdom, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. The book has 18 chapters in total.
The first two chapters summarise the challenges faced by the HRM profession in the changing business environment. The focus is on HRM at the organisational level. These chapters also considered the implications of HRM in developing economies. The next two chapters then shift the analysis to examine how firms integrate HRM with the process of strategic management, focusing on the status of strategic HRM in multinational corporations in the ASEAN region and British Airways, respectively. The remaining 14 chapters then shift from a macro to micro perspective, as indicated by a collection of papers on the practice of HRM at the firm level in different national contexts. There is an eclectic collection of papers here, ranging from a literature review on techno-stress to career management and women police officers in Pakistan. For those interested in HRM in developing and less developing countries, this book definitely provides some interesting observations and empirical evidence of the changing patterns of HRM across the world. However, this is where the positives ended.
and proofreading effort; there are basic errors which should have been identified prior to publication.
In conclusion, this edited volume provides much needed empirical evidence regarding the challenges of HRM in developed, as well as developing economies. This reviewer feels that the title should reflect this as it currently lacks clarity and is therefore misleading to the reader. It is appropriate for anyone interested in the teaching, research, and practice of HRM in the international context, but it is certainly not without its problems.
UNIVERSITY OFTECHNOLOGY, SYDNEY STEPHENTEO
UNDERSTANDINGEUROPEANTRADEUNIONISM: BETWEENMARKET, CLASS ANDSOCIETY
By Richard Hyman. Sage, London, 2001, xi + 196 pp., $69 (paperback)
Richard Hyman has spent much of the last two decades pondering on comparative European industrial relations and, in particular, the national characteristics and evolution of trade unionism across Europe. This short book addresses one theme that has emerged in his work on Europe—the notion of a triangulation between market, class and society—which helps to understand the trade unionism of three countries (Britain, Germany and Italy). The argument is expressed in terms of a simple diagram; a triangle, with market at one point, society at another and class at the third. Britain is broadly represented by the side connecting class and market, Germany by the side connecting market and society, and Italy by the side connecting class and society. Following a brief introductory chapter, three chapters consider respectively the role of trade unions as economic actors, trade unions and class struggle, and trade unions in civil society. Thereafter, three chapters explore each case in terms of its particular duality, leading to some brief conclusions.
The ‘eternal triangle’ metaphor is an effective way to discuss the three most frequent models of trade unions—as vehicles for class action, for social integration, or for economic cooperation with business. Hyman notes carefully that, in practice, any trade union movement will normally reflect elements of all three models, but that there is a tendency for some combination of two to be signifi-cant in any particular trade union movement. The importance of this warning becomes clear in subsequent chapters.
‘political economism’. In discussing trade unions and class struggle, Hyman con-cludes that however real class relations are, and however hard trade unionists seek to use trade unions as a vehicle for class action, trade unions perform very different roles within the existing system. Effective class-based trade union action becomes elusive when confronted by the demands of day-to-day regulation of the employment relationship. In his third thematic chapter, Hyman provides a succinct and helpful discussion of trade unions in civil society. The initial emphasis is on the emergence of an anti-socialist, ‘integrative’ trade unionism, illustrated by the confessional union traditions and by the development over time of the social partnership tradition. Hyman then addresses the post-1970s debates about civil society and social movements, tellingly concluding with reference to Peter Waterman’s view that trade unions with declining power must see their future in terms of a labour movement allied to broader political agendas.
The three thematic chapters are notable for their succinctness, clarity of expres-sion and breadth of coverage. Their structure and content suggests that Hyman may have had a sub-text in mind when writing this book. If the main target of the text is the scholarly debate around European trade unionism, a subsidiary target may well be pedagogic. Many contemporary students would benefit from exposure to Hyman’s melding of histories and literatures, some of which have been too frequently displaced in contemporary thinking. As a result, this text will be a welcome addition to both advanced undergraduate and postgraduate reading lists.
The three case study chapters on Britain, Germany and Italy illustrate the historical commitments by each country’s trade union movement to one duality or the other, whilst also illustrating how those commitments have come to be challenged by others. Thus, in the case of Britain, the class-market duality which historically defined trade unions is now qualified by a social partnership impetus in some union thinking and beyond. Indeed, the role of unions in employer-employee partnerships is not a given in modern British Labour Party thinking. In the case of Germany, the society-market emphasis from the days of Adenauer is now qualified by a class-based rhetoric from some trade unionists who confront increasing demands for restructuring and improved employee per-formance. In Italy, restructuring pressures in the 1980s and 1990s have challenged the dominant class-society duality. As a result, integrative and class action-based unions have converged in terms of identity, even though the role of unions (bargaining agent, social partner, or agent of class action) is still contested. These chapters are again succinct and provide the reader with a useful introduction to trade union development in the three countries.
would have to transcend mechanistic formulations about, for example, regional collective bargaining and create a European level ‘moral economy’ upon which a European civil society can emerge and in which a European system of industrial relations can develop. In many ways, the last few pages of this book are by far the most profound, for they provide some tantalising ideas about how the future of national industrial relation systems may develop in an internationalising world.
As one would expect, this is a well-crafted, literate and absorbing account of European trade union development. Established scholars and advanced students will enjoy the discussion of theory and cases. No doubt, the eternal triangle metaphor will be subjected to critical appraisal in terms of its application to national trade union movements, but, like many good metaphors, it is likely to find a long-term home in industrial relations vocabulary. We should all look forward to Hyman’s future work on supra-national industrial relations systems.
UNIVERSITY OFAUCKLAND NIGELHAWORTH
INTERNATIONALLABORSTANDARDS: HISTORY, THEORY ANDPOLICY OPTIONS
Edited by Kaushik Basu, Henrik Horn, Lisa Roman and Judith Shapiro. Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, 2003, xiii + 342 pp., $92.40 (paperback)
If this volume is judged on the basis of its title and declared aims, it must be deemed a major disappointment with one very significant saving grace. The title suggests the focus is international labour standards and the fact that this is the centre of the book is reinforced by the editors who declare they wish to contribute to the debate surrounding the demand that labour standards should be ‘internationally agreed and enforced’. The editors further note that this demand has been the source of heated discussion and suggest the dialogue has now reached an impasse. The latter is a claim that is debateable given the US is presently internationalising labour standards at a rapid pace by incorporating labour provisions into bilateral trade agreements. This is a development of which the editors appear unaware. This unawareness is a critical development that diminishes the book’s central questions.
development, international relations and labour economics, and to policy makers in government and international organisations.
Given the foregoing, and being one who teaches trade policy and is interested in history and labour rights, it was with enthusiasm that I turned to the first chapter by Stanley Engerman who confronts the question: what we can learn from economic history? This enthusiasm was not daunted by the fact that the chapter is 72 pages. Disappointment, however, soon replaced enthusiasm as it became increasingly obvious Engerman says almost nothing about international labour standards. This is largely, but not solely, because his focus is not the international dimension of labour standards but rather the evolution of labour standards in selected nations. The result is a series of tables that would be of value to those wishing to compare the pace at which various nations have introduced labour standards, but it is not a contribution to the internationalisation literature. An example of this lack of focus on what is supposedly the primary focus of the volume, is the fact that the ILO does not make an appearance until some 55 pages into the text and then is discussed in less than three pages. In short, as history of the international labour standards the chapter would appear to cover inappropriate ground.
Nirvikar Singh confronts the second question, asking what does contemporary economic theory tell us about the impact of international labour standards? His contribution is a survey of neo-classical international labour standards theory that offers little new. This is also the conclusion advanced by both commentators on the chapter. Industrial relations scholars and practitioners will find the offering disappointing because it ignores issues they tend to consider basic such as the role of bargaining power and conflict management. These issues are ignored because Singh accepts an adequate understanding of labour standards can be reached by limiting the focus to individual choice and consumer demand. At one stage, he concedes this approach is problematic because ‘it is difficult for consumers to assess the conditions under which a product is made’. However, this recognition appears more a feint designed to deny the value of international standards (which appears his real goal) than a pathway that could induce him to discuss the views of those with an understanding of production conditions—the workers and managers who actually produce the wealth of the world.
Chapter 3 by Brown et al.explores child labour issues and again the inter-national dimension of labour standards is all but ignored. The chapter provides a competent outline of the neo-classical child labour literature but bias is manifest not least by the authors’ working assumption that ‘all children volun-tarily decide whether to work on the family farm or attend their local school’ (a point noted by one of the commentators). The contribution is also inadequate because, though it is acknowledged government policy can accelerate the pace at which the incidence of child labour is reduced and that not all governments are sufficiently active in this area, the fact that penalties might play a role in motivating states is simply ignored and discussion limited to how sanctions might impact on the decisions of individuals.
standards? In particular, what should be the role of the ILO and the WTO? The inclusion of this chapter is the saving grace of the book. For not only does Robert Staiger make international labour standards his focus, he offers a contribution that does carry the debate forward. Staiger, who is undertaking a larger study of the internationalisation of labour standards for Sweden’s Expert Group on Development Studies, is not convinced labour standards should be linked to international trade via the WTO or by some other mechanism. But, he does suggest, if this is to be done then critical issues need to be confronted regarding how linkage might be best achieved and what aspects of labour standards should be deemed the brief of the ILO and WTO, respectively. He is critical of the social clause demand but argues there are alternative instruments that might be more effective in defending labour rights and that have the attrac-tion that they are either voluntary or that involve ‘non-violaattrac-tion’ instruments already part of the multilateral trade negotiating process. A number of the obser-vations he offers are contentious but they are universally insightful and worthy of debate. In short, this is a chapter that should be read by all concerned with the issue of international labour standards and a contribution that makes the $92 price of this book a bargain.
MONASHUNIVERSITY CHRISNYLAND
TAKING THEHIGH ROAD: COMMUNITIESORGANIZE FORECONOMIC CHANGE
By David P. Reynolds. M.E. Sharpe, Armonk, New York, 2002, xvi + 336 pp., US$28.95 (paperback)
The collapse of the Soviet Union and Communist China’s embrace of the capitalist model have seemingly established the authority of capitalism as the universally predominant and most enduring form of economic organisation. The significance of this transformation has been exaggerated by the governments of many advanced industrial economies adopting the US economic management model. This has had quite significant effects upon the integrity of economic and political processes in these economies.
The ascendancy of US-style neo-liberalism has seen the abandoning of the different social democratic traditions that prevailed throughout much of the developed world in the post-World War II era. In the process, the commitment to policies of demand management, to a measure of economic egalitarianism and to corporatist models of governance that made for social inclusion, have been, to varying degrees, set aside to give greater force to free markets. This has generally been presented as an inevitable if not natural trajectory, and justified in terms of the efficiency gains to be had from liberating capital and labour markets from the ‘dead hand’ of government regulation.
The ascendancy of neo-liberalism as a force in the abolition of restrictions in the movement of money, capital and commodities has thus been intimately bound up with the process of globalisation.
As natural as this transformation has been represented, considerable con-sequences have flowed from this engagement with neo-liberalism. National economies have become increasingly subject to the imperative of markets, and this has proved to be a critical factor in the push to deregulate domestic labour markets. The anonymity of market-based outcomes has been privileged over social and more collective or group-based forms of negotiations effected through political and other institutional forums. There has been an ‘economisation’ of humanity, manifest in the greater credence given to people’s place within the economy framed in terms of the contribution they make to the economy through the market, at the expense of the social.
The material and social impacts are evident far and wide. The hegemony of the market has coincided with increasing numbers of people being marginalised and forced into impoverished circumstances from which there is little opportunity for escape because of the withdrawal of institutional support. The more general impacts are evident in the way in which the structural transformations of the last twenty years have appreciably compromised the capacity of communities to shape their own destiny.
It would seem that the ascendancy of neo-liberalism and globalisation has effected a pervasive disempowering of individuals and communities. In more recent times, the ability to envisage anything other than economies structured in terms of the imperative of the laissez-faire market seems even more remote. The enactment of such legislation as the US’s Homeland Security Acthas served to engender a sense of despondency in people’s ability to posit alternative forms of economic organisation.
The hegemony of neo-liberalism, and just as importantly its resilience to challenge, is thus highly questionable. This appreciation, however, is a matter that is worthy of more focused scrutiny. Fortunately, this task has been taken up with enthusiasm in David Reynold’s Taking the High Road. The study brings together a wide-ranging appreciation of the foundations that existed and those that are now being constructed to provide an alternative vision of a more pro-gressive future. This is a future in which people are not subject to the full force, to the anonymity and, above all, to the vagaries of the free market.
The study represents a critique of the idea that neo-liberalism is a behemoth that cannot be challenged. Reynolds points to the organising principles of the social democratic tradition, to the import of social citizenship in defining the Swedish model, the associative democracy of Germany and the social partnership and social ownership that has framed the development of Austria, as more socially inclusive and more economically benign models of economic government in contrast to the US liberal model. This should be an important reminder to the Australian reader of a past that both Labor and conservative governments have been only too keen to jettison.
With a US audience in mind, Reynolds argues against the widespread belief that the more egalitarian path is no longer a political possibility. He takes issue with the ideas that the market is too great a force to successfully contest or that the conservative state and its blocking progressive struggle is too powerful an institution to effectively challenge. He points to the numerous examples of local campaigns and those that have a broader reach to highlight the possibilities for how we might go about building a better future. The ‘living wage’ movement is held up as a campaign that has extended the purview of trade unions and drawn into increasingly nation-wide campaigns workers who would otherwise not have joined a trade union let alone engaged in industrial struggle.
The documenting of campaigns for economic justice and the melding of struggles to defend the environment with social justice activism further highlight the level of energy that presently animates social and political life in the US. Reynolds considers that the momentum of these forces culminated in the broadly-based mobilisation of different social movements, trade unions and progressive political parties to protest at the WTO Seattle meeting in 1999, and Washington DC in the following year. This has sent an unequivocal political message of the measure of popular opposition to globalisation.
message for the Australian reader who despairs at the thought that our immediate future will continue to be bound by the two political parties who remain so wedded to the twinning of neo-liberalism and globalisation.
