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BOOK REVIEWS

Labour and the Ambiguities of the European Social Model

Unwrapping the European Social Modeledited by Maria Jepsen and Amparo Serrano

Pascual. Policy Press, Bristol, 2006, 260 pp., ISBN 10 1 86134 798 7, 65.00.

Struggling for a Social Europe: Neoliberal Globalization and the Birth of a European

Social Movement by Andy Mathers. Ashgate, Aldershot, 2007, 215 pp., ISBN

978 0 7546 4580 1, 50.00.

Trade Union Revitalisation: Trends and Prospects in 34 Countries edited by Craig

Phelan. Peter Lang, Bern, 2007, 582 pp., ISBN 978 3 03911 009 4, 59.90.

The concept of social Europe is part reality, part aspiration and part public relations.

The reality is that in broader comparative perspective, most countries of continental

western Europe have high levels of statutory employment protection, multi-employercollective bargaining and an institutionalized public status for trade unions and

employers organizations (also known as the social partners). The aspiration, shared

by most unions and parties of the left, is for an upwards harmonization of the

European social model and its extension, in particular, to the new EU member-states

to the east. The public relations dimension dates back over two decades in the

discourse of a social dimension to European integration, propagated by Jacques

Delors when president of the European Commission as an accompaniment to the

single market project. It has been reiterated by all his successors, even as they pursue

efforts to modernize social protections, which might more honestly be regarded as a

demolition exercise.How, then, do we make sense of this multifaceted and often contradictory idea of

social Europe? How far is its core of reality threatened by the intensification of a

market logic, at EU and at more general international level? What is the role in this

process of trade unions, as the main institutionalized stakeholders in social regulation

of employment? Do they have the will and capacity to resist the erosion of the models

of social protection, which until recently were taken-for-granted features of the indus-

trial relations landscape? These questions are at least part of the focus of all three

works under review.

Jepsen and Serrano Pascual, in introducing their volume, note that the concept of

a European social model (ESM) is highly ambiguous (p. 1), and often derives

meaning only through an explicit or implicit contrast with the United States. This

imprecision and ambiguity render the notion a politically constructed project (p. 37)

deployed by European policy makers to legitimize an individualization of social

protections and a subordination of employee rights to the dictates of competitiveness.

British Journal of Industrial Relations doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8543.2008.00712.x

47:1 March 2009 00071080 pp. 180202

Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2009. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd,9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.


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The body of the book co-ordinated by the European Trade Union Institute

(ETUI), the research arm of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC)

consists of a set of thematic contributions, for the most part by academic experts.

Goetschy, writing on the community social model, initially takes a less sceptical

view than the editors, regarding the concept as a valuable analytical tool (p. 47).

Her main focus, though, is on the evolution of social policy at EU level, seen as a

deliberate trade-off for progress in economic integration (p. 53). She notes the frag-

mentation of EU social policy interventions, adding that the Commission approach

is inherently elitist, with a dominant effort to reduce political issues to purely tech-

nical choices. She also emphasizes that social policy measures are subordinated to

economic policies, which are increasingly deflationary and deregulatory in charac-

ter. In some ways complementary is the chapter by Keune on the ESM and eastern

enlargement. He stresses that there was an elaborate state socialist welfare state,

which to some extent cushioned the disruptive impact of economic restructuring in

the 1990s. But he adds that diversity among the new member-states in terms ofpatterns of welfare provision, relative poverty levels and income inequality was as

great as in the West though welfare expenditure in all cases as a percentage

of GDP remains very low and far below the average for the EU15 (p. 184). Given

the lack of a homogeneous ESM in the West, and the priority of economic

over social objectives in the enlargement process, it is not surprising that there

has been little upwards convergence. A different aspect of enlargement is considered

by Lafoucriere and Green, the role of social dialogue. They discuss the efforts to

construct tripartite institutions in the new member-states, but emphasize the

obstacles notably, the lack of representative employers organizations and

conclude sombrely that a failure to fill the gap may discredit the rather fragileESM (p. 251).

Salverda addresses the common argument that the ESM, by creating rigidities in

the labour market, results in lower employment rates and higher unemployment than

in the USA. He notes that (un)employment rates vary substantially within both the

EU and the USA. Much of the aggregate gap reflects the more rapid increase in

manufacturing productivity in the EU up to the mid-1990s, and the lower compen-

sating growth in low-wage service employment. Paradoxically, greater institutional-

ized wage moderation in Europes co-ordinated market economies may also have

depressed aggregate demand, with negative employment effects.

Many of the subsequent chapters consider aspects of the European EmploymentStrategy (EES) explicitly designed to redress the presumed gap between Europe and

the USA. Msesdttir focuses on the link between the EES, the ESM and gender

equality, identifying a dual policy shift. First, the emphasis has changed from anti-

discrimination to the reconciliation of work and family life; second, hard law has

increasingly given way to soft processes of target setting, benchmarking and peer

review (the open method of co-ordination). She concludes (p. 161) that the EUs

regulatory paradigm as it relates to gender equality is patchy and involves contradic-

tory objectives. Salais examines more generally the politics of indicators within the

EES, and argues that there is inbuilt bias in the measurement of employment perfor-

mance. For example, employment ratios are calculated on the basis of any positionregarded as a job regardless of length, number of hours worked perweek, status, or any

other aspect (p. 191). If the raw data were corrected for hours worked, the superior

performance of the UK compared with France would disappear. A quality vocational

education system, provided outside the firm, paradoxically deflates the employment

ratio for young people. Such biases matter, Salais argues, because governments are

Book Reviews 181

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encouraged to adopt policies that improve their scores rather than to achieve real

improvements in labour market outcomes.

Handler provides a critique of workfare, which he equates with what in Eurospeak

is known as activation. His chapter in effect summarizes his (2004) book on Social

Citizenship and Workfare in the United States and Western Europe, which I have

reviewed elsewhere; his evidence derives mainly from the USA, but he insists that the

EU has moved radically in the same direction, fundamentally altering the ESM.

Barbier takes a different approach to the same issue. The notion of activation, he

suggests, is as ambiguous as that of the ESM itself. Certainly Europe has seen

significant dilution and redefinition of traditional social protection, but the shifts in

the main have been pragmatic (directed towards economies in public expenditure

and specific labour market outcomes) rather than doctrinal (driven by an ideological

commitment to labour market deregulation). Despite some similarities, European

activation differs significantly from American workfare even in the case of the UK,

the closest American analogue in Western Europe. Similar issues are addressed byBonvin, who also identifies a threefold transformation of welfare systems involving

activation, individualization and decentralization (p. 213), but he too insists that the

reconfigured ESM is still distinct from the US model in terms of a greater emphasis on

social cohesion and redistribution.

Overall, this volume shows a critical and sceptical view of the ESM, whether as

reality, project or ideology. This is consistent with a distinct distance between the

perspectives of the ETUI and those of its parent ETUC. This was clearly demon-

strated, after the books publication, in contrasting approaches to flexicurity. In the

first half of 2007, Keune and Jepsen (the two ETUI contributors to the volume)

published a devastating critique of the European Commissions advocacy of theconcept under the title Not Balanced and Hardly New (now, as far as I can tell,

removed from the ETUI website). The dominant drift of EU policy, they argued, was

to weaken employee protections while offering few compensating measures to mitigate

the resulting insecurity of employment; flexicurity is a mendacious rhetorical device

to camouflage the harsher realities of current labour market policy. Though some

subsequent ETUC declarations echoed this sceptical stance, in October, it agreed with

the employers organizations a joint analysis of the key challenges facing Europes

labour markets that embraced without criticism the Commissions approach.

The tension between European trade unionisms roles on the one hand as defender

of worker interests against growing threats to employment security and welfareprotections and on the other as social partner seeking consensual engagement with

the EU policy-making elite, is a leitmotiv of Mathers study. In many respects, it is a

strangely constructed, if often fascinating work. In part, it is a sharp critique of the

neoliberal direction of EU integration, and the double-think underlying ETUC

backing for the main drift of Commission policies. In part, it is a documentation and

celebration of the new social movements that have mobilized more forcefully in

protest at the weakening of employment protections and the growth of social exclu-

sion, in part a critical review of the writings of the new social democratic left and of

more explicitly anti-capitalist theorists.

The empirical peg on which the book is hung is the Euromarches, which began as aseries of protests in 1979, culminating in a large demonstration at the Amsterdam EU

summit. Mathers participated in many of the follow-up actions in subsequent years,

observing the events and interviewing three dozen of the participants.

The movement was a loose transnational network involving activists primarily

engaged in national protests against unemployment and poverty. For these activists,

182 British Journal of Industrial Relations



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the deflationary macroeconomic regime imposed by the Economic and Monetary

Union (EMU) was the cause, or at least the amplifier, of such social deprivations, and

the transnational movement therefore took shape as a counter-politics to the EU

summits. Mathers indicates many of the internal tensions (which to any student of

trade union history will be familiar). Was the campaign simply aiming to achieve

immediate improvements in the conditions of the unemployed and socially margin-

alized, to demand job-creating measures, and to resist attacks on public welfare?

Should it encompass broader issues such as war and racism? Was it opposed to

specific EU policies, or to the EU itself? Was it committed to the long-term goal of

abolishing capitalism, as the only answer to poverty and unemployment; in which case

were the concrete aims enunciated essentially transitional demands? Such questions

underlay many of the internal divisions over policy and methods. Those who called

for the right to work clashed with those who insisted, we dont want work, we

demand money (p. 76), so one contentious issue was the goal of a citizens income.

How far should protest actions break the law? In the course of the mobilizations,some participants, adopting the slogan cant pay, wont pay, insisted on the right to

use public transport without tickets or even on free shopping (pp. 667); others

insisted that this would alienate popular support.

Who was actually involved in the Euromarches? From Mathers own account,

though he focuses rather little on this, it is clear that the participants were relatively

few in numbers (the 50,000 claimed marchers in Amsterdam in 1997 were never

matched in subsequent actions), and were drawn in the main from small leftist parties,

protest campaigns and oppositional trade union organizations. Perhaps underlying

these characteristics, one might note the perennial problem of organizing movements

of the unemployed: that the jobless typically divide between the fatalistic and demor-alized, and those who define themselves not as unemployed but as job seekers. And

indeed, to varying degrees, unemployment typically is a transitional state, and the

turnover in composition makes continuous association virtually impossible. Thus,

unemployed struggles are commonly led by proxy by political activists. It is interest-

ing to note della Portas (2006) study of Italian participants in the European Social

Forum (a movement which clearly overlapped with the Euromarches): roughly a

quarter were employees, 1 in 10 were unemployed, the great majority were students.

There is a fateful dynamic that deserves more explicit attention. Activists protesting

against the neoliberal drift in EU policy were, almost inevitably, radical and unrep-

resentative; and this in turn reinforced the reluctance of the official representatives ofEuropean labour to endorse the protests, locking them even more firmly into the

elitist social dialogue of the Brussels establishment. And this enhanced the scepti-

cism, even contempt, for official trade unionism on the part of those with an impas-

sioned objection to neoliberalism.

Is there an alternative? There is by now a substantial literature on social movement

unionism. The concept is often ambiguous but implies, first, a broader programmatic

orientation than collective bargaining with employers (and indeed also with govern-

ments), second, an increased readiness to mobilize members and supporters in collec-

tive action, and third, a willingness to work in alliance with campaigning groups and

NGOs outside the established boundaries of the labour movement. With tradeunions around the world declining in membership and influence, recovering their

mission as social movements is widely regarded as a necessary element in any recov-

ery, a view shared by many of the contributors to Trade Union Revitalisation.

The history of trade unionism is one of survival and continuing adaptation,

writes Phelan at the end of his introduction to the volume. The scale and scope of

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experimentation taking place in trade union movements today is testimony not just to

the depth of the crisis they face but also to the possibility of resurgence in the years

ahead (p. 33).

The book covers an impressive range of 34 countries. Inevitably, there is a trade-off

of breadth against depth, with roughly a dozen pages for most chapters. This may be

contrasted with the somewhat more detailed treatment of fewer countries in the recent

collection by Bieler et al. (2008). There is a particularly strong coverage of Latin

America and Asia (five chapters each), though surprisingly, the only African countries

included are South Africa and Cameroon. However, half the cases are European: 10

of the old EU members in the west, 5 of the new member-states from central Europe,

together with Russia and Ukraine (and Turkey, a candidate country). Given the

overall theme of this review, I will focus on the EU countries.

A decade ago, an edited collection on trade union modernization in Europe

(Mckenberger et al. 1996) offered precious little evidence on the phenomenon in

question. And despite Phelans introductory enthusiasm, his authors provide onlylimited examples of revitalization. The accounts of most countries stress defensive-

ness, lack of imagination and reluctance to abandon old recipes in the face of new

challenges. Where experimentation is more apparent, as Webster and Buhlungu

comment in the case of South Africa, initiatives are largely ad hoc, inchoate and

uncoordinated (p. 429). In the British case, as Fairbrother shows (though like

Phelan, his conclusion is upbeat), there have been extensive debates about revitali-

sation (p. 156), but the responses have been fragmented and often contradictory. In

Germany, argue Behrens, Fichter and Frege, there has been a striking level of

activity in a variety of union policy fields but a failure to generalize and co-ordinate

such initiatives (p. 184). Dutch unions have suffered almost as severely as in Britain,and indeed have recently achieved some recovery, but Beukema concludes that they

still need to initiate a candid debate on the nature, ultimate ends and means of

revitalisation (p. 196). Swedish unions, writes Kjellberg (p. 281), are caught in a

dilemma between massive job losses and accepting worsened employment condi-

tions; however, they respond that their legitimacy is likely to suffer. In general,

the position in central and eastern Europe appears even less encouraging. Overall,

it seems, the authors find it easier to suggest what trade unions shouldbe doing

in order to revitalize than to present a persuasive case that they actually are

revitalizing.

In the context of the comprehensive challenges facing trade unions, and not leastthe erosion of a policy consensus on the meaning of social Europe, the implications

seem sombre. Many of the problems afflicting national unions are external in origin,

but they are forced to concentrate on firefighting at local level. Many authors note

the importance of international involvements, but the construction of real interna-

tional capacity and cross-national agreement on a common strategy still seems

remote.

Richard Hyman

London School of Economics

References

Bieler, A., Lindberg, I. and Pillay, D. (eds.) (2008). Labour and the Challenges of Globalization.

London: Pluto.




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della Porta, D. (2006). From corporatist unions to protest unions?. In C. Crouch and W.

Streeck (eds.). The Diversity of Democracy: Corporatism, Social Order and Political Conflict.

Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 7198.

Handler, J. F. (2004). Social Citizenship and Workfare in the United States and Western Europe:

The Paradox of Inclusion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Mckenberger, U., Schmidt, E. and Zoll, R. (eds.) (1996). Die Modernisierung der Gewerk-schaften in Europa. Mnster: Westflisches Dampfboot.

Recent Developments in the Economics of Training, edited by Francis Green, An Elgar

Reference Collection, Cheltenham, UK, 2007, 2 volume set, xvii + 1059 pp.,

ISBN 978 1 84542 546 3, 260.00.

This two-volume set comprises 46 journal articles, published between 1994 and 2005,

along with an interpretative introduction. It is the successor to the comparably large

collection edited by Ashenfelter and Lalonde (The Economics of Training, Elgar,Cheltenham, 1996). Its principal audience will be academic economists, but it will also

interest other social scientists and policy analysts.

The collection documents the contemporary explosion of research on the econom-

ics of training. The two foci are employer-sponsored continuing training in the private

sector and public training programmes, which means little coverage for both voca-

tional education and individually sponsored training.

The selection is taken entirely from peer-refereed journals, primarily in mainstream

economics, but also in management science. The articles are grouped into four cat-

egories: in Volume I, the theory of training, evidence on the determinants of training

in the private sector, and assessments of public training programmes; in Volume II,evidence on the effect of training on workers and employers. Implications for public

policy crop up frequently.

The innovations on view, relative to the predecessor collection, start with the

refocusing of theoretical interest from outcomes under perfect competition, in

markets for products, capital, labour and risk bearing, to those under imperfect

competition in markets for skilled labour (alone). Employers who provide transfer-

able (or general) training are assumed to possess monopsony power over their

ex-trainees, as a result of heterogeneous skill requirements, or asymmetric informa-

tion and contractual incompleteness. Employers can therefore retain many ex-trainees

despite paying them less than their marginal products, but the employer must alsobear at least part of the costs of training. This literature, led by the work of Stevens,

provides a much-needed theoretical foundation for the poaching externality between

employers, and the resulting under-supply of employer-sponsored training.

A central prediction of recent models is that training increases workers pay less

strongly than their productivity, even when the skills involved are highly transferable.

It has become possible to test the prediction as a result of the second salient innova-

tion reflected in this collection: the development of datasets containing both produc-

tivity and employers attributes, in contrast to the previous near-total confinement of

data to individuals attributes. The evidence proves largely consistent with prediction:

training raises pay for the individuals or plants involved, but much less strongly than

it raises productivity.

The introduction of data on employers involves a further innovation: research that

treats training as part of wider packages of personnel (HRM) practices, often termed

high-performance work practices. These studies also find that training, viewed as a

salient component of such practices, increases productivity. They suggest, however,

Book Reviews 185



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that training may not work on its own, given significant complementarities, both

between training and other innovative HRM practices, such as teamworking, and

between it and product market strategies, such as the importance of increasing

product quality relative to cost-cutting.

A further development is the universal attention paid to estimation strategy in

empirical studies of both the determinants and the effects of training. The biases

potentially caused by the selection of individuals and firms into training activity

according to unobserved attributes (e.g. motivation and innovativeness, respectively),

by the endogeneity of training itself (e.g. timing it to coincide with slack periods in

production, when productivity is low), and by lags between the occurrence of training

and its effects are widely recognized. Most studies respond with enhanced economet-

ric methods, primarily fixed effects estimators and instrumental variables. When such

antidotes cannot be used, as when only one-off cross-sectional data are available, the

potential biases in any causal interpretation of statistical associations are recognized.

The analytical sophistication of the research is, however, accompanied in some casesby an overestimation of the efficacy of the various estimation methods. It also means

hard going for the technically non-adept reader.

A related improvement is the elaboration of measures of training itself, which in

several studies involves its duration as well as its incidence, and in some cases,

breakdowns into its various components, formal and informal, off-the-job and

on-the-job. At the same time, information on training remains strictly limited. The

final two articles, by Bartel and by Collier, Green and Peirson, bring out the paucity

of the evidence on the financial benefit of training to employers and the resulting

importance of managerial beliefs for training decisions.

A final innovation is the inclusion of evidence for countries other than the UnitedStates and the UK. Australia and seven continental EU countries are covered in at

least one article each. Three further studies, all concerned with HRM practices, take

a comparative approach and spread the net yet wider, to embrace Japan and the

transition economies. The latter articles apart, the expansion of territorial coverage

reveals few differences between advanced economies in the determinants and effects of

training. The inclusion of evidence for different countries would be potentially more

informative were it to concern initial training, for which cross-national differences in

institutions and practices are more marked, and were it to involve a comparative

rather than a single-country approach.

One limitation of recent research on training incidence is the predominance ofreduced form specifications, and the paucity of models and evidence that distinguish

between supply-side and demand-side factors. The repetition of broadly similar par-

ticipation equations across different datasets and countries brings diminishing

returns. The exceptions are Stevens, for the theory of training, and Andrews, Bradley

and Stott, for the evidence. The latter authors find substantial excess demand for

employer-provided training in the UK, and thereby provide the only direct evidence

of the non-price rationing of access to that type of training.

Readers with an institutional bent will encounter only selective attention to insti-

tutional attributes, despite the insights into institutions that economics can provide

and the editors recognition of their importance (the way that institutions shape boththe incentives and the preferences and attitudes of trainees and trainers; p. xiii).

The leading exception is the interpretation of apprentice contracts by Malcomson,

Maw and McCormick as a corrective to market failure when the content of training

programmes cannot be observed by the interested parties. The implications of trade

unionism and minimum wages for training patterns are also well represented.




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Previous evidence for the United States and the UK, suggesting positive and uncertain

net effects respectively, is reinforced. Moreover, Booth and Chatterji analyse plant-

level collective bargaining as a corrective to the under-supply of training, insofar as it

commits the employer not to underpay ex-trainees, who consequently quit less fre-

quently, which encourages employers to offer more training; and Bheim and Booth

introduce such institutional details as craft unionism and bargaining level and

agendas in studying the effects of unionism on training in Britain.

An institutional weakness is, however, visible in the assumption, standard in recent

models of training, that the pay of trainees is determined by competitive clearing in the

market for training places: what Leuven terms the free entry at the start of period 1

assumption (p. 89). The assumption conflicts with evidence of the non-price rationing

of access to training (above). Instead, trainee pay may be determined collectively, by

some mix of employee norms (in which any reduction in pay for trainees during

employer-sponsored training is viewed as inequitable), employee bargaining power,

and administered pay structures, which prevents employers from passing any trainingcosts to trainees by way of lower pay. Apprenticeship contracts constitute a potential

exception to such constraints, insofar as they legitimate the separate treatment of and

lower pay for trainee compared with non-trainee employees. But the evidence on that

is confined to the United States, whose small-scale apprenticeship system functions

along different lines from those of other countries, not least in catering primarily to

adults.

The collection touches only incidentally on other salient institutional attributes,

including: the interplay of internal and occupational labour markets; multiple equi-

libria, at sector or country level, in skill stocks and training flows; corporate finance,

ownership and governance (shareholder vs stakeholder variants); and the functioningof the training market through which public training programmes are often

organized.

Finally, the section comprising evaluations of public training programmes provides

no more favourable a picture than did its predecessor. The studies included here rely

heavily on econometric modelling an orientation that aligns poorly with the US

governments contemporary reliance on experimental evaluations. The result is a

lacuna within the scope chosen for the collection: there is no mention of the recent

experimental evaluation of the long-running and intensive Job Corps programme for

disadvantaged youth, even though its findings have undermined the received verdict,

based on an earlier econometric evaluation, that the programme works, in costbenefit terms, for the economy and society.

Taken as a whole, this collection is welcome, both as a guide to recent mainstream

research, in both mainstream economics and management science, on employee train-

ing, and as a vivid demonstration of the increased range and sophistication of that

research.

Paul Ryan

Kings College London

Social Democracy Inside Out: Partisanship and Labor Market Policy in Industrialised

Democracies by David Rueda, Oxford University Press, New York, 2007, 264

pp., ISBN 978 0 19 921635 2, 18.99, paper.

Since the onset of hard economic times in the OECD after the 1970s, one argument

seems to have survived the dramatic shifts in the labour markets of western countries:

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social democratic (SD) governments care more about high employment than low

inflation. Ruedas book is one of a small but growing group of studies that takes issue

with this assumption and examines the extent to which SD governments promote

policies that further employment for the unemployed as opposed to job security for

the employed insiders. His conclusions are sobering, both for those of us who care

about decent work for all, and for the academic debate that was built on this premise.

Rather than caring for the outsiders through active labour market policies, relaxing of

hiring and firing rules, and training programmes, SD governments have made sure

that those in good jobs keep them and by and large ignored the others.

This book is, in line with much scholarship in comparative political economy and

labour relations these days, built on two complementary modes of analysis. The first

part offers a quantitative analysis of partisanship and labour market policies in most

of the OECD countries, which starts from the differences in preferences of workers

and unemployed, and then links these findings to the partisan nature of governments

and the labour market policies they pursue. The second part offers two thematicallyorganized chapters, one on employment protection legislation and one on active

labour market policies, which compare developments in Spain, the Netherlands and

the UK. The first is a country that experienced a long SD rule in the 1980s and part

of the 1990s, the second, mixed SD-conservative governments, and the third, a long

rule of conservative governments. Both offer the reader a wide array of interesting

data and arguments, and the analysis and narratives in both cases are systematic,

didactic and well organized. The conclusion they lead to is that SD governments do

very little to promote employment for those without jobs while promoting employ-

ment protection for insiders.

This is an important argument, and therefore warrants a careful critical reading.Let us start with the case studies. It is somewhat strange to make an argument on the

link between partisanship and labour market policies without including at least one of

the Scandinavian countries, where SD governments have been in office for most of the

post-war period, and where active labour market policies are most developed. Sweden

and Denmark are cases in point here: under the RehnMeidner model, Swedish

growth was based on forcing uncompetitive companies out of the market, retraining

their then unemployed workers and reallocating them in dynamic growing companies,

while Denmark has surprisingly low employment protection but well-developed

retraining arrangements. Moreover, as Rueda himself admits in the case study chap-

ters, the link between partisanship and active labour market policies is very weak inthe three countries he examines: it does not seem to matter all that much whether SD

or conservative governments are in office. What is clear, though, is that SD govern-

ments are deeply reluctant to relax employment protection but that is at worst a sin

of omission, not of commission, and it is hardly surprising that SD governments

refuse to hollow out job security.

Turning to the statistical analysis, then, what struck me was that one critical

dimension of governing whether this takes place with absolute majorities (as in a

Westminster system) or in coalitions resulting from an electoral system that is built on

proportional representation (PR) found no place in the analysis as a control. Yet

we know that one of the reasons why the Thatcher governments were able to pushthrough labour market reforms was because she controlled a single-party majority in

parliament a situation that is unlikely to occur in PR systems.

Any statistical analysis of this kind depends critically on the precise coding of cases.

And here may be a significant issue to explore. Simply relying on the seats of SD and

other left parties in government, as Rueda does along with most others in this field,




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could be misleading in countries where Christian Democratic parties have a strong

labour wing, a situation that is prevalent in many continental European countries

since the papal encyclical De Rerum Novarum, which aimed to give the working class

a voice in Catholic (later Christian Democratic) parties. In Belgium, the Netherlands,

Germany and Austria, these labour wings of the Christian Democratic parties are

often implicitly or explicitly allied with Christian or non-denominational trade

unions, and focusing only on SD and other left parties ignores that a non-socialist left

may also exist in the conservative parties. Think also about how difficult it is to find

significant differences between the dominant centrist party in France (the Gaullists

and their successors) and the left on issues of labour market policy, and ask if the

Italian Christian Democratic parties and their successors in Italy are conservative in

this regard. For at least 6 of the 16 cases, a more nuanced coding might therefore be

more appropriate but with potentially very different overall results.

Overall, the book takes most of the conventional wisdom in standard economics,

particularly the idea that employment protection is a cause of unemployment, toouncritically for granted. The sad fact is that there are virtually no studies that

unequivocally confirm this position. Moreover, it is left unclear how exactly would

active labour market policies operate in the depressed macroeconomic environment

that much of the OECD has known for the last 20 years, since the institution of

hawkish independent central banks and the process that led to the DM-bloc first and

EMU later? Too often, they lead simply to a redistribution of available jobs (as in the

Netherlands) instead of a net growth. Could it be, therefore, that rather than stub-

bornly defending the interests of their insiders, SD governments are aware of their

limited capacity to influence job growth directly in such an environment, and thus

have good reasons to keep on protecting those who depend on work for their income?

Bob Hancke

London School of Economics and Political Science

The Global Korean Motor Industry The Hyundai Motor Companys Global Strategy

by Russell D. Lansbury, Chung-Sok Suh and Seung-Ho Kwon. Routledge,

London, 2007, ISBN 978 0 415 41366 4, 75.00.

The first well-known model of automobile manufacturing was Fordism, a massproduction system of large numbers of inexpensive automobiles using the scientific

management concept. The success of Fordism in the early twentieth century made the

United States the icon of automobile manufacturing at that time. Changes in the

product market and customer taste in the later part of the twentieth century, however,

resulted in the advent of post-Fordism, such as the lean production principle adopted

in Toyota, which was based upon the just-in-time and supply chain principles,

employee involvement and extensive quality programmes. Many believed that lean

production or the Toyota production model was the most efficient and effective

system for assembling motor vehicles and the world production systems would soon

converge on the Toyota model. However, convergence towards the Toyota model hasnot occurred. Instead, lean production, Fordism and various types of hybrid systems

coexist in the world automobile industry.

This book describes a story of the old system, the Fordist model, in the twenty-first

century using the case of Hyundai Motor Company (HMC), a Korean automobile

manufacturer, and Hyundai Motor India (HMI), HMCs subsidiary company in

Book Reviews 189



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India. HMC, a latecomer in the automobile industry, has been quite successful in

manufacturing high-quality and low-priced automobiles. Since the painful setback

in the wake of the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, the market share of HMC

has increased in the global market, and the quality of Hyundai automobiles has

improved remarkably, as indicated by the recent JD Power quality surveys. This

book attempts to provide some explanations for the remarkable performance of the

Hyundai Way.

HMC first adopted the Fordist model in the 1970s, and later added some aspects of

the lean production system, resulting in a hybrid model relying heavily on scientific

management principles. HMC applied the Fordist production approach to site design

and production processes and the lean production approach to the management of

work relations practices, such as quality management techniques. HMC utilizes dif-

ferent hybrid systems on different settings: a labour-intensive, semi-mechanized

system in HMI, and capital-intensive, fully mechanized systems in the Alabama plant

in the United States and the Ulsan plant, Korea. In particular, HMI adopted ahigh-quality, low-cost business strategy by utilizing its relatively well-educated and

low-paid local labour force. HMI also embraced the hierarchical Indian caste system

in its management by reflecting the caste composition in Indian society in the firms

employment structure.

The richness of factual details and the depth of coverage of the book will impress

many readers, and it will serve as a good descriptive documentation of HMI. This

book has a very logical sequence from a broad picture of global trends in the auto

industry to the current status of the Korean auto industry, and to a description of a

single plant in India. Thus, readers can easily grasp the whole scene from the world

market to a local plant.Following a brief introduction (ch. 1), the book discusses the recent development

of the global auto industry (ch. 2), the status of the Korean auto industry in the

global auto market (ch. 3) and the origin and impressive growth of Hyundai Motors

(ch. 4). The main part of the book deals with HMI: production systems and supplier

relations of HMI (ch. 5) and the management of employment relations (ch. 6)

in comparison with HMCs Ulsan plant in Korea. Finally, the book provides a

summary and brief theoretical implications of the remarkable performance of HMC

(ch. 7). The most notable aspect of this book is very rich statistical data displayed in

lots of tables along with a comprehensive comparison with HMCs Ulsan plant in

Korea. The richness and objectiveness of factual data adds credibility to the argu-ments presented in the book.

Although this book attempts to draw theoretical and practical implications from

the case of HMI, some of the logical questions were not answered. First, it seems that

the lean production, Fordist and hybrid models have been quite successful under

different circumstances. The authors may need to add a section defining the business

and environmental characteristics that make the hybrid model more efficient and

effective than either the Fordist or lean production model. Such a discussion might

explain why convergence towards the newest model does not occur and the old model

still survives and prospers despite many well-known problems.

Second, one of the widely recognized failings of scientific management is the qualityproblem inherent in the mass production process. Scientific management is believed to

result in repetitive and simplified tasks, de-skilling, and fatigue and monotony, which

may be responsible for poor quality products. The case of HMC, however, shows that

remarkable quality improvement is attainable even under the scientific management

system. In seems that the Hyundai Way was able to take the best of both worlds: low




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costs and economies of scale in the Fordist model and high quality in the lean

production model. The authors need to explain how HMC has overcome the quality

problem, possibly by mentioning the extensive quality programmes in HMC and top

managements keen interest in the quality issue.

Factual developments after the publication of this book should be mentioned.

Although this book described HMI as a non-union plan, HMI was eventually union-

ized in July 2007. The non-union Works Committee was transformed into a union

through a series of strikes, as the authors hinted at the possibility of unionization in

the near future (p. 116). After the initial turmoil of labour disputes right after union-

ization, labour relations in HMI seem to be stabilized now.

Despite these limitations, this book will be of wide interest to readers who are

interested in HMCs global strategy as well as the world motor industry because of its

thorough coverage, useful data and its comparative implications. Indeed, as far as I

know, this book is the only comprehensive documentation of HMI.

Dong-One Kim

Business School, Korea University

Competing Claims in Work and Family Life by Tanja van der Lippe and Pascale Peters

(eds.). Edward Elgar, Cheltenham and Northampton, 2007, 278 pp., ISBN 978 1

84542 751 1, 59.95, hardback.

Against the background of dramatic changes in the labour market and the evolution

of new management principles, this book addresses issues that have pushed their wayto the forefront of the policy agenda: the pressure of increased demands on time, the

rise of the culture of long working hours and conflicts linked to the management of

everyday life. Although a large amount of research-based literature has already been

published in this area, all the contributors have provided some compellingly fresh

insights into how employees are balancing growing demands from the workplace with

the need to find time for their own private or family life.

Rationales underpinning trade-offs, negotiations and compromises made by

employees at the household level, in particular those facing family responsibilities, are

explored in several chapters, in particular the one written by Liana Sayer, who sheds

light on gender differences in multitasking. On the other hand, it is often mentionedthat family-friendly policies public and/or employer-driven may alleviate con-

straints weighing on working parents by providing in-kind and cash benefits, which

facilitate a better work/life balance. Most authors are nevertheless aware that ones

position in the occupational hierarchy (sometimes only measured through educa-

tional level) and patterns of organizational structures also matter.

In his cross-national comparative study (including the United States and Japan),

Manfred Garhammer argues that time-related pressure and increased overwork have

led to a deterioration in quality of life, a broad concept combining both subjective and

objective indicators. Placing emphasis on full-time employees, his analysis demon-

strates that life satisfaction is a socio-cultural construction with standards that varyaccording to ones surroundings. The chapter devoted to the United States by Judith

Treas and Christin Hilgeman brilliantly explains why longer work hours do not

automatically translate into a desire for more family time and that, at odds with

Hochschilds thesis, it is somewhat dubious to claim that the workplace has become

a refuge from the family. Their points are relevant and insightful, but we should bear

Book Reviews 191



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in mind that the American institutional and policy context is markedly different from

that found in European countries.

Susan Lewiss stimulating chapter focuses on the long working hours that are

endemic in the chartered accounting profession in Britain. Emphasis is put on the

complex bundle of explanatory factors that lead these employees to willingly devote

an excessive amount of time to their job. She combines two theoretical approaches:

one draws on the time and money exchanges inherent in the commodification of

time, the other examines formation of identity within specific occupational contexts

and its relationship to socially constructed time. There is evidence, however, of an

emerging counterculture, and the arguments put forward by proponents of this new

culture are illustrative of the different approach taken by many of the upcoming

generation.

As far as possibilities to cope with the conflicting demands of paid and unpaid work

are concerned, it has been largely documented that room for manoeuvre is class

bound and gender related. In line with this perspective, Tanja van der Lippe providesan original analysis by exploring the importance of trustworthiness in the decision-

making processes related to household outsourcing.

In all European countries, given the freedom to organize their time at will, most

entrepreneurs, executives, professionals and high-level management choose to work

long hours, which frequently spill over into the evenings and weekends. More spe-

cifically, Patricia van Echtelt, Arie Glebbeek, Rudi Wielers and Siegwart Lindenberg

put emphasis on the puzzle of unpaid overtime in the Netherlands. Against the

background of the development of post-Fordist organizations (epitomized by

knowledge-based organizations), this is a very relevant issue to address. In order to

explain the time-greedy nature of the workplace, they adequately used multi-leveltechniques. Results are stimulating and counter-intuitive: for instance, that

performance-based pay does not stimulate workers to put in extra hours.

Teleworking and telecommuting are the topics of the final two chapters and should

draw the attention of human resource departments in organizations trying to imple-

ment or develop these supposedly family-friendly policies for employees.

Seven out of the 15 chapters are devoted solely to the Netherlands. The UK, the

United States, Germany and Flanders are the other research fields (except in Gar-

hammers chapter). Regrettably, the rationale behind the selection of countries to be

represented is neither presented nor entirely justified. It should be kept in mind that

the Netherlands is classified, according to welfare states typologies, as belonging tothe cluster of countries qualified as one-and-a-half breadwinner model, together with

Germany and the UK. More specifically, the Netherlands is rather atypical in regards

to the patterns of female participation in the labour market: according to Eurostat, in

2006, this country exhibited the highest share in the EU of female employees working

part time (74 per cent), of which 57 per cent work less than 20 hours. As demonstrated

by Kea Tijdens in her chapter on Employees preferences for longer or shorter

working hours, this may explain why female employees in this country report rather

less friction between preferred and actual working hours than their male counterparts.

The Netherlands can therefore be regarded as a less than salient example of the

time-induced pressures faced in other countries where patterns of female participationin the workforce are very different. In France, for instance, the norm for employed

mothers is still to work full time, although part-time jobs have been increasing over

the last three decades due to legislation favourable to their development. Moreover, to

assess the importance of time constraints and workload at a macro level, one should

also consider demographic structures: the share of female employees who have




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children at home and the average number of children per woman must be taken into

account when explaining cross-national variations. In France, a country that demon-

strates along with Ireland the highest fertility rate in the EU, time and spatial

constraints are really at stake for women. The ways in which public policies support

working parents while promoting gender equality at home and in the workplace are

also of great significance and could have been used to shed light on the specificities of

the Netherlands in some research fields investigated in this book.

Despite these minor reservations, this book, well-structured and written by highly

qualified contributors, is a valuable contribution to the better understanding of the

variables that impact on the interplay between work and private life and successfully

provides a medium through which students in sociology and human resource man-

agement will be able to chart the shifting boundaries of their respective disciplines.

Jeanne Fagnani

Centre dEconomie de la SorbonneUniversity of Paris 1

Fading Corporatism by Guy Mundlak. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2007, 344 pp.,

ISBN 978 0 8014 4600 9, US$49.95, hardback.

Guy Mundlaks excellent book describes a very significant and rapid transformation

of Israeli industrial relations: from a mostly corporatist mode, resembling countries

such as Germany in many respects, to a mostly liberal mode resembling the United

States. It is a definitive analysis of the Israeli case; it also has significant potential forcatalyzing a new direction in analysis of industrial relations more generally.

Mundlak identifies three primary functions of industrial relations systems: first,

determination of the mechanism of regulation (denoted the metalevel); second, the

regulation (or borders of power) of the capitallabour relationship; and third, the

management of conflict among different groups of workers. After a historical section

exploring the foundations and development of Israeli corporatism (including its diver-

gence from the ideal type), Mundlak turns to his primary agenda, the analysis of the

transition to a more pluralist system, treating each of those three functions in separate

chapters.

The second and third aspects are the usual concerns of people who write aboutcorporatism and its alternatives. But the treatment of the first is probably the most

significant contribution the book makes to a more general understanding of industrial

relations (beyond the Israeli case). As a legal scholar, Mundlak is keen to demonstrate

the importance of law for understanding industrial relations systems. In regard to

corporatism, where it is often held that the absence of law is a distinguishing feature,

Mundlak shows that law nonetheless has central functions. In particular, the legal

process (e.g. legislative and judicial) helps to construct the relevant actors, to solidify

their place in the negotiation process and to defend that process from incursion by

other actors and mechanisms. There is nothing inevitable about the dominance of

particular incarnations of the social partners that result is determined in part bythe interventions of judges and legislators.

For the transformation of Israeli capitallabour relations, the key concept is juridi-

fication. As the relevance of the social partners in Israel was undermined, courts and

legislatures increased their assertiveness in the regulation of the labour market. The

Knesset (parliament) has been particularly active in creating or recognizing individual

Book Reviews 193



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rights, for example, non-discrimination on grounds of gender, invoking a body of

human rights principles that were essentially alien to the more collectivist tradition of

corporatism. The Israeli courts have reinforced this process, and the courts (particu-

larly the Labour Court) have adopted a more activist stance in the more general

project of regulating the labour market. In the past, the Knesset and the courts

preferred to defer to the agreements negotiated by the social partners, but in the

pluralist mode, both bodies are much more willing to assess, modify and even reject

those agreements in light of more general legal principles.

The overall result is an industrial relations system that is similar, in key and perhaps

surprising ways, to the American flexible labour market, with much greater primacy

for the direct relationship between the employer and the individual worker. Unions

and peak organizations still exist, but they function in a very different environment.

Mundlak defines his purpose as analytical and refrains from offering judgments on

whether this result is to be preferred to the older system.

For observers of industrial relations in Israel, this book is likely to be the definitivesource for many years: it is thorough and analytically powerful. The complexity of the

analysis, as against satisfaction with a less demanding set of answers, is something I

can only describe as inspirational. (It does mean, however, that reading it from cover

to cover requires a significant investment.) As such, the argument resists efforts at a

concise summary (perhaps a warning in relation to my attempt in the preceding

paragraphs).

For the field of industrial relations more generally, the impact of this book will hinge

on whether readers are convinced by the claim that the kind of legal analysis offered

here is useful for other cases as well. The last two chapters summarize the contribution

of that analysis for the Israeli case, arguing that the focus must be on the objectives oflabour law as against its functions or institutions. This argument helps clarify the place

of law in corporatist systems: while the social partners tend to see law as a threat and

thus try to keep it in its place, an outside observer can perceive that the system itself

requires strong legal foundations in a more general sense. For example, there was

extensive recourse to legal mechanisms, such as extension orders and derogation, that

were nonetheless not law in a strict sense; more generally, law plays a central role in

preserving the autonomy of the social agents from legal intervention (p. 255).

In a liberal system, the role of law is more explicit and salient even though some

of the institutions involved have not changed from the corporatist period. In other

words, if we focus only on the institutions, we might underestimate what has changed;in reality, the objectives have changed significantly, something that becomes particu-

larly clear in the discussion of juridification.

My hunch is that some potential readers might fail to appreciate the potential

usefulness of this book for a more general understanding of contemporary industrial

relations, simply because it is not a comparative work that treats the core cases (e.g.

Germany). This would be a most unfortunate mistake. For one thing, much can be

learned from consideration of a non-standard case. More generally, the book offers

more than a historical treatment of a single case. In addition to the argument for greater

attention to law in industrial relations research, it is a model for analysis of any case.

There is clearly much that could be done via comparative analysis of a wider rangeof countries. This book should function as an essential building block in any future

work on that task.

David Bartram

University of Leicester




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EU Intervention in Domestic Labour Law by Phil Syrpis. Oxford University Press,

New York, 2007, xx + 177 pp., ISBN 978 0 19 927720 0, 50.00.

Is the EU a friend or a foe to employees and their rights and interests? Certainly, over

the years, a body of legislation has been developed at EU level that has added to

employees individual and collective rights, making marked improvements to the

prevailing situation for workers in at least some jurisdictions. Further, in the past

decade, the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union has been adopted,

which contains an extensive set of social rights, seemingly sending signals about the

important status of social rights in the Union. However, recent case law from the

European Court of Justice has suggested a more negative role for the Union, with

established national labour law practices being challenged as being hindrances to the

European Community (EC) treatys fundamental free movement provisions. The

clash between economic and social concerns has been highlighted most clearly in cases

such as C-438/05 Viking Line, C-341/05 Lavaland C-346/06 Rffert. These cases haveseen service providers coming with their workforces from lower wage states and

challenging practices in higher wage states which have sought, through collective

means, to protect the higher level terms and conditions operating in these destination

states. In short, these cases have seen collective action (including proposed strike

action and blockades), which is designed to avoid incoming service providers under-

cutting locally agreed terms and conditions, conceptualized as a hindrance to funda-

mental free movement rights established under the EC treaty. These Article 43 and 49

EC economic rights to establishment and the provision of services in another state

may take precedence over the social rights of worker protection. While there is a

minimum core of rights (set out in the Posted Workers Directive, 96/71/EC) that mustbe respected at host state levels, action to achieve respect for anything over and above

these rights will be hard to justify. These cases are currently stimulating a lively debate

about the relative balancing of economic and social interests in the EU project, and

about the proper reach of EU law into national systems of labour law.

Although its publication predates these more recent cases, Phil Syrpis timely book

offers the reader a useful frame of reference to bring to debates about the appropriate

degree and methods of intervention by the EU into domestic labour law. Syrpis

stated aim is to provoke the reader into thinking about the roles that the European

Union does, and should play in this field (p. 1). In a clearly presented, accessible way,

Syrpis identifies three possible rationales on which EU intervention may plausibly befocused integrationist, economic and social. The first, integrationist rationale refers

to action by the EU that has the aim of establishing, or improving the functioning of

the European market (p. 4). The economic rationale, meanwhile, refers to action

taken to improve the performance of the European economy, for example by reduc-

ing unemployment, enhancing efficiency or improving Europes international com-

petitiveness (p. 5). Finally, there is the social rationale, which aims to improve the

position of workers (p. 5). As Syrpis shows, these rationales are contested, may be

incompatible, and, in terms of providing a legitimate basis for action, must further be

viewed in the light of competence questions, subsidiarity and proportionality. It is, as

Syrpis demonstrates, hard to identify any coherence and consistency in the rationalesthat have in fact underpinned the EUs interventions to date, which leaves the EU in

the uncomfortable position of having inadequate, unconvincing cases for much of its

intervention in the labour law field to date. Through a meticulous and rigorously

argued presentation, Syrpis details the possibilities for more robust, more legitimate

bases for EU intervention in domestic labour law.

Book Reviews 195



17/23

Both negative and positive integration and the rationales for them are considered in

the book. Negative integration, which involves the possible judicial striking down of

national provisions that offend against the treaty rights to free movement is particu-

larly topical, given the recent case law interventions by the Court in Viking Line, Laval

and Rffert. Positive integration meanwhile involves the adoption of secondary leg-

islation, such as minimum standard setting directives or the introduction of other

forms of policy steering tools, including the open method of co-ordination the

currently in vogue soft form of policy co-ordination, which includes benchmarking

and reporting and which receives particular attention in the book. In relation to

both negative and positive integration, the strongest, most convincing rationale is

presented as being an integrationist one, though Syrpis convincingly argues that this

certainly does not require the removal of all diversity and differences between national

labour law systems. Integration, he argues, does not demand harmonization. This has

implications for both the legislative and political organs of the EU and for the Court.

For the latter, for example, mere differences in systems should not be seen as prob-lematic from the perspective of integration, and a less blunt, more restricted approach

to identifying hindrances to free movement should be adopted than the one the Court

appears to currently favour (and which it appeared to apply in Viking Line, Lavaland

Rffert). Ultimately though, according to Syrpis, whatever the value of the integra-

tionist rationale, a recognition of the social is demanded if the EU is to meaningfully

engage with its citizens and regain the trust of its people (p. 164).

In short, Syrpis book is rigorous, readable and timely, and offers a rather different

focus from other contributions that form the ever-growing body of work on EU

labour law. While its intended readership may be those with a familiarity with EU law

and policy, it is certainly accessible to those without such a background, and will beinteresting reading for anyone who seeks an appreciation of what the EU can and

cannot do in the area of domestic labour and industrial relations.

Jo Hunt

Cardiff Law School, Cardiff University

Labour Relations in Central Europe. The Impact of Multinationals Money by Jochen

Tholen, with Ludovt Cziria, Eike Hemmer, Wiesawa Kozek and Zdenka Mans-

feldov. Ashgate, Aldershot, 2007, 196 pp., ISBN 978 0 7546 7093 3, 55.00,hardback.

Jochen Tholen of Bremen University already had two considerable achievements to

his name before even publishing this book: he had put together a research team with

three of the best industrial relations experts in Central Eastern Europe (Wiesawa

Kozek in Poland, Zdenka Mansfeldov in the Czech Republic, Ludovit Czria in

Slovakia) and gained research access to nine large multinationals operating in those

countries. As industrial relations scholars are frustrated by the limited expert net-

works available in the new EU member-states, and by multinationals reluctance to

discuss their operations in the region, the book stemming from that research deservesattention as a precious pioneering effort.

The structure of the book is simple and resembles a long research report: two

introductory chapters on the analytical framework and the overall picture of foreign

direct investment (FDI) in Central Eastern Europe (CEE) are followed by one chapter

on the supra-company level of industrial relations in the relevant countries, and by




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one (the longest) on the company case studies. The introduction clarifies that the book

is about Western European, but mostly German investors into Central Eastern

Europe (hence the titles wording of Central Europe), seen as a major factor in

todays global modernization processes brought about by growing corporate power.

The research included two steps a mapping of supra-company developments

through expert interviews, and company case studies and was carried out in

20022005. Research questions referred to the foreign investment effects on industrial

relations in the host countries as well as on European-level industrial relations,

especially the European Works Council (EWC).

The analytical framework chapter raises some intriguing issues, such as the mir-

roring processes of decentralization in Germany and CEE or the patchy path depen-

dency of post-communist industrial relations, whereas the chapter on FDI presents

interesting (although not always up-to-date) figures on the relevance of foreign capital

in CEE (in manufacturing, in 2001 it accounted for over one-third of employment,

and over two-thirds of investment and exports). Yet the core of the book is in thesubsequent empirical chapters.

The mapping of industrial relations and foreign investment at the supra-company

(country and sector) level illustrates the weakness of associations in the host countries,

both in industrial relations and in broader issues related to foreign investment. The

chapter describes the views of relevant actors both in Germany and in the three CEE

countries, paying particular attention to instances of cross-border interactions.

Important insights include the description of the cold feet with which western trade

unions (e.g. the European Metalworking Federation) approached integration with

CEE, and the lesser enthusiasm for social dialogue shown by CEE local managers as

compared with expatriates from Germany. Prominent space is devoted to the intro-duction (following the Directive on Information and Consultation) of hybrid (or

residual) works councils in the three countries (i.e. only in companies where there

are no trade unions) a change that could approach local industrial relations to

the German model and consequently (according to a German employers advisor)

provide German investors with a comparative advantage. Too little time has passed

to detect any impact of the Directive, but the overwhelming scepticism of local actors

is very impressive and interesting in a comparative dimension for instance, with the

UK.

The reader will appreciate that the nine companies studied are named (and they are

all very important ones, from the crucial sectors metalworking, energy and food), andthat most cover subsidiaries in all three countries, adding to the comparative dimen-

sion. It is found that in the majority of cases, hybridization between host and home

country effects prevails (Bosch, Siemens, RWE, Continental, Henkel), while only at

Volkswagen do country of origin influences dominate, at Oetker, host country ones,

at Aventis, European ones, and finally, Nestl emerges as a footloose company.

The rich case studies provide insights, such as into the unusual strength of trade

unions in Volkswagen subsidiaries, or the frequent German use of Austrian managers

in CEE for their negotiating mentality and less compromised historical image. While

the book was being written, the two companies closest to the German social model,

Volkswagen and Siemens, were hit by major corruption scandals, but the authortactfully skips the subject.

The research leads to seven tentative theses in the conclusion. First, pragmatic

(solution-oriented co-operation) industrial relations are emerging, which differ from

those pre-FDI entry, and include a certain degree of democratic understanding.

Second, there is no transfer of the German model of industrial relations (contrary to

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previous studies by Bluhm). Third, decentralization and therefore deep company

variation prevails, which cannot be fully accounted for by simple greenfield/

brownfield or FDI motivation factors. Fourth, German employee representatives

have very little influence, because both their legal prerogatives and negotiating power

are still anchored to national borders. Fifth, CEE subsidiaries are increasingly

autonomous. Sixth, the new works councils in CEE might lead to a divide between

old unionized and new (employer-led) work council sectors. And seventh, the EWCs

are not (yet?) able to act as intermediaries between East and West Europe.

Tholen acknowledges the limitation of the study and himself points towards open

questions, such as on the interests of shop-floor employees (whose voice is unfortu-

nately absent which is maybe why the Polish shock therapy is reported as success-

ful, p. 16) and on differences between countries of origin.

Overall, the book combines optimism on social conditions in CEE foreign subsid-

iaries (reported to already often achieve better production quality than German plants,

and to develop human resources but might these companies be self-selected?) withpessimism as to the transfer, and even survival, of the German model of industrial

relations. Such pessimism may be itself a sign of a very German approach. This is a

strength, as it allows a particularly deep understanding of the companies, although the

reader will benefit from familiarity with the German industrial relations literature (and

sometimes German sentence structure!) to appreciate it. But it might have also exag-

gerated the benchmark against which CEE industrial relations are evaluated, and

have even led to occasional ethnocentrism. When the author says that the rejection of

works councils in the Czech Republic is naive and stems from the ignorance of the

actual mode of operation of the German dual model (p. 59), he might be right, but

Czech observers might equally well reply that the Germans support for works councilsin CEE stems from their naive ignorance of Czech reality.

The book suffers from rather inaccurate editing, in terms of style, references,

repetitions and minor factual mistakes. For instance, the Polish union at Volkswagen

is Solidarity, not the small radical Solidarity 80 (p. 86), and Volkswagens declaration

of social rights is not valid in all plants worldwide (p. 89), as it most certainly does not

cover China. But this is a pioneering work; regardless of the occasional false steps, it

should be welcome for the new paths it opens to scholars of German industrial

relations, post-communist industrial relations and multinational companies.

Guglielmo MeardiUniversity of Warwick

Punishment and Inequality in America by Bruce Western, Russell Sage Foundation,

New York, 2006, xiv + 247 pp., ISBN 0 87154 894 1, 20.70.

Recent years have seen the publication of a vast literature stimulated by the extraor-

dinary punitive turn that has taken place in the United States. In the main, such work

has focused on the nature of the imprisonment binge and the social and political

context and reasons for such developments. By contrast, this book by Bruce Western,with contributions from Becky Pettit and Leonard Lopoo, focuses on the collateral

damage such strategies bring with them. It is simultaneously a highly stimulating and

deeply worrying read.

First, in case anyone is unfamiliar, the bare facts. In the middle 50 years of the

twentieth century, on any one day, about one-tenth of 1 per cent of the American




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population was in prison. By the turn of the century, this had risen to one-half of 1 per

cent. Add in jail inmates, and the proportion is closer to three-quarters of 1 per cent.

The United States incarcerates its citizens at a rate about five times that of England

and Wales. Now, of course, there is wide demographic variation in imprisonment.

Men, young people and African Americans are each much more likely to serve prison

terms than women, older people and whites. Thus, by 2000, a staggering 11.5 per cent

of 2024 year-old African-American males were incarcerated, and this proportion

increased to almost one-third where young black high school dropouts were con-

cerned. Centrally for Westerns thesis, incarceration has become a common life event

for recent birth cohorts of black men without college education. He explores the

impact of poverty on crime rates and of the imprisonment boom on recent declines in

crime. Interesting though these analyses are, they are far from the most important

aspects of the book. Rather, the real story here involves the impact of mass incar-

ceration on poverty, exclusion, and, in particular, the family and employment pros-

pects of African Americans.So extensive now is the experience of incarceration that it has a dramatic and

disfiguring impact on American society. The incarcerated are not only excluded, but

socially invisible; not just behind bars, but omitted from statistics. Thus, conventional

figures leave those in prison out of the employment figures. When added back in, the

jobless rate for young whites in 2000 rises from 10.6 to 12 per cent. Interesting, but not

startling perhaps. For young blacks, the increase is from 23.7 to 32.4 per cent. In

Westerns terms, young black men were the only group to experience a steep increase

in joblessness between 1980 and 2000, and this was due to the increase in the penal

population (p. 91). Moreover, it is a form of joblessness that is largely invisible. Just

as dramatically, if we adjust the way in which we understand unemployment toinclude those in prison, then the apparently comparatively positive performance of

the American economy in the 1990s with its allegedly low unemployment rates

disappears.

One of the consequences of very high incarceration is the ever-increasing numbers

of people being released from prison. Imprisonment has a profound effect on a variety

of life chances. It reduces employment prospects, and, where men do find jobs, they

earn less. Men with prison records who are in work are estimated to earn between 30

and 40 per cent less each year than those without prison records. Of course, the impact

of this is itself unequal across American society. The concentrated impact of the

imprisonment boom on young black males who left school early not only reducestheir wages and annual earnings, but relegates ex-convicts to a secondary, insecure

and highly limited labour market. Moreover, Western argues, incarceration increases

poverty. Without incarceration, he suggests, the rise in income would lift one-fifth of

all poor blacks out of poverty. Moreover, by reducing earnings and consigning

ex-prisoners to the secondary labour market, incarceration produces the economic

conditions for continued crime (p. 130).

The other crucial area of life and life chances affected by the American imprison-

ment boom is marriage and family life. Incarceration by definition means separation

from families. It also reduces the likelihood of marriage. White male inmates in their

20s are less than half as likely to be married as their counterparts on the outside.Approximately one-quarter of young, non-incarcerated blacks are married compared

with 11 per cent of those in prison. Though marriage is relatively uncommon among

the incarcerated, fatherhood is not. Indeed, the proportions inside and outside are

roughly comparable. There are therefore a lot of children being born to imprisoned

fathers accounting for nearly 3 per cent of all children born in 2000. Using data

Book Reviews 199



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from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, Western shows that a while male

high school graduate aged 26 is just under 13 per cent likely to have separated from

the mother of his 12-year-old child, whereas a man with identical characteristics but

who has been to prison is almost three times (34.5 per cent) as likely to be separated.

Incarceration therefore has a potentially dramatic impact on families and local neigh-

bourhoods. Incarcerated males have extensive family connections, but these are often

weak. Marriage rates are relatively low and separation rates high. The effects are

magnified and most visible among the poor in the inner cities.

Anyone searching for the data to support a social justice case for reducing the use

of imprisonment and other forms of punitive intervention need look no further than

Westerns volume. With masses of original empirical material, he advances a powerful

argument that shows the dramatic unintended consequences of using the prison as a

primary means of governing populations, particularly minority populations. Though

Western anticipates that, eventually, fiscal realities may mitigate aspects of the incar-

ceration binge, his overall message is far from optimistic, concluding that the self-sustaining character of mass imprisonment as an engine of social inequality makes it

likely that the penal system will remain as it has become, a significant feature on the

new landscape of American poverty and race relations (p. 198).

Tim Newburn

London School of Economics and Political Science

Rethinking the Future of Work Direction and Visions by Colin C. Williams. Pal-

grave Macmillan, Basingstoke, UK, 2007, xiii + 343 pp., ISBN 1 4039 937 7,23.99, paper.

The underlying pretext of this useful book is that the future of work cannot

adequately be understood in terms of convergence towards a fully formalized, com-

modified and globalized template of capitalist paid employment spreading inexorably

across the globe. This universalizing and totalizing scenario, it is argued, character-

ized by neoliberals as an apparently naturalistic order emerging in neatly linear

progression over time, remains largely blind to the much more variegated, fragmen-

tary, and in many respects divergent reality of forms of employment that people

typically experience.The author is also weary of the tendency among academic observers of the future

of work, particularly in the fields of management and business studies, to assume that

such a future can adequately be inferred from the various simplistic dichotomies they

use to frame their own discourse. Instead, a kaleidoscopic view is recommended to

try to grasp the many fragments moving in different directions in various parts of the

picture. The novelty the author claims for his book is that he introduces samples of

divergent thinking, for example, from the anti-capitalist movement and from green

thought, which offer alternative perspectives on the future of work and which are

generally marginalized in the management and business studies textbooks.

This book is likely to meet the needs of a range of undergraduates who need adescriptive survey of the dominant perspectives on the future of work. The first part

of the book provides lecture-style critical rsums of three dominant narratives. First

is formalization, which assumes that all productive activity is being drawn within the

formal regulated public economy. Second is commodification, which assumes that the

capitalist market economy will continue to colonize all forms of worthwhile activity.




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Third is the narrative of globalization, which assumes convergence of just about

everything at the level of global production and exchange. Each of these narratives is

treated critically as a myth or discourse which, according to the author, treats as fact

features of the future of work that are far less clear-cut. A range of statistical data is

used to rebut the strong thesis in each case and point towards divergence and variety.

A recurrent theme is that the dominant narratives tend to aggregate opinions and

impressions that are not borne out at the detailed level of lived experience.

The second part of the book takes half-a-step beyond these narratives, and again in

lecture mode, recounts familiar tales of putative shifts beyond industrialism, beyond

Fordism and beyond bureaucratic forms of business organization. A common theme

here is the inadequacy, despite their pedagogic and discursive convenience, of the

dichotomies model. If a feature of work is not industrial, it must be post-industrial; if

not Fordist, then it must be post-Fordist; if not bureaucratic, then post-bureaucratic.

The author explores the limitations of these accounts, again concluding that being

complicit with the narratives of formalization, commodification and globalization, itis disingenuous to infer convergence when the individual cases for post-Fordist modes

of production or for non-hierarchic organization based on soft skills and so on have

yet to be made.

The implication here is that it is the neoliberal model of convergence that is the

main focus of analysis in the majority literature, and not the complex and multiple

directions of change occurring in lived practice. The reader might conclude from this

that alternative views of the future of work only become possible once the dominant

model of convergence is abandoned.

The transition from the largely descriptive, though critically treated, material in

parts one and two, and towards the more expansive treatment in part three, rides onthe argument that the convergencedichotomies scenario only sees the future of

british journal of industrial relations17

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