Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Industrial relations – OECD countries'

Includes bibliographical references.
The aim of this dissertation was to ascertain what type of employee relations system is identifiable in the public services of South Africa, Namibia and Botswana, and to determine what type of voice regulation is in place in the determination of terms and conditions of employment.

In the first chapter,a harmonised linked employer-employee dataset is used to study the impact of firm-level agreements on the wage structure in the manufacturing sector in Belgium, Denmark and Spain. To our knowledge, this is one of the first cross-country studies that examines the impact of firm-level bargaining on the wage structure in European countries. We find that firm-level agreements have a positive effect both on wage levels and on wage dispersion in Belgium and Denmark. In Spain, firm also increase wage levels but reduce wage dispersion. Our interpretation is that in Belgium and Denmark, where firm-level bargaining greatly expanded since the 1980s on the initiative of the employers and the governments, firm-level bargaining is mainly used to adapt pay to the specific needs of the firm. In Spain, the structure of collective bargaining has not changed very much since the Franco period where firm agreements were used as a tool for worker mobilisation and for political struggle. Therefore, firm-level bargaining in Spain is still mainly used by trade unions in order to reduce the wage dispersion.

In the second chapter, we analyse the impact of the bargaining level and of the degree of centralisation of wage bargaining on rent-sharing in Belgium. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that considers simultaneously both dimensions of collective bargaining. This is also one of the first papers that looks at the impact of wage bargaining institutions on rent-sharing in European countries. This question is important because if wage bargaining decentralisation increases the link between wages and firm specific profits, it may prevent an efficient allocation of labour across firms, increase wage inequality, lead to smaller employment adjustments, and affect the division of surplus between capital and labour (Bryson et al. 2006). Controlling for the endogeneity of profits, for heterogeneity among workers and firms and for differences in characteristics between bargaining regimes, we find that wages depend substantially more on firm specific profits in decentralised than in centralised industries ,irrespective of the presence of a formal firm collective agreement. In addition, the impact of the presence of a formal firm collective agreement on the wage-profit elasticity depends on the degree of centralisation of the industry. In centralised industries, profits influence wages only when a firm collective agreement is present. This result is not surprising since industry agreements do not take into account firm-specific characteristics. Within decentralised industries, firms share their profits with their workers even if they are not covered by a formal firm collective agreement. This is probably because, in those industries, workers only covered by an industry agreement (i.e. not covered by a formal firm agreement) receive wage supplements that are paid unilaterally by their employer. The fact that those workers also benefit from rent-sharing implies that pay-setting does not need to be collective to generate rent-sharing, which is in line with the Anglo-American literature that shows that rent-sharing is not a particularity of the unionised sector.

In the first two chapters, we have shown that, in Belgium, firm-level bargaining is used by firms to adapt pay to the specific characteristics of the firm, including firm’s profits. In the third and final chapter, it is shown that firm-level bargaining also allows wages to adapt to the local environment that the company may face. This aspect is of particular importance in the debate about a potential regionalisation of wage bargaining in Belgium. This debate is, however, not specific to Belgium. Indeed, the potential failure of national industry agreements to take into account the productivity levels of the least productive regions has been considered as one of the causes of regional unemployment in European countries (Davies and Hallet, 2001; OECD, 2006). Two kinds of solutions are generally proposed to solve this problem. The first, encouraged by the European Commission and the OECD, consists in decentralising wage bargaining toward the firm level (Davies and Hallet, 2001; OECD, 2006). The second solution, the regionalisation of wage bargaining, is frequently mentioned in Belgium or in Italy where regional unemployment differentials are high. In this chapter we show that, in Belgium, regional wage differentials and regional productivity differentials within joint committees are positively correlated. Moreover, this relation is stronger (i) for joint committees where firm-level bargaining is relatively frequent and (ii) for joint committees already sub-divided along a local line. We conclude that the present Belgian wage bargaining system which combines interprofessional, industry and firm bargaining, already includes the mechanisms that allow regional productivity to be taken into account in wage formation. It is therefore not necessary to further regionalise wage bargaining in Belgium.

Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion
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The process of globalisation has had a large impact on the world economy over the past three decades. Economic globalisation has manifested itself in the increasing integration of goods and services through international trade and the integration of financial markets. As a consequence the existence of co-movements in economic variables of different countries has become more evident. The extent to which globalisation causes a country’s economy to move together with the rest of the world concerns policy-makers. When such co-movement is significant, the influence of policy-makers on their respective domestic economies is significantly reduced. South Africa re-entered the international economy in the early 1990s when the forces of globalisation, especially for developing countries, seemed to gain momentum. Empirical research such as Kabundi and Loots (2005) found strong evidence of international co-movement between the world business cycle and the South African business cycle, particularly following South Africa’s integration into the global economy. This study examines the relationship and interdependence between South Africa and four of its major developed trading partners. More particularly, the study examines the question of whether business cycles are transmitted from Germany, Japan, US and UK to South Africa, and/or from South Africa to Germany, Japan, the US and UK. The study employs structural vector autoregressive (SVARs) models to analyse monthly data from 1980:01–2008:04 on industrial production, producer prices, short-term interest rates and real effective exchange rates. The results show that South Africa benefits from economic growth in both the UK and US. They also indicate significant price transmission from Germany and Japan to South Africa, with transmission in the opposite direction being statistically insignificant. The impulse response graphs show that a positive one standard deviation shock to both German and Japanese producer prices has a negative impact on South African output (industrial production) growth. Furthermore, South African monetary policy is relatively unresponsive to international monetary policy stances. The findings of this study indicate that South African policymakers need to take into consideration economic performance of the country’s major trading partners, with particular emphasis on the UK and US economies.

The aim of the thesis is to further explore the relationship between economic integration and firm mobility and investment, both from an empirical and a theoretical perspective, with the objective of drawing conclusions on how government policy can be used to strengthen the positive impact of integration on investment, which is crucial in moving and maintaining countries at the forefront of the technology frontier and accelerating economic growth in a world of rapid technical change and high mobility of ideas, goods, services, capital and labor.

The first chapter aims to bring together the literature on economic integration, firm mobility and investment. It contains two sections: one dedicated to the literature on FDI and the second covering the literature on firm entry and exit, economic performance and economic and business regulation.

In the second chapter I examine the relationship between the Single Market and FDI both in an intra-EU context and from outside the EU. The empirical results show that the impact of the Single Market on FDI differs substantially from one country to another. This finding may be due to the functioning of institutions.

The third chapter studies the relationship between the level of external trade protection put into place by a Regional Integration Agreement(RIA)and the option of a firm from outside the RIA block to serve the RIA market through FDI rather than exports. I find that the level of external trade protection put in place by the RIA depends on the RIA country's capacity to benefit from FDI spillovers, the magnitude of set-up costs of building a plant in the RIA and on the amount of external trade protection erected by the country from outside the reigonal block with respect to the RIA.

The fourth chapter studies how the firm entry and exit process is affected by product market reforms and regulations and impact macroeconomic performance. The results show that an increase in deregulation will lead to a rise in firm entry and exit. This in turn will especially affect macroeconomic performance as measured by output growth and labor productivity growth. The analysis done at the sector level shows that results can differ substantially across industries, which implies that deregulation policies should be conducted at the sector level, rather than at the global macroeconomic level.
Doctorat en sciences économiques, Orientation économie
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This thesis is a case study of the effects of association with the EU on domestic industrial policy making in Poland during 1990-1995 from a liberal intergovernmentalist perspective, showing how association affected the industrial policy-making autonomy of the Government in relation to other domestic actors in two ways. First, because domestic interests were weak and divided in transition-era Poland, the EU provided political leaders with a sharper focus and allowed them to consolidate domestic support for government industrial policy initiatives. Second, where domestic opposition arose, association helped political leaders to overcome it by giving industrial policy initiatives greater legitimacy and allowing them to be portrayed as "mandatory" for EU membership. The manner in which the Government handled domestic pressure for intervention from state enterprises seeking to avoid painful adjustments and restructuring during the transition offers a prime test of the effects of EU association on industrial policy-making autonomy. In most areas, the pro-market, pro-competition policies mandated by EU association were incompatible with the nature and level of governmental involvement in industry under socialism, requiring an end to state subsidies and other forms of discretionary support enjoyed by state enterprises for nearly four decades. Incorporating case studies of the steel and textiles sectors, this thesis illustrates how in the context of transition, the Government's commitment to EU association was stronger than for other recent EU members and ensured that the Government would deviate from the course charted in the Association Agreement only in cases of intense domestic pressure, and even then only temporarily. Accordingly, in a new twist to liberal intergovernmentalism, Poland's transitional domestic situation coupled with the country's enduring commitment to eventual EU membership ensured that the effects of association on policy-making autonomy were more pronounced in Poland than in existing member states.

This study sets out to explore employer response to the EU social dimension, in answer to the question, "How are employers in the UK and Germany responding to the EU social dimension, and why?" Using case study evidence from nine large British and German engineering companies, as well as material from employers' associations at all levels, it is argued that there is little employer support for extending the social dimension. Focusing on micro-economic aspects of the debate, it is also argued that a common feature in both British and German employer opposition is a concern for the impact of EU industrial relations regulation on firm-level flexibility. This stands in direct contradiction of the EU Commission's own contentions about the flexibility-enhancing effects of its social policy measures, and appears paradoxical in light of earlier research findings of a German flexibility advantage over UK rivals on account of the country's well-structured regulatory framework for industrial relations. Evidence from participant companies, however, suggests that, in the global environment of the late 1990s, much of Germany's former flexibility advantage has been eroded, and the regulation-induced limitations on both the pace and scale of change are increasingly onerous to German companies. German managers perceive a need for targeted deregulatory reform of their industrial relations system; by strengthening (and often extending) existing industrial relations regulation, EU social policy measures meet with firm disapproval. In the UK, by contrast, the changed context has contributed to a significant increase in firm-level flexibility. British companies now operate to levels of flexibility often in advance of their German counterparts, at far lower 'cost' in terms of the time taken, and the extent to which change measures are compromised, to reach agreement. For British managers, EU social policy measures are perceived as a threat to these beneficial arrangements, and vigorously opposed. The thesis concludes by suggesting that such fixed opposition, in the face of Commission determination to extend the EU social dimension, points to an escalation of the controversy surrounding the social dimension.

The main contribution of my thesis is the analysis of substantial empirical material that I have collected from Community trade union actors. My analysis focuses on the institutional strategies of the sectoral European trade union federations and their implications for the Europeanisation of wages policy. I have demonstrated that the development of European coordination processes of national collective bargaining, particularly at sectoral level, has contributed to reviving the concept of collective bargaining and professional relations in the European Area, which until then had been covered in the literature by the social dialogue. I have identified three obstacles to collective negociations at a European level: the “depoliticised” wage in the economic partnership, employers identified as the “lobby partner” in the sectoral social dialogue, and the difficulties encountered in the Europeanisation of trade unions.

L’apport majeur de notre thèse est l’analyse d’un matériel empirique conséquent que nous avons collecté auprès des acteurs syndicaux communautaires. Notre analyse se concentre sur les stratégies institutionnelles des fédérations syndicales sectorielles européennes et sur leurs implications en matière d’européanisation de la politique salariale. Nous avons démontré que le développement des processus de coordination européenne des négociations collectives nationales, en particulier au niveau sectoriel, peut contribuer à renouveler la conception de la négociation collective et des relations professionnelles dans l’espace européen jusqu’alors appréhendée dans la littérature par le dialogue social. Nous avons identifié trois obstacles à la négociation collective européenne :le salaire « dépolitisé » dans le partenariat économique, le patronat devenu « partenaire-lobby » dans le dialogue social sectoriel, et la difficile européanisation syndicale.

Doctorat en sciences sociales, Orientation sociologie
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This thesis draws on David Harvey’s concept of “accumulation by dispossession” and an international political economy (IPE) approach centred on the institutional arrangements and power structures that privilege certain actors and values, in order to critique current capitalist practices of primitive accumulation by the global corporate extractive industry. The thesis examines how accumulation by dispossession by the global extractive industry is facilitated by the “free entry” or “free mining” principle. It does so by focusing on Canada as a leader in the global extractive industry and the spread of this country’s mining laws to other countries – in other words, the transnationalisation of norms in the global extractive industry – so as to maintain a consistent and familiar operating environment for Canadian extractive companies. The transnationalisation of norms is further promoted by key international institutions such as the World Bank, which is also the world’s largest development lender and also plays a key role in shaping the regulations that govern natural resource extraction. The thesis briefly investigates some Canadian examples of resource extraction projects, in order to demonstrate the weaknesses of Canadian mining laws, particularly the lack of protection of landowners’ rights under the free entry system and the subsequent need for “free, prior and informed consent” (FPIC). The thesis also considers some of the challenges to the adoption and implementation of the right to FPIC. These challenges include embedded institutional structures like the free entry mining system, international political economy (IPE) as shaped by international institutions and powerful corporations, as well as concerns regarding ‘local’ power structures or the legitimacy of representatives of communities affected by extractive projects. The thesis concludes that in order for Canada to be truly recognized as a leader in the global extractive industry, it must establish legal norms domestically to ensure that Canadian mining companies and residents can be held accountable when there is evidence of environmental and/or human rights violations associated with the activities of Canadian mining companies abroad. The thesis also concludes that Canada needs to address underlying structural issues such as the free entry mining system and implement FPIC, in order to curb “accumulation by dispossession” by the extractive industry, both domestically and abroad.

This thesis was awarded the prize "Le monde de la recherche universitaire" in the human and social sciences category, for the 14th edition (2010-2011) organized by the French newspaper "Le monde".
Defence Date: 22 May 2010
Membres du jury: Professeur Peter Wagner, Università degli studi di Trento (Directeur de thèse, ex-IUE); Professeur Christophe Dejours, Conservation national des arts et métiers, Paris; Professeure Marie-Ange Moreau, Institut universitaire européen, Florence; Professeure Eve Chiapello, Hautes études commerciales, Paris
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses
La thèse tend à défendre l'idée que les concepts d'esclavage et de servitude sont essentiels pour comprendre la modernité contemporaine en Occident, et cela à partir d'une analyse interdisciplinaire des rapports entre le travail et le capitalisme. Le postulat de départ a été de soutenir que la modernité constitue un concept central mais aporétique pour rendre compte des réalités de la domination dans le monde d'aujourd'hui. Phénomène anthropologico-historique déterminant mais refoulé dans les sciences sociales et dans la philosophie, l'esclavage constitue une forme d'antinomie moderne qui permettrait de combler ce vide sémantique. Si l'on peut aisément concevoir la modernité comme un « miroir inversé » par rapport à l'esclavagisme antique, l'analyse socio-historique des esclavages en Occident, fait apparaître d'encombrantes contradictions. Au centre de celles-ci, figure la mise en place d'un « capitalisme esclavagiste » du XVe au XIXe siècle entre l'Europe, l'Afrique et les Amériques. Tenir compte de cette expérience historique irréductible, oblige à reconnaître que la fin de cet esclavagisme constitue une condition sine qua non de l'avènement de la modernité politique et économique en Occident. La deuxième partie de la thèse entend montrer que la modernité peut être approfondie par la construction du concept moderne et critique de « servitude volontaire » et cela à partir de l'oeuvre d'Étienne de La Boétie. Comment est-il possible de se retrouver à la fois libre et asservi ? Quelles sont les raisons qui poussent à consentir à une tyrannie ? Comment la liberté peut-elle se métamorphoser en esclavage ? La servitude volontaire apparaît comme une interrogation majeure qui transcende la théorie politique et la théorie de la subjectivité. Elle ouvre ainsi tout un champ de questions inédites sur notre modernité contemporaine. La troisième partie vise à démontrer que l'esclavage et la servitude volontaire constituent des outils interprétatifs pertinents pour analyser la réalité du travail soumis aux conditions actuelles du capitalisme. Pour cela, la thèse rappelle dans un premier temps qu'il ne peut exister de modernité, dans ses dimensions politique, économique et sociale, sans la constitution d'un droit du travail effectif qui protège la personne humaine de la servitude. Analyser cette centralité du travail et du droit dans la modernité conduit en outre à reconnaître l'importance de la subjectivité. A l'instar de la psychodynamique du travail de Christophe Dejours, cette proposition moderne implique de considérer qu'« un pur travail d'exécution n'existe pas » et que tout travail mobilise l'intelligence du sujet. A partir de cette reconstruction de la modernité, la thèse se poursuit de manière transdisplinaire pour montrer que « le nouvel esprit du capitalisme » (Luc Boltanski et Eve Chiapello) peut être interprété comme une idéologie de la servitude volontaire. Le phénomène de management (à la fois discours et pratique) est ici le point-clé des discussions pour comprendre les évolutions du capitalisme et les transformations du travail. Le consentement à la servitude volontaire, s'il peut s'observer à travers les nouveaux dispositifs de redisciplinarisation des travailleurs, il ne peut en revanche s'expliquer qu'à partir de la clinique du travail, c'est à dire à travers l'étude étiologique des pathologies mentales et psychosomatiques, des suicides et tentatives de suicide en rapport au travail. Enfin, le rapport entre capitalisme contemporain et servitude volontaire, s'il constitue une centralité, nécessite cependant d'être nuancé. La servitude involontaire, reconnue internationalement par le droit sous les termes de « formes contemporaines d'esclavage » ou de « travail forcé », existe toujours tant au centre qu'en périphérie du dit-système. Ainsi, cette continuelle résurgence menace aujourd'hui directement la dignité humaine au travail et par delà même, le coeur du Contrat Social.

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This article examines why employer opposition is stimulated by the introduction of statutory union recognition provisions in Britain, Ireland and the US. It examines the impact of the provisions for encouraging union organizing, which in turn stimulates employer anti-unionism, which then negates the intention of the provisions.

This dissertation examines how firm-specific behavior concerning factors of production is shaped by institutional constraints in development countries. The initial two chapters analyze how firms in Brazil compensate workers for their labor: the first centers on the role of the collective bargaining framework, and the second quantifies the impact of firms on the racial wage gap. The final chapter focuses on firms' use of credit for working capital in response to disruptive periods of violence during Mexico's Drug War. Firms compensate workers not only with wages, but also with other job characteristics that the labor literature broadly refers to as amenities. However, it is hard to study amenity compensation because we rarely observe variation in amenities across establishments in some systematic way. One exception is the comprehensive set of amenities codified in the text of collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) that unions negotiate with employers. In chapter 1, I leverage a reform that automatically extended all existing CBAs in Brazil to analyze the impact of this new collective bargaining framework on firm compensation, as measured by wages and amenities, as well as subsequent selection effects in the workforce. To quantify the value workers place on amenities secured by unions, I measure how textual elements in CBAs influence an establishment's ability to poach workers from other employers, conditional on wages, using data on the universe of CBAs merged with an administrative linked employer-employee dataset. I find that automatic extensions increase compensation by 1.6-3.8% when unions are strong---an effect that is driven by additional amenities whose value more than offsets foregone wage gains. These changes in compensation lead to an increase in hiring concentrated among low-skill workers, implying an elasticity of labor supply to the affected firms of around 2. Further evidence suggest that unions reduce compensation inequality within establishments. While union-driven changes to firm compensation can lead to an influx of low skill workers, how firms select and pay workers can have important consequences for wage disparities between groups. In Chapter 2 (work co-authored with François Gerard, Edson Severnini, and David Card), we measure the effects of firms' employment and wage setting policies on racial pay differences in Brazil. We find that nonwhites are less likely to work at firms that pay more to all race groups. This sorting pattern explains about 20% of the white-nonwhite wage gap for both genders. Moreover, the pay premiums offered by different employers are also compressed for nonwhites relative to whites. This within-firm differential wage setting contributes another 5% of the overall gap. We then explore to what extent the under-representation of nonwhites at higher-paying firms is due to the selective skill mix at these workplaces. Using a counterfactual based on the observed skill distribution at each firm and the nonwhite shares in different skill groups in the local labor market, we conclude that assortative matching accounts for about two- thirds of the underrepresentation gap for both men and women. The remainder reflects an unexplained preference for white workers at higher-paying firms. Interestingly, the wage losses associated with unexplained sorting and differential wage setting are largest for nonwhites with the highest levels of general skills. This suggests that the allocative costs of race-based preferences may be relatively large in Brazil. The first two chapters reveal that firms exercise some discretion over compensation and hiring within the context of institutions such as collective bargaining and nondiscrimination laws. But firms are also constrained by other institutions in how they carry out their day-to-day activities. In particular, the capacity of the State to exercise control over the legitimate use of force promotes the fundamental trust required between agents to make welfare-enhancing transactions. In Chapter 3, I analyze how drug-related violence affects credit use by micro and small enterprises (MSEs). Leveraging administrative data on working capital credit lines issued to MSEs in Mexico, I exploit geographic variation in homicide rates as well as exogenous kingpin captures to identify the causal effects of violence on credit use. I find that firms significantly increase the amounts drawn from their credit lines after experiencing violence shocks. More credit use could be motivated by rising short-term liquidity needs (distress story) or increasing risk of holding cash (substitution story). Rising default probabilities indicate signs of distress, although heterogeneity analyses reveal cash-for-credit substitution among non-revolving borrowers. I also find evidence that rising liquidity needs among distressed MSEs are likely driven by decreased economic activity rather than theft or extortion. As such, this paper highlights the important role that financial products play in terms of helping firms absorb violence shocks as well as providing safe alternatives to cash holdings under insecure environments.