Local bargaining over flexibility and security: varieties of
outcomes and diversity of “dualisation” effects for the European
workforce.
Valeria Pulignano, Fabio De Franceschi and Nadja Dörflinger
(Center for Sociological Research (CeSO) – Catholic University Leuven,
Belgium)
Paper prepared for the Symposium “Collective bargaining and the flexibilitysecurity agenda” for the 10th European Conference of ILERA, Amsterdam, 20th22nd June 2013 – Convenor: Prof. Paul Marginson
Draft Version
Corresponding author:
Valeria Pulignano
Centre for Sociological Research (CESO)
Faculty of Social Science
Parkstraat 45 bus 3601
3000 Leuven (Belgium)
Tel: 0032 (0)16 323162
Fax: 0032 (0)16 323365
e-mail: valeria.pulignano@soc.kuleuven.be
1
Abstract
Drawing on the on-going view that sub-national governance instruments, such as collective
bargaining at sector- and firm-level, act together to shape different forms of flexibility and
security combinations, the paper provides an original assessment of the influence of
contextual (market) and organisational features of the firm on flexibility and security tradeoffs. It then examines the effects of these trade-offs on workforce dualisation. Based on a 2by-2 comparison of 16 case studies of multinational subsidiaries in Germany, Belgium, Italy
and the United Kingdom, with similar country-of-origin such as US/ Europe, higher/lower
technology and standardized/differentiated products, it finds that both market competition and
the degree of international integration of the firm significantly impact on within (and cross-)
country variation of flexibility-security bargaining practices. They condition the capacity of
local unions to negotiate with management on flexibility-security trade-offs. The study also
assesses the effects of these trade-offs on workforce dualisation. It sheds light on a
progressive shift towards “converging” and ”diverging” dualisation within existing traditional
(core-periphery) forms of dualism.
Key words: flexicurity, collective bargaining, trade unions, institutional economics,
dualisation, labour markets, comparative analysis, Europe.
Introduction
Recent contributions on flexicurity have placed increasing attention on the functioning
of European labour markets and their different national labour policy, employment and
welfare systems when studying the balanced combination of flexibility and security (Madsen,
2002; Wilthagen and Tros, 2004). Accordingly, flexicurity is based on the co-ordination of
employment and social policies within dynamic (flexible) national labour markets. Nationallevel employment legislation as well as social labour market policies can create the best
conditions for guaranteeing acceptable levels of economic and social security for employees.
A classic example is the Danish flexicurity model (Madsen, 2006), which stresses how
relaxed employment protection legislation, and therefore high external numerical flexibility,
is balanced with high spending on active and passive labour market policies, which ensures
high employment and income security (Bredgaard et al., 2009). If flexicurity is based on the
coordination of national level employment and social policies (Viebrock and Claesen, 2009),
then cross-national diversity in labour markets policies and legal frameworks are the essential
ingredients for examining how far flexicurity can be implemented in such a way as to
guarantee the best conditions for job growth and economic and social security (European
Commission, 2007; Bekker and Wilthagen, 2008). As mentioned above, the assumption is
that flexicurity measures are to a considerable extent an important part of national-level
labour market policies and employment regulatory systems.
2
However, there is an on-going debate in labour market studies, social policy and
employment relations regarding the need to pay more attention to the role of sub-national
levels as well, including sector and company, and particularly to the character of specific
modes of governance, such as collective bargaining (Marginson and Galetto, 2013; Burroni
and Keune 2011; Ibsen and Mailand, 2010; Ibsen, 2011) on the definition of flexible and/or
secure employment policies and practices. This does not contradict early studies referring to
the positive role that social dialogue can play in developing flexicurity (e.g. Wilthagen and
Tros 2004). Specifically, it is claimed that human resource policies and the practices
negotiated between management and local union representatives within firms are equally
relevant to frame the general social context where competitive flexible adjustments can be
combined with security for workers (Wilthagen et al., 2012). Accordingly, company-level
flexicurity is prevalently a human resource management activity, which potentially creates the
basis for an active intervention by both management and local unions for regulating
employment under a situation of socio-economic crisis (Rydell and Wigblad, 2011).
Companies can choose their flexibility strategies and act quite autonomously from
institutional environments (Bredgaard and Tros, 2007). For example, firms which belong to
the same sector or size may consequently have similarities in their needs for flexibility
(Chung, 2007). Moreover, behavioural patterns among companies regarding flexibility and
security within (and across) different institutional environments can differ (Pulignano and
Keune, 2013).
Hence, in light of recent empirical evidence, it seems that examining only nationallevel labour market legacies in the general approach to flexicurity may be too restrictive
because of the range of sub-national governance mechanisms firms increasingly use to
influence the forms and extent of the flexibility-security nexus. Two observations are at the
core of the analysis presented in this paper. Firstly, we claim that the emphases on the local
governance mechanisms enhancing and/or inhibiting flexibility and security combinations at
the firm-level raise implicit important questions regarding the understanding of the factors
influencing the flexibility-security nexus. Secondly and directly linked to the former, we
attempt to develop knowledge around the nature of the elemets affecting flexibility-security
arrangements at the firm-level. This is because if we are to properly understand the policy
interventions around flexicurity and the outcomes and if firm-level flexicurity is an important
part of these policy interventions, there is a need to develop greater understanding around the
factors shaping such decentralised policy interventions at the firm-level and advance
knowledge around its social implications (Pulignano and Keune, 2013). In so doing, the paper
creates scope to go beyond exploring the extent of management and local trade unions’
potential involvement in European-level flexicurity policy making.
We draw from socio-economic theories and empirical studies in industrial relations
highlighting the importance of the market for industrial relations institutions (Kochan, 1980;
3
Brown et al., 1984, Brown, 2008), particularly collective bargaining (Marginson et al, 1988).
Therefore, the paper sheds light on two aspects. Firstly, it assesses the impact of market
competition and the corresponding strategies of the multinational firm’s international
integration (Marginson, 1992). Secondly, it illustrates that this does not only produce different
kinds of flexibility-security trade-offs, but also distinct societal effect for different groups of
workers (regular/non-regular and lowly- and highly skilled). In so doing the paper develops
an understanding of the effects that negotiated flexibility-security practices produce on
workforce dualisation at the firm-level. Aside from conventional micro-sociological analysis
(Doeringer and Piore, 1971), emphasising the different treatment of the workforce in
accordance to a core (regular and high skilled) and a periphery (non-regular and low skilled),
we observe a shift away from traditional dualisms under the influence of these flexibilitysecurity trade-offs. Accordingly, groups who have previously been treated like insiders are
increasingly being treated as outsiders (“converging” dualisation) on one hand, and the
differential treatment between outsiders and insiders has become significantly more
pronounced (“diverging” dualisation) on the other hand.
In the sections that follow we set our main argument regarding the nature of the
factors shaping distinctive flexibility-security trade-offs, and contributing to workforce
dualisation effects, within the broader debate about flexicurity. The argument is probed via
original data from 16 cases of multinational subsidiaries in Belgium, Germany, the United
Kingdom and Italy. Analysis of the empirical cases allows us to illustrate within (and across)
country variation in the detection of flexibility-security trade-offs, which are bargained
between the trade unions and local management, and which depend on market forces and
structural and organisational features of the firm. Next, based on the field research, we
explore the dualisation effects of the distinct flexibility-security trade-offs on the workforce
and draw some conclusions.
Flexicurity research
The flexicurity literature provides tools for understanding how labour markets may
differ. In particular, the concept rests on the assumption that flexibility and security are not
contradictory but complementary. In this regard, from a theoretical point of view, flexicurity
policies might be characterized as a form of synchronization of economic and social policy, as
a post-deregulation alternative (Keller and Seifert, 2004). This idea of a mutually reinforcing
relationship between flexibility and security has become popular among European institutions
(see the European Commission, ‘Employment in Europe Report’, 2006 and 2007), and more
recently the European Commission has recalled flexicurity as one of the policy discourses in
the EU’s long-term economic and social strategy “Europe 2020” adopted in 2010 and in the
2012 Communication of the European Commission titled “Towards a job-rich recovery”.
They support the notion that labour market institutions need to encourage employers and
4
employees to invest in employability as a necessary and sufficient condition for increased
employment security as well as increased labour productivity. Flexicurity is considered a core
element in building and reinforcing national competitiveness, while positively managing and
anticipating the social consequences of the rising risks in society.
However, the flexicurity concept has been increasingly criticised (Keune and Jepsen,
2007; Schmid, 2010). The most recent strand of this literature (for an extensive review of the
debate see Burroni and Keune, 2011) claims that there has been a tendency by flexicurity
research to focus on formal market and national regulatory institutions, and therefore informal
regulations and alternative methods of governance such as collective bargaining and human
resource management policies in companies have been oversimplified and their role
underexplored. This has contributed to increased ambiguity within the concept of flexicurity,
which thereby still remains not fully conceptualised. In addition, limiting ourselves to a
macro-institutionalist analysis of national labour markets and welfare systems, the forms and
the extent to which flexibility and security are implemented is in contradiction with research
demonstrating the role of the firm as strategic actor in the local negotiation and regulation of
flexibility and security. Crouch and Keune (2012), for example, illustrate that the actual
impact and effectiveness of a flexicurity strategy followed by governments and social partners
at the labour market (macro) level during restructuring depend to a large extent on
institutional variations at the company level.
The importance of firm-level variation, when assessing the use of flexibility and
security arrangements, is widely recognised by flexicurity research, too (Muffels, 2008; Ibsen,
2011; Wilthagen et al., 2012). For example, company training and life-long learning practices,
varieties of ‘employee-friendly’ flexible working time arrangements and other employeecentred measures are negotiated at the firm-level (Ilsøe, 2008; 2011; Chung, 2007).
Accordingly, flexicurity at the firm-level can be defined as connecting human resource
management policies with the distinctive industrial relations practices at the local level. This
is because the manner in which social dialogue structures between employers and employees
at the company level work represents an essential mechanism contributing to creating the
social context for ‘local flexicurity’ (Hagen and Trygstad, 2009; Rydell and Wigblad, 2011).
In accordance, flexicurity rests on stable locally circumscribed compromises between trade
unions and management. Along this vein, Ibsen (2011), nevertheless, has illustrated that the
expectation of a compromise may be dubious. This is because trade unions at the local level
may have a much more pragmatic bargaining strategy including concession bargaining or
trade-offs to safeguard jobs.
Although very rich in delineating the complex and sometimes contradictory bargaining
scenario characterising the flexicurity trade-off, when the analysis comes to providing a
systematic examination of the forces which account for this trade-off at the firm-level, it
remains rather patchy. In particular, what is still missing is an integrated and systematic
5
research approach, looking at the whole spectrum of issues influencing the nature of the
flexibility-security trade-offs. Moreover, little attention has been paid by current studies to
investigating how distinctive firm-level flexibility and security trade-offs affect different
groups of workers. Once more, even when these studies exist (the only exception is Ilsøe,
2011) they remain with a rather country-based focus and refer to an individual category.
Therefore, no research to date has attempted to provide a comprehensive analytical
framework supported by extensive contextual evidence through which a systematic
exploration of the factors shaping flexibility and security micro-level arrangements in the
contemporary context of socio-economic change and increasing competitive pressures is
possible. Moreover, none of the current studies so far has systematically looked at the effects
these arrangements produce for different groups of workers and skill levels. This paper
attempts to deal with these issues. In the following section we will illustrate how we attempt
to do so analytically.
Towards a new understanding of flexicurity at the level of multinational businesses
Our starting point in approaching flexibility and security at the firm-level is that if we
want to understand the main sources of inter-firms variation with regard to how flexibility and
security are bargained we need to identify first of all how firms are configured and the nature
of the market they operate in. Pulignano and Keune (2013) explain the relevance of studying
firm-level flexicurity practices within multinationals. The authors refer to multinationals as
firms which follow two pulls of forces: macro-institutional, that is the country-of-origin and
the host country, and micro-political, that is the fact they have to negotiate with powerful
actors, including organised labour, in the local environment where their subsidiaries operate.
In addition, actors at different organisational levels may have differing interests as well as
different resources generating a variety of capabilities for negotiation. Therefore, the study of
multinationals is particularly appealing when the aim is to analytically and empirically
capture both macro and micro-level effects. In this paper, we build on this argument and go
further in arguing that for multinational businesses the organisational configurations
necessitate looking at the key aspects of the degree of integration on an international level.
The choices which are exercised in arriving at a particular form of firm-level
integration are constrained by a range of considerations including national institutions, the
complex nature of strategy formation, technological and product market factors (Edwards,
2011). This means that the form and degree of integration that in practice firms adopt at the
international level is the result of the balancing across all these sorts of aspects that companies
try to develop in a pragmatic way. The approach of this paper incorporates the role of
integration of firms and the nature of the market. Indeed, these are inter-dependent in the
sense that the market (and technology) set the parameters within which firms integrate; but
the strategies of integration of firms themselves change in character partly as the result of
6
market (and technological) factors. By recalling the discussion on the transnational approach
to employment matters particularly by multinational firms, Marginson (1992) argues that
where companies have diversified into vertically-related activities, linkages between different
parts of the company in different countries where companies produce stimulate the
standardisation of labour relations arrangements across each location. A further reported
influence is that the firm’s degree of integration influences local unions’ bargaining power
due to the greater capacity they have to press for cross-country comparison.
In addition, the nature of the market in which firms operate profoundly affects the
workplace industrial relations practices in different industries at different times (Brown,
2008). Particularly, the intensity of competition for a firm’s goods or services, the
competitiveness of what is generally known as its product market, has influences on
bargaining structures and power. Marginson et al. (1988) clearly illustrate that firms’ internal
arrangements in collective bargaining are strongly influenced by their product markets. More
specifically, it has been illustrated that under the exposure of international competition as
employers in Britain withdrew from their industrial agreements, they tended to restructure
their internal pay-fixing arrangements along product market lines so that they could be linked
more directly to the performance of specific business units. Moreover, classic arguments in
institutional economics have strongly emphasised that “the conflict of capital and labour is a
conflict of market and labour” (Commons, 1909: 261 in Brown, 2008) and consequently that
power in industrial relations follows the contour of the markets. In particular, Kochan (1980)
discussed the implications of product market competition for trade union organising strategies
and observed that, conversely to employers who collude with each other as product market
competitors, it is in the interest of unions to organise all the workers in a given product market
in order to minimise loss of employment. Along the same line, strategic choice theory
(Kochan et al., 1986) and further developments (Godard, 1997; Turnbull et al., 1994) have
highlighted that contextual, ideological and power considerations related to environmental
issues explain the factors affecting the employment relationship. Thus industrial relations
processes and outcomes are determined by a continuously evolving interaction of
environmental pressures and organisational responses. Although market changes do not have
independent effects or operate in a deterministic way, they interact significantly with choice,
discretion, power and ideologies on the part of labour, management, and government in order
to affect the course and structure of industrial relations systems.
Markets have, in recent decades, evolved considerably. The change particularly
reflects the fact they have become more exposed to international competition as a result of the
world economy becoming steadily more exposed to trade. Moreover the strategies of
internationalisation of companies, which are reflected in an increase of foreign direct
investment, have also contributed to the change. The internationalisation of product markets
has contributed to enhancing economic uncertainty and increasing pressures on the
7
institutional actors of industrial relations (Crouch, 2010). Whereas from the trade union point
of view the prospects of gaining any effective bargaining leverage on even more sprawling
product markets may appear rather bleak (Brown, 2008), on the other hand it can also be
argued that collective bargaining has proved to be a relevant mechanism for protecting against
economic insecurity. Specifically, recent research developed by the GUSTO1 team suggests
that during the recent economic crisis collective bargaining, particularly multi-level, provided
the most likely governance tool through which firms could take on the risk of offering both
longer-term trade-off and procedural certainties while gaining in high levels of voluntary
labour market transitions, and therefore flexibility (see Crouch, 2012).
As we will illustrate in the following sections, this is particularly interesting for the
analysis advanced by this paper because it has very much to do with understanding the factors
which influence the nature of trade-offs at the firm-level while making them possible.
Moreover, it remains to be seen what the outcomes of these trade-offs are. Generally
speaking, simplistic labour economics theories see pure markets as eroding all forms of
discrimination in labour markets. Conversely, social science emphasises that it is crucial to
focus on the interaction between the managerial preferences and trade union policies that
constitute collective agreements to discover more about the reasons for such discrimination.
Hence, the paper accords priority to local bargaining under enhanced international product
market competition to examine the nature of flexibility-security trade-offs, how they occur,
and how they affect different groups and skill categories of workers. In doing so it
contextualises the flexibility-security outcomes within the organisational and contextual
environment which contributes to configuring firms.
Our argument
By originally adding to existing studies on collective bargaining and the flexibilitysecurity nexus at the firm level (Ibsen and Mailand, 2011; Ibsen, 2011; Ilsøe, 2011), we argue
that how flexibility is traded off against security at the firm level and the outcomes these
trade-offs produce for the different groups of workers (regular/non-regular and lowly/highly
skilled) can vary. We explain this variation by referring to two independent variables, the
intensity of market competition and the degree of international integration of the firm. These
forces contribute to influence the bargaining power of the local union, which in turn affect the
form of the flexibility and security trade-off. Specifically, we observe that under situations of
high product market competition and unpredictable and unstable fluctuations in firms’
workloads, trade unions face a reduction in their bargaining power. Referring to companies
producing low-tech products, our findings illustrate that this is relatively more evident when
firms are less vertically integrated. Under this specific situation it is difficult for local unions
GUSTO is a research project entitled “Meeting the challenges of economic uncertainty and sustainability – through
employment, industrial relations, social and environmental policies in Europe” funded by the European Commission’s 7th
Framework Programme. Further information can be found on the project’s homepage http://www.gusto-project.eu/
1
8
and management to accommodate fluctuations and market downturns by moving production
across sites. This is because firms are spatially diversified; and the same or similar products
are produced in different locations, making use of the same production technology. This
contradicts the idea of economies of scale, but a widespread reason is the customer requiring a
local presence of the supplier close-by. Therefore, local unions are under high pressure to
accommodate fluctuations in workloads while safeguarding the level of jobs in the plant. This
leads to a situation where unions negotiate locally on high flexible arrangements, with
difficulties in compensating the increase in flexibility (for the employer) with enhancement of
security (for the employees). The result is an “unbalanced” trade-off to the detriment of the
employees because employers gain in flexibility more than employees can retain in terms of
security. Where firms are more diversified in vertically integrated activities, pressure on local
bargaining for unions may well arise but it is less than in the former situation. Potential to
reduce costs can be achieved by management in the case of product market standardisation,
which allows benchmarking across sites. Vertically segmented multinationals are more likely
to be associated with relocation threats, and this opens scope for bargaining with the local
unions to accommodate on the avoidance of plant closure by exchanging flexibility mostly for
job security The result is a “balanced” trade-off between employers and employees, where
local unions exchange flexibility (of the overall workforce) against security (of the overall
workforce).
In situations of both “balanced” and “unbalanced’ trade-off under high market
uncertainty and homogeneous products, local unions respond to social uncertainty (job cuts)
by enhancing the level of external (temporary work) flexibility, but not to the benefit of the
security of the “core” (regular) workers. They rather negotiate on combining internal and
external flexibility and therefore, the use of regular and non-regular workers. The
combination of external and internal flexibility means not only that the numerical capacity of
the latter is often reduced (redundancies) when volumes go down, and overtime of regular
workers is used to accommodate unexpected upturns, but also that non-regular workers are
often used to put pressure on the core (regular) workforce for productivity reasons. Thereby,
the function of non-regular workers shifts from a source for external flexibility (buffer) for the
core (regular), in case of production peaks, to a more stable component of the workforce. In
so doing the firm dissipates the effects of economic uncertainty, but at the cost of enhancing
pressure on regular workers. The effect is a form of workforce dualisation characterised by
the “widening of pre-existing institutional dualisms” (Emmenegger et al., 2012: 10), that is,
that the core (insider) increasingly acquires the features of the periphery (outsider), with a
progressive degradation of the working conditions for the workforce overall. We refer to this
form of dualisation as “converging” dualisation in the sense that the borders between the core
(insider) and the periphery (outsider) are blurred.
9
Conversely, the bargaining power of the union over the flexibility-security trade-off is
positively affected by product market competition ranging from medium to low and low
economic uncertainty, with similar technology, country-of-origin and products. This is
particularly the case when interdependences across different sites are present. Local unions
are better placed to bargain for the core (regular) workforce against negative economic events
by using a periphery of non-regular workers. Also, across-plant labour mobility can be used to
handle situations of market uncertainty, particularly because what each production unit often
needs is specific expertise (skills) which are usually held within the company as the “internal
(core)” workforce. This can guarantee a situation where the core (regular) is secured while
flexibility is achieved by using a reservoir of non-regular (periphery) workers. The result is a
“balanced” trade-off where in accordance with the traditional core (insider) versus periphery
(outsider) model, the flexibility of the latter is traded off against the security of the former.
The picture may be slightly different when the level of integration is lower. Here unions are
much less exposed to the threat of relocation and the pressure on flexibility is relatively less.
This is particularly the case when the level of market uncertainty is lower than in the former
case. The result is an “unbalanced” trade-off in favour of the employees because they gain in
security. The outcomes of these flexibility-security trade-offs will be in both cases a
“deepening of existing institutional dualism” (Emmenegger et al., 2012: 10), that is, the
differential treatment of insider (core) and outsider (periphery) becomes significantly more
pronounced because the working conditions will be kept increasingly good for the core (the
regular and highly skilled workers) versus the periphery (the non-regular and low skilled
workers), who will have comparably worse working conditions. Interestingly enough, the
highly skilled workforce (such as specialised engineers, engaged in project work) whose
service is bought by the firm, are often kept on a short-term but multi-renewable contract by
the corporate management. This allows categorising them as “de facto” in the core. We refer
to this form of dualisation as “diverging” dualisation in the sense that the borders between the
core (insider) and the periphery (outsider) are clearly visible and the polarised treatment
between the two groups even more pronounced.
To examine the factors shaping distinctive forms of the flexibility and security tradeoff at the firm level and its outcomes for different categories of workers, we analyse data on
the local negotiation practices between management and local unions and their representatives
on the use of flexibility and security practices from in-depth comparative company case
studies conducted in 16 subsidiaries of four similar foreign multinational companies within
the manufacturing sector in Belgium, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. In the
following sections we present the research design, methodology and sample description.
10
Research design, methodology and sample description
The empirical investigation was conducted in 2011-2012 focusing on the subsidiaries
of multinational companies within the manufacturing sector in Belgium, Germany, the United
Kingdom and Italy. Two multinationals are headquartered in the US and two in Europe. Both
European multinationals are of the same country-of-origin which does not overlap with the
countries selected for investigation. The logic is to avoid the bias of observing multinationals
within the country where they are headquartered. Half of the companies are automotive
suppliers (but no OEMs) and represented the medium-low specialised part of the
manufacturing sector, with more standardised and less specialised products, and half are in the
medium to high technology manufacturing sector, with highly specialised and diversified
products. In particular, we used a 2-by-2 comparison method so that country-of-origin
US/EU, higher/lower technology, standardised/differentiated product characteristics as well as
the nature of the production process were similar by group of two. Two companies share
medium to high technology and a quite specialized nature of the production process and
differentiated products, and the other two share medium to low level of technology and a
more standardized, automated nature of the production process. The 2-by-2 comparison also
operated in the selection criteria of the sample, diversified in accordance to the degree of
international integration and the level of competitiveness of the product market where the
companies operate. More particularly, although all firms were active within internationally
competitive product markets, the degree and the nature of competitiveness in terms of the
intensity of market fluctuations and the level of economic uncertainty for the firm as well as
the degree of integration of each firm varied 2-by-2. In other words, two companies (US1 and
US2) characterised by medium to low technology operated within highly fluctuating and
competitive markets represented by high levels of economic uncertainty. Conversely, the
other two companies (EU1 and EU2), with medium to high technology, were positioned
within more stable, less competitive and predictable product markets, characterized by a low
level of fluctuations. This was partially related to the nature of the customer in the market,
which in the case of the former two companies (US1 and US2) was private whereas in the
other two company cases (EU1 and EU2) was mainly public (the state, public agencies, and
subnational entities). Moreover, in terms of the degree of vertical integration of the operations
of the multinationals across borders, we selected a sample of two companies highly vertically
integrated (US1 and EU2) and two with a low level of vertical integration (US2 and EU1).
This provided us with a rich variety in the independent variables we selected for analysis,
such as the degree of market competitiveness and the level of international integration of the
firm. Conversely, all other company features, such as country-of-origin, technology and
nature of the product, were maintained constant 2-by-2. Moreover, size, presence of the
unions and sector were also similar on a 2-by-2 basis.
11
Since four companies per country were examined, they amounted to a total of 16
subsidiaries, each company being named by an acronym for anonymity. Each case study
consisted of about four to five interviews making up a total of 80 semi-structured interviews
with strategic management and local managers, trade union and employee representatives in
each subsidiary at both the European headquarters and subsidiary level. Interviews with
experts at both sector and national level, such as employers and trade union officers were also
carried out. Interviews were 90 to 120 minutes in duration and provided insights not only into
the day-to-day management practices and local negotiations, particularly during the recent
economic crisis and intensive periods of restructuring the companies went through, but also
into the strategic issues and choices of the firm with regard to the use of different forms of
flexibility (internal and external) for different categories of workers (regular/non-regular;
highly and low skilled). Fieldwork was also supplemented through archival research on the
companies involved. Additional data sources were collective agreements at inter-sector, sector
and company levels, extensive site visits and observation of the workplaces, corporate
publications, press reports, company websites and trade union websites. Interviews were
translated with the support of professional native speaker translators, appositively transcribed
and analysed by using NVivo. Data from different interviewees was triangulated in order to
improve validity and provide a comprehensive representation of the bargaining processes that
occurred in the firm. In this respect, it may be argued that validity in this research pertains to
the accounts or conclusions reached by using a qualitative exemplifying multi-case study
comparative method in a particular context for a particular purpose. This is what Maxwell
(2012) defines as a “realist” approach to validity. Interviews were mostly conducted in the
original language by researchers who were native speakers with a grasp of the national
context under investigation and social science research. Moreover, the fact that more than one
observer (member of the research team) was involved in undertaking the interviews
guaranteed inter-observer consistency and the internal reliability of the qualitative data.
The case-study company size (see Table 1) clustered medium to large companies
ranging from 200 to 8000 employees. Unions were present in all establishments, which were
part of the main national trade union confederations existing in their respective countries. In
particular, the unions represented in Italy are the metalworkers’ federations of the Italian
General Labour Confederation (CGIL, Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro), the
Italian Confederation of Workers' Trade Unions (CISL, Confederazione Italiana Sindacati
Lavoratori), and the Italian Labour Union (UIL, Unione Italiana del Lavoro). In the UK the
unions active in the companies of our study are Unite the Union, the GMB – Britain’s General
Union, the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), and the
Transport Salaried Staffs' Association (TSSA). The unions represented in all Belgian
workplaces are the Confederation of Christian Trade Unions ACV/CSC (Confédération des
Syndicats Chrétiens/Algemeen Christelijk Vakverbond), the Belgian General Federation of
12
Labour ABVV/FGTB (Fédération Générale du Travail de Belgique/Algemeen Belgisch
Vakverbond) and the Federation of Liberal Trade Unions of Belgium CGSLB/ACLVB
(Centrale Générale des Syndicats Libéraux de Belgique/Algemene Centrale der Liberale
Vakbonden van België). In Germany, workers at the analysed subsidiaries are largely
represented by IG Metall, Germany’s metalworker union. Only in the German subsidiary of
US2 there is a small share of members belonging to the Christian metalworker union CGM
(Christliche Gewerkschaft Metall).
13
Table 1: The 16 company cases
Company
Country
VoC
Total
employees
Subsidiary
employees
UK
LME
125.000
1.550
US1
ITA
BEL
MME
CME
GER
CME
UK
LME
24.000
ITA
MME
320
1.700
200
200
2.500
US2
BEL
CME
GER
CME
UK
LME
60.000
ITA
MME
EU1
BEL
CME
GER
CME
UK
LME
90.000
ITA
MME
EU2
BEL
CME
GER
CME
1.600
1.500
8.000
2.300
600
4.300
4.000
2.500
1.000
2.800
Degree of
integration
high
Low
low
high
Technology
degree
medium-low
Low
high
medium-high
Degree of
competition
medium-high
High
low
medium-low
Nature of the
product market
standardised
Standardised
differentiated
differentiated
Market
uncertainty
medium-high
High
low
medium-low
Union density
70%
60%
95%
80%
79%
90%
95%
75%
30%
30%
85%
25%
50%
50%
95%
75%
Contracts:
agency
fixed-term
35% BC
4%
none;
20%
20%
7%
10-15%
5% ;
10%
15%
8%
3-4%
8%
very
few
35-40%
3%
20%
10% ;
10%
Flexibility:
Ext-num.
Int-num.
Other
high
med
wage
low
high
wage
(varia
ble
pay
only)
low
low
wage
high
high
wage
low
high
wage
med
high
wage
med
high
wage
med
high
wage
med
high
wage
low
med
wage
med
high
low
high
wage,
functi
onal
high
med
functional
high
med
wage
med
high
wage
Security:
Job
Employment
med
med
med
high
med
med
high
high
med
low
med
low
low
low
med
med
high
high
high
high
med
high
high
high
med
low
Flexicurity
balance
“Balanced” trade-off: flexibility of the
overall workforce is exchanged versus
“Unbalanced” trade-off in favour of the
employer
“Unbalanced” trade-off in favour of
employees
low
high
functio
nal
med
med
med
medmed
med
high
“Balanced” trade-off: flexibility (of the nonregular/periphery) is exchanged against
14
security of the overall workforce
security (of the regular/core)
15
The selection of the company sample also covered different labour market institutional
settings. Representing all the major institutional contexts is crucial in order to assess the
extent to which different national labour market legacies affect local bargaining on flexibility
and security. In particular, we have ensured that at least one case from each “Variety of
Capitalism” (VoC) (Hall and Soskice, 2001) was clearly represented. CMEs are characterised
by non-market relations, collaboration and credible commitments and the “deliberative
calculation” of firms (for example Germany, Belgium). The essence of the liberal market
economy is arm’s length, competitive relations, formal contracting and supply and demand
price signalling (for example the UK). Moreover, recent literature pays more attention to
mixed-market economies (MME), usually including the countries from the Southern part of
Europe (we look at Italy), that fall outside the original VoC analytical dichotomy (Molina and
Rhodes, 2007).
We follow the flexibility and security classification proposed by Wilthagen and Tros
(2004) as the basis of the conceptualisation and operationalisation of firm-level flexibility and
security. We therefore identify four different types of flexibility (external-numerical, internalnumerical, functional, and financial), and three categories of security (job, employment, and
income). The fourth type of security - combination security - is not addressed in the present
study because of the lack of empirical evidence of trade unions’ involvement in bargaining on
work-life balance in each company case. This is supported by the fact that work-life policies
at the firm-level mostly derive from direct face-to-face dialogue between employers and
employees at the individual level rather than from negotiations via the union channel.
Accordingly, as collectively negotiated ‘one-size-fits-it-all solutions are difficult to establish
(Muffels, 2008).
The factors indicative of firm-level flexibility and security practices are set out in
Table 2. They have been selected because of the strong evidence in existing literature and
empirical studies that they promote flexibility and security and because they cover the diverse
macro (labour market) dimensions of flexicurity indicated by Wilthagen and Tros (2004).
Table 2: Flexibility and security at the firm-level
Macro (labour market) level flexicurity dimensions
External-numerical
flexibility
Internal-numerical flexibility
Functional flexibility
Financial flexibility
Job security
Micro (firm)-level flexibility and security practices
Atypical work
(Keller and Seifert, 2006; Chung, 2007; Ibsen and Mailand, 2009; Ilsøe, 2006, 2011;
Wilthagen et al., 2013)
Working time flexibility tools (i.e. shift system, working time accounts, overtime, flexible
entry/exit time)
(Chung, 2007; Kerkhofs et al., 2008; Muffels and Luijkx, 2008, Wilthagen et al., 2013)
Job rotation, internal mobility, training
(Forrier and Sels, 2003)
Performance-related pay, wage reductions
(Seifert and Tangian, 2007; Glassner et al., 2012)
Type of employment contract
16
Employment security
Income security
(Muffels, 2008; Rydell and Wigblad, 2011)
Training and career progression schemes, outplacement schemes
(Forrier and Sels, 2003)
Wage-guarantee schemes, internal career development programmes
(Bredgaard et al., 2009; Schmid, 2012)
The case study companies
US1 is a big conglomerate operating in several subsectors of the manufacturing
industry, including the production of components for the automotive and ship-building sector.
Its international expansion was carried out during the last 60 years both through green-field
and brownfield investments, and has resulted in a highly complex and integrated structure.
US1 operates as a leader in most of the markets where it sells, but is exposed to very strong
international competition from both global and local companies. Clients include end
customers as well as other manufacturing companies, while many plants are mainly dedicated
to supplying other companies of the group. The plants included in our study are all highly
industrial and integrated within the group. About 70-75% of the workforce is blue collar,
except in Germany where half of employees are white collar.
US2 is a company that shifted its activities from their original public utility core
business to the automotive component sub-sector. It has production units in Europe, North
America and the Asia-Pacific region. The company operates through a wide range of global
brands, and slightly less than 40% of revenues come from three big (automotive) groups. The
business structure of the company is organised along two main divisions, although plants in
different countries often produce for different market niches and with different brands, a
consequence of the company’s expansion mainly through brownfield investments. Plants in
the UK and Italy are medium-sized (about 200 employees each), while big plants operate in
Germany and Belgium with over 1,000 employees. Most of the workforce is blue collar,
reflecting the strong production character of the company, with the exception of Germany
where slightly above 50% of employees are white collar.
EU1 operates in several different highly-technological markets, following a multidomestic business organisation. The company can count on nearly 70,000 employees
worldwide and is strongly R&D-based, with investments in this area that amount to about
20% of its revenues. Their main shareholders are the State and another private company,
while the main customers are public bodies and the world-leading aircraft manufacturers.
When interviews were carried out, EU1 employed 2,300 people in Italy, 600 in Belgium and
about 4.300 in Germany, while 7,500 employees were on the payroll (thus excluding agency
workers) in the UK. The workforce in EU1 has a strong component of engineers, given the
very high technological grade of its products. In the UK 3,500 people are engineers, while
there are about 300-400 (skilled and semi-skilled) blue collar workers. In Italy there are only
about 50 blue collar workers, while about 450 people are in middle management and another
17
80 in top management. Non-managing engineers could be estimated to be at least 1,000. In
Belgium, 100 people were blue collar workers, 200 skilled (white-collar) technicians, and
about 280 engineers (including top management).
EU2 operates mainly in the business of energy and transport and is one of the world
leaders in each of these markets, despite facing fierce competition. The group pursued a
strong strategy of expansion through M&A in the 1990s and 2000s and a widespread setup of
new manufacturing facilities. EU2’s market leadership is based on strong investments in R&D
and on the strong technological base of its products. The strategies of expansion in emerging
markets are also securing growth in revenues at a time when the economic outlook in Europe
is negative, with the accumulation of a substantial order backlog which secures constant
revenues for the future. EU2 is a strong industrial company, although two general tendencies
are apparent in Western Europe. The first is a trend towards a focus on higher added value
activities, while the second is a transition from production to maintenance activities, a
response to changes in demand from the (Western) public sector in times of austerity. These
trends have clear effects on the labour force. While about half of the workforce is still
composed of blue collar workers, the trend is for a steady increase of the white collar
(engineering) base, already the majority in Belgium and the UK. A stronger focus on services,
instead, implies consequences in terms of flexibility needs, since most services are performed
at nights and weekends.
Variety of flexibility-security trade-offs and local union bargaining
In the presence of medium to high competitive product markets, a medium to high
degree of economic uncertainty and internationally integrated companies, with a
homogeneous product, trade unions will be forced to accommodate locally to management’s
demand with a consequent reduction in their discretionary bargaining power. This is because
the homogeneous nature of the product raises the managements’ threat of (internal)
benchmarking and relocation. However, local unions will have relatively higher capacity to
accommodate locally with managers when, based on similar technology and nature of the
product, the degree of vertical integration of the firm is higher and the degree of market
competition relatively lower. Here unions have wider scope to influence by adopting common
strategies to face flexibility needs at the local level. Therefore, where companies are
integrated, “balanced trade-offs” occur, where degrees of flexibility and security tend to
compensate each other. When companies are not integrated and the level of market
competition is comparatively higher, trade-offs will be unbalanced. This is because unions
potentially loose the capacity to use vertical linkages within the multinational to define
common strategies. The result is a stronger pressure on the union to accomplish locally the
company’s request of flexibility, independently from security, which is not an object of
18
exchange. This is the situation of the local subsidiaries of US1 and US2 respectively in all the
countries we have been looking at.
US1 operates in medium-high competitive markets, open to international competition.
Flexibility needs stemming from those markets that are strong, limiting unions’ bargaining
power, which also have to compete with other plants from low-wage countries in the group
(e.g. Brazil and China). US1 has built up a strong vertical integration within the group, which
allows it to even out production surpluses and deficits, and to be more protected against
economic fluctuations. Unions have used the strong vertical integration in their favour by
setting up co-ordination at the European and global level, and by negotiating forms of
protection for the overall workforce. However, job protection was often negotiated under
“concession bargaining”, which means that the local unions exchanged external and internal
flexibility (including wage flexibility) against job protection. The result was a “balanced”
trade-off as flexibility (for the employers) comes along with an employment guarantee (job
security) for the employees. Moreover, flexibility included the combined use of numerical
(external) and functional (internal) forms which were used in a complementary manner for all
the categories of workers (regular and non-regular) in order to protect the workforce as a
whole. Accordingly, external flexibility, especially agency and fixed-term work, was locally
negotiated. For example, agency workers represent 20% of the workforce in Germany (this
quota was negotiated with the works council), and about 35% of all blue collar workers in the
UK, while in Italy unions agreed on a ceiling of 12%, in line with what was suggested by the
main union’s provincial section. In Belgium the use of 20% of employees with a fixed-term
contract was agreed upon. It can be argued that local management, particularly in Belgium
and Italy, used fixed-term and agency contracts to screen workers for permanent positions.
This basically explains the management’s interest in such flexible arrangements. This is
because screening workers for permanent positions by trying them out in flexible
arrangements arguably lowers the cost of dismissing workers who demonstrate low
productivity (Pulignano and Dörflinger, 2013). Because of that the trade unions had little
reason to believe that the temporary arrangements would result in less job stability for nonregular workers than what is usually guaranteed to regular (internal) workers as the result of
the bargained local “concessions”.
The relatively high degree of market uncertainty obliged local unions in all the
investigated production units to concede on various forms of external but also internal
flexibility, such as working time accounts, short-time working schemes, overtime in order to
secure employment. Particularly, overtime was accepted by the unions and used in the Italian,
British, Belgian and German plants as a way to cope with market fluctuations. This
contributed to putting pressure on the regular internal workforce. On the other hand, during
the time of crisis working time arrangements were also broadly used to guarantee security to
the internal workforce. They took different terms depending on the institutional regime. In the
19
UK, for example, working time was reduced by 10%, while short-term working schemes
(Kurzarbeit) and working time accounts were widely introduced in Germany, and temporary
unemployment schemes mostly adopted in Belgium and Italy. The German HR manager
stresses the need for using various kinds of flexibility (external-internal for all categories of
workers) in combination in order to cope with US1’s fluctuating business:
“So many people of our workforce worked the maximum of the allowable working time, which would
be 42 hours a week, which is by far more than the average in our industry which is 35. We would hire
people temporarily; we would even pay for overtime. So we used all this stuff, and what we did
significantly, which is a matter of employment, we outsourced activities, so log-machining, we were
really expanding the scope of our flexibility, so it could work out, where we couldn’t do it, to rely on
the suppliers.”
(US1 – German HR manager, March 28th, 2012)
In addition, in local negotiations local unions conceded high levels of external and
internal flexibility in exchange for strong investments in training and formalised career paths,
which are reflected in a medium-high employment security for the workforce. This was valid
for both internal (regular) and external (non-regular) and particularly fixed-term workers who
were committed to perform well in order to get a stable position and further training in the
plant. For example, while training is provided in formalised schemes in almost all the
production units in US1 and ‘personal development plans’ are in place in the entire group, the
local union in Italy and the UK had an important role in bargaining the definition of career
progression for the overall workforce.
In the UK the introduction of pay cuts were not resisted by the local unions, they were
rather exchanged for safeguarding jobs. As a union convenor from the UK states in this
respect:
“When they [the company] first introduced [pay cuts], there was a lot of disgruntled employees out
there on the shop floor. I think if you speak to the majority of the people out there now they
understand that it was the right thing to do. And it was the best thing to do, for the future of the
company, you know.”
(US1-UK Union convenor – May 23rd 2012)
Similarly, in US1’s German plant, various forms of flexibility – specifically working
time flexibility and wage flexibility in term of wage cuts – were explicitly traded off by the
works council in exchange for safeguarding jobs, reducing the amount of forced redundancies
and creating employment security. In particular, a regular working week of between 28 and
42 hours and wage cuts which implied a 50% reduction on the shift premium was agreed
20
upon. This was possible because of the use of voluntary schemes to reduce the number of
staff, such as early retirement possibilities, were additionally agreed upon. When negotiations
started in 2003, the plant faced severe economic difficulties which made “concessions” on
internal flexibility and wages necessary steps in order not to risk plant closure. The local HR
manager explains:
“We told them [the workforce] that hard times are coming but that we have a choice: either you give
up those many rules, this complete lack of flexibility and the dependency on being obliged to negotiate
agreements about something which probably goes beyond the requirements of the law, so there is no
need to have an agreement on that. But this is because they are set up by earlier legacy agreements.
Let’s get rid of that and let’s go back to the German legal basis and work from there, give us the
flexibility back and we will try to keep as many people inside in the company.”
(US1 – German HR manager, March 28th, 2012)
The situation is different for US2, as vertical integration among subsidiaries is limited,
resulting in low interaction and mutual dependency across the different sites. However, in
US2, competition and market uncertainty are arguably higher than in US1 due to the
replicated nature of the operations, which makes across-borders comparisons likely. Asked
about what competition looks like the European HR manager states:
“We already have competitors from China and the Far East that come to Europe. We do not yet know
whether our European plants will continue assembly in the future. In ten years the situation for US2
will be completely different [product name] are produced for a global market and they go around to
our sister companies. At the moment they are cost competitive. As long as this is the case, the
production will stay here. But the assembly in the Western countries will surely decrease. We have
capacities in the East, and when volumes increase we are likely to go East.”
(US2 European HR manager – May 15th 2012)
The strong competition and the need to quickly react to the requirements of customers,
often big MNCs, to which the corporation needs to guarantee geographical proximity, are the
causes of strong flexibility demands for US2 subsidiaries, which unions are obliged to meet in
local negotiations. An effect of this high market uncertainty is the fact that all plants make use
of 10% to 20% of external flexibility through agency and temporary contracts. The UK
represents a partial exception, since local unions stood firm in the request not to use the socalled “Swedish Derogation”. It says that signing a contract with an agency automatically
pulls agency workers out of the entitlement of full term conditions, to which HR management
would be obliged in case of the use of agency workers for more than 12 weeks. The union
refusal to apply the Swedish derogation let agency workers become more expensive; and this
21
is why British management has not found agency work very attractive and have limited its use
to 7% of the workforce.
The high degree of market uncertainty of US2 arguably made the corporation more
vulnerable to the effects of the economic and financial crisis, which started in mid-2008.
Specifically, the decreasing orders and stagnating demand reduced revenues, pushing
management and trade unions to get involved in local bargaining about restructuring plans.
Temporary unemployment schemes were widely used in Belgium and (together with
solidarity contracts) in Italy, while in the UK a 10% reduction in working time for hourly-paid
(blue collar) workers was accompanied by a 10% wage cut for white collar workers. In
Germany, the company extensively used the state-subsidized short-term working scheme
(Kurzarbeit). The HR manager explains:
“The flexibility we have here helped us a lot. The location survived and we had the possibility of
sending some employees to 100% short time work. This instrument was great. Both the union and the
works council supported us.”
(US2-GER HR manager, November 14th, 2011)
High levels of internal flexibility, under the shape of strong use of overtime, shift flexibility,
and working time accounts, were also visible. For example, in the company-level collective
agreement the Italian unions had to agree to the management’s request to an increase in the
hour ceiling for working time accounts, and on a premium for weekend work. Also, in
Belgium and the UK, local unions were faced to see their shift pattern changing on short
notice as a consequence of rapid market fluctuations, reflected in the quickly changing
customers’ requirements. In Germany, an unpaid working time extension of ten hours per
month was negotiated with the works council. Following management, this implicit wage cut
has been necessary to maintain competitiveness and therefore, to also safeguard employment.
Although the strong presence of unions in all subsidiaries meant that solutions were
negotiated rather than imposed by management, local unions at all the investigated US2 local
plants were not able to trade off flexibility with equivalently security, rather they suffered
increased pressure by management to enhance flexibility, a reflection of their weaker
bargaining power. The result is an “unbalanced” trade-off in favour of the employer, as
employees had to give in on flexibility without a corresponding guarantee in security.
Evidence illustrates that, for example, local unions in the UK agreed on higher wage
flexibility to be used in the form of wage cuts and a reduction in the weekly working time,
which was not met with a guarantee of job security. This is because dismissals were not
avoided anyhow but followed the huge corporate restructuring plans and the increasingly high
request for flexibility by management. Moreover, US2 has been under strong pressure to
reduce costs, and one of the areas where costs have been cut most has been training, which
22
usually implies investment in employment security. As the US2-UK union convenor
particularly argues:
“When companies want to cut costs, the first thing they cut is training cost, I think. Ten years ago, the
workforce in [plant name] was very highly skilled. At this moment in time, I think [training] has
decreased, which is creating issues with quality and efficiencies.”
(US2-UK Union convenor, June 5th, 2012)
Although formalised training programmes are in place in all subsidiaries, HR local
managers in all plants report that the economic crisis affected the extent to which employees
had opportunities for training. There was a clear decline in the frequency with which people
received training particularly in Italy and the UK. In Germany and Belgium, the situation
looks slightly difficult, as one requirement in order to make use of the state subsidized
schemes (short-time work or temporary unemployment) is in fact training provision in the
employees’ growing amount of free time. However, the effects of the offered training
programmes (mostly language classes) were rather limited and did not really contribute to
skill upgrading. Moreover, most of the skills are specific to US2, meaning they would have a
limited use outside the company and therefore a scarce impact on employment security. Also,
possibilities for professional growth, which could be an indicator of employment security, are
relatively scarce. In US2-ITA, for example, both local unions and HR managers acknowledge
that an excessive use of promotions, negotiated with the unions, occurred only in previous
years. Currently, there is no leeway for future career progression within the framework of the
sectoral collective agreement. German, Belgian and British plants’ career progression
schemes are formalised and strongly rely on appraisals done by supervisors, and so are
individually decided on a case-by-case basis. Moreover, they do not seem to work well in
times of crisis, since the uncertainty about the future deters the company from bringing people
upwards in the organisation.
In the presence of medium to low market competition and economic uncertainty and
internationally integrated companies with similar country-of-origin, technology and products,
trade unions have relatively high discretion in negotiating locally with management. This is
because the differentiated nature of the product seems to contribute to reducing the
management’s potential threat of benchmarking and relocation. This is particularly the case in
situations of low degree of international integration and low market competition, where
“unbalanced” trade-offs are produced as the result of local union capacity to guarantee
security independently of the management’s demand of flexibility (“unbalanced” trade-off in
favour of the employees). Conversely, when companies are vertically integrated and
competition is medium-low, because of the interdependencies across different production sites
in spite of differentiated products, local unions will face relatively higher pressure to
23
accommodate locally to the headquarters’ demands compared to the aforementioned situation.
The result is a “balanced” trade-offs where local unions exchange flexibility (of the core) with
job security (of the periphery). This is what occurs in the local subsidiaries of EU1 and EU2.
EU1 is a leader in its highly technological market and needs highly skilled personnel,
hard to find in the labour market. Employee retention and skill upgrading are therefore the
main concern for EU1’s HR strategy. The Italian HR manager states:
“We have taken great care to project the image of a very well-structured company, because we
realized that from the moment one person perceives his or her job to not be very secure, those are
competences that are bought up from the job market in an instant.”
(EU1-ITA HR manager – April 13th 2012)
EU1 therefore favours a secure environment in which to invest in skill development;
and unions are able to take advantage of this stability in order to negotiate strong investments
in training and an integrated approach to career development, favourably affecting
employment security. The use of temporary and agency work is about 8% of the workforce in
Belgium and the UK, and below 5% in Italy and Germany, both because EU1 wants to give
an image of itself as a “secure” company, and because the skills this company needs are
difficult to find in workers provided by agencies. In Italy management prefers the use of
external contractors to agency workers, while EU1-UK is a partial exception because of its
use of agency work also for skilled positions, however a strong attention to reputation is
observed in the crucial importance given by the UK’s HR to their ‘Investors in People’ award
for their retention policy. EU1’s multi-domestic organisational structure implies that
flexibility needs, stemming mainly from the intense research and development activity
occurring in the bids for new projects and the delivery of existing orders, are dealt with by
autonomous local unions with fragmented responses to management requests. Local unions
allow workers to work long shifts on weekends in Belgium, for example, taking advantage of
the little flexibility offered by the sectoral collective agreements. Similarly, unions in Italy
succeeded amending the, in their opinion, rigid sectoral agreement with a company agreement
in order to guarantee the payment of overtime premium also to very qualified workers.
Overtime is also considered a major way of managing flexibility in the UK, according to their
HR local manager, while the use of job rotation by management is also reported in Italy and
Belgium. In addition, low market uncertainty has allowed unions to locally negotiate on
strong training programmes and career progression schemes. As a result, management has set
up structured career development schemes, with group-wide processes that are highly
formalised to design career paths leading to high technical or managerial positions. Three
distinct but connected processes link a yearly appraisal, the career progression trajectory, the
training plan, and performance-related pay. Regarding personnel development, a European
24
Framework Agreement (EFA) has been in place since 2009, making national best practices on
training-related issues available to the broad European workforce. Another EFA on the
development of professional knowledge was implemented in 2010. Overall, the trade-off in
EU1 can be described as unbalanced, clearly favouring employees in terms of guaranteeing
their employment security independently from bargaining on the request for flexibility by the
corporation. This is because, in order to attract and retain skills, EU1 has to offer a high level
of security to its workforce without asking for an equally high level of flexibility in exchange
for it.
Similarly to EU1, EU2 can also count on a leading position in an oligopolistic market
and on a solid order backlog, which guarantees medium-term financial and economic
stability. Stability has been used by local unions to develop a good dialogue, both at the
transnational and local levels, with management on different measures on how to increase
flexibility while guaranteeing employability (via training) particularly for the core (internal)
workforce. Accordingly, at the European-level an EFA was signed, mainly concerning labour
mobility and requalification measures as the best ways to anticipate change. In particular, the
overall aim is to reinforce the use of internal forms of flexibility for the core workforce while
using external flexibility (i.e. contractual and atypical forms of work) as a “buffer”. The effect
is to preserve the employment security of the core while increasing flexibility for the
periphery. The result is a balanced trade-off where local unions accept flexibility (of the
periphery) in exchange for security (of the core).
The market conditions EU2 faces are arguably more difficult than those of EU1,
although not as harsh as for US1 or US2. The austerity measures implemented by national
governments following the economic crisis have impacted on the expense capacities of public
institutions, which represent the bulk of EU2’s customers in the countries we included in our
study. A restructuring plan in 2011 was announced by corporate management and negotiated
locally with unions in order to structurally adjust workforce levels in each plant. Thus, during
the crisis, the German plant utilised short-time working schemes (Kurzarbeit) to cope with the
drop in orders as an immediate effect of the crisis, but only in exchange for job security of the
core workers.
In order to compete for high-value bids, EU2 has pushed for internal vertical crosscountry integration, which allows it to deliver complex, integrated and customised solutions
to the client. At the same time the on-going transition from a predominantly productive
activity to a service post-sale focus has had the effect of structurally changing pre-existing
internal configurations and working conditions. For example, inter-firm labour mobility and
job rotation are highly pursued by both local management and unions as a way to enhance
flexibility while avoiding job losses. On the other hand, however, works councils and local
unions do not resist the use of numerical flexibility, which they often use to “buffer” the
security of the core (internal) workforce. As the European headquarters manager argues:
25
“We need flexibility in order to adjust our production to the current needs. When we have a large
workload in our plants we use various instruments of flexibility such as flexi-time and overtime to
secure employment to our core workers but we do also very much use agency workers for example.
The fact we can use agency work is very important for us to guarantee security to our core. The unions
agree on that because the core workers are their affiliates”
(EU HQ management- Brussels, 10 July 2012)
Due to their agreement to use external (numerical) flexibility, local unions have been blocked
by local management from enforcing wage compensation in the case of overtime. The result is
a reinforcement of the working conditions of the core. For example, in the local collective
agreement for British plants, an overtime premium is given to core workers assigned to night
or multiple shifts. Also, procedures for internal promotion are included in the agreement and
formalised in a detailed assessment handbook linking competences, promotion and training.
The link of training with the flexibility requirements of each team is explicitly stated in the
local agreement. Likewise, in Italy, the local HR manager states that the company’s objective
is to have every employee trained for 27 hours a year, in exchange for their commitment in
the new service-oriented working organisation.
To sum up, we observe that for two companies of similar country-of-origin
(American), technology and (homogeneous) nature of the product (US1 and US2): in US1, a
company vertically integrated with medium-high market uncertainty, local unions conceded
flexibility in exchange for security. The effects on the workforce (internal-external) have been
alike in the sense that practices of flexibility and security adopted cover equally both the core
and peripheral workforce (“balanced” trade-off). Conversely, in US2, a non-integrated
company with high levels of market uncertainty, local unions were instead forced to accept
high levels of flexibility without a corresponding trade-off in terms of security. In particular,
the “unbalanced” trade-off produced negative effects on the employees who had to deliver
more flexibility relative to what was received in terms of security. On the contrary, for the
other companies of similar country-of-origin (European and therefore the same country-oforigin), nature of the product (differentiated) and technology (EU1 and EU2): in EU1, not
integrated but with low level of market uncertainty, local unions managed to bargain for high
levels of security independently from the company’s request of flexibility (“unbalanced”
trade-off in favour of the employees). By contrast, the local unions in EU2, a vertically
integrated company with medium-low levels of market uncertainty, have been exchanging
flexibility (of the periphery) with security (of the core) (“balanced” trade-off), and thereby
kept relative control on the job conditions of the internal (core) workforce.
26
The effects of flexibility and security trade-offs on workforce dualisation
This section sheds light on how the organisational and market conditions, affecting
unions’ bargaining power and the negotiations on flexibility and security at the level of the
different multinationals’ subsidiaries, influence the degree of dualisation of the workforce at
the local level. Hereby, we refer to the degree of difference in treatment and working
conditions between different groups of workers, particularly regular and non-regular workers
and also associated skill levels. We argue that within US1 and US2 operating in markets with
medium to high uncertainty and competitiveness, the negotiated flexicurity trade-off
contributes to exerting pressure on the core (regular) workforce by an externally flexible
periphery, which challenges the working conditions of the core, progressively increasing the
flexibility demanded from this group of workers. The result is a widening of existing
institutional dualisms (“converging” dualism), that is, the core (regular-insiders) is
increasingly treated like the periphery (non-regular-outsiders). This leads to blurring borders
between core and periphery as a result of the increasing flexibilisation of the whole
workforce, and its correspondent degradation of working conditions. Conversely, in EU1 and
EU2, where market uncertainty and competitiveness are relatively low, unions are better
equipped to preserve their bargaining power at the local level. The result is a deepening of
existing institutional dualisms (“diverging” dualism), with the difference in treatment between
the core and the periphery becoming more pronounced and reflecting a contractual and skill
difference. This is because unions are able to resist pressure for the highly skilled core by
using the low skilled periphery of non-regular workers. Thereby, non-regular workers
function mainly as a “buffer” for the core, with lower levels of security and higher levels of
flexibility than the core. Below we illustrate this argument by reporting the empirical
evidence.
Pressure on unions in US1 and US2 are high considering the need to implement
flexible practices in order to face market uncertainty. Specifically, in US1 the MNC’s
integrated organisational structure and the homogeneous nature of the product allows
management to easily benchmark across borders and thereby reduce unions’ capacity to
bargain autonomously at the local plant. The result is a balanced flexibility-security trade-off
where local unions at each subsidiary had to make concessions on flexibility in order to secure
jobs. Similarly, in US2 local unions were pushed to increase flexibility but without being able
to compensate in security (“unbalanced” trade-off in favour of the employer). However,
despite the differences in the nature of the trade-offs, in both cases the trade-offs create
internal competition between the different groups of workers. More specifically, what we
observe from the US1 and US2 case studies in the four countries is that the use of agency and
fixed-term (non-regular) workers has had visible repercussions on the regular (permanent)
workforce as well. This happened in two ways. Firstly, regular (core/insider) workers started
to suffer from the pressure for flexibility coming from the temporary workers. Thereby they
27
started to be treated as non-regular (periphery/outsider) employees, in the sense that in order
to keep their regular (stable) positions they were obliged to do overtime; guarantee internal
flexibility via working time reduction and wage cuts; perform as good as their non-regular
competitors. The effect is a worsening of the working conditions of the regular workers in
terms of not only working time and wages but also career prospects and job security.
Secondly and directly connected to the former, local management often strategically used the
non-regular (particularly agency workers) to put pressure on the core (regular) workforce by
introducing pay premium and performance indicators. For example, pay premiums were
strategically used by local management in US2 in Germany to introduce ‘coercive
comparisons’ across regular and agency workers. They are used to put pressure on the ‘core’
workers to enhance their level of productivity in the plant. Similarly, in US1 in Belgium the
pay premiums were used as a ‘stick and carrot’ mechanism to enhance performance among
both regular and non-regular workers (Pulignano and Dörflinger, 2013).
During the crisis heavy restructuring plans were announced or actually applied in US1
in Belgium, Italy, UK and Germany. In the UK, unions agreed to cut working hours of
(hourly-paid) blue collar workers and wages of white collar workers. Local unions agreed on
increasing the use of sometimes not compensated reductions in working time and wage
flexibility for the internal (regular) workforce. While compensated working time flexibility
was increasingly applied in Germany (especially via working time accounts and the
flexibilisation of the weekly working time depending on the forecasted production volume)
and Belgium (paid overtime), conversely in the UK, regular workers were not being paid a
premium when working on night shifts. Flexibility, moreover, is basically set by market
demands and production requirements rather than the type of contract or workers’ skills. An
HR manager explains:
“[Flexibility] is much more dependent upon which assembly track you’re working on. […] The most
important factor for the number of temporary employees we have is the demand for our product. And
then, within the recruitment process, we need to understand […] we need to determine what skills we
need.”
(US1-UK HR Manager – May 16th 2012)
This may also explain why forms of internal and functional flexibility for production
peaks can coexist with wage cuts or a reduction in working hours. Unions have also tolerated
the extensive use of overtime for regular workers in order to adjust to production peaks. In the
words of the Belgian EWC representative:
“It can also happen that in the very same work area 50% of them are dismissed, whereas 0% of them
are dismissed in the close building. That’s not fair. People know that even in the same building there’s
28
no work at all on one floor, and that there’s plenty of work on the floor under it, where people even
work overtime.”
(US1-BEL EWC representative – September 4th 2012)
Therefore, the result is the degradation of the general working conditions of the
internal (regular) core workforce. Similarly, the option of using traditional processes of
workforce dualisation as instrument to protect the core is not available for unions at US2
either. While unions have been partly able to impede an even greater use of agency work or to
oppose even wider differences in working conditions and pay with the core workforce, as in
the UK and Germany, they were obliged to give in on high levels of flexibility for permanent
workers. While agency workers remain unsecure regarding their continuity in US2, permanent
employees at each subsidiary were mostly subject to pay cuts and working time reductions,
particularly during the crisis. Moreover, all employees (regular/non-regular) were subject to a
strong degree of undesired both internal and numerical flexibility, since all changes in the
quantity and nature of labour had to be accommodated internally. In some local plants more
than in others this led to a relative improvement of the working conditions of the outsiders
(non-regular). In the UK, for example, the union has strongly pushed for equality in working
conditions between regular employees and agency workers by the rejection of the “Swedish
Derogation”. Fixed-term contracts would in their opinion be better than agency ones to
guarantee flexibility while avoiding differences in working conditions. In addition,
differences in the access to training in the stipulations of permanent/temporary contracts were
not observed except for Germany where training is solely available to core (regular) workers,
although the focus seemed to be on white-collar employees rather than on the shop floor. The
consequence is a forced increase of internal and numerical flexibility rather than the creation
of a buffer of non-regular workers. An Italian member of the European works council shows
how the reinforcement of a periphery of non-regular workers to act as buffer of the core
workforce was not as their main aim in negotiation where instead they bargained on the use of
other flexible instruments:
“[…] In 2008 we made an agreement concerning productivity bonuses, and there was an exchange,
too, because we increased the number of working hours within the shifts: 15 minutes more in the
morning and afternoon shifts, and 30 minutes in the night shift. We made this in exchange for a good
amount of money as a productivity bonus as well as other advantages such as industrial policy,
trainings, trade unions’ internal relations and so on.”
(US2-ITA Union EWC rep – April 3rd 2012)
Both US1 and US2 represent cases of multinational companies where the hypothesis
of the “dualisation divide” between a strong core and a weak periphery seems to lose terrain
29
as the consequence of the pressure on local unions for flexibility – compensated (balanced) or
not compensated (unbalanced) – at the local level. How can we explain this? Something that
US1 and US2 have in common is the simple technology and the nature of the production
process, which implies relatively simple skills as well as the cost-effectiveness of their
operations. The relative simplicity of the production processes and the economic nature of the
operations entail a reduction in substitution costs. It progressively decreases the need for
internal segmentation, both from management and unions, and it can help explain why market
uncertainty has to be borne to a similar extent by all workers.
Processes of dualisation seem to work in a different way where market uncertainty is
low and unions can count on stronger bargaining power. In EU1 a high level of security is
observed, although the multi-domestic structure of the company obliges unions to find local
solutions to fluctuations in demand. The high bargaining power of unions, though, allows
them to negotiate better conditions for regular (core) workers. It is important to remark that
this negotiation power stems mainly from the scarcity of skills in the market rather than a
strong union affiliation in the company. Agency workers, where hired, are used especially for
less added-value production activities and do not enter in conflict with regular employees.
This is due to the fact that the production process is organised in such a way that allows the
separation of tasks between regular and non-regular employees in accordance to the
differentiated nature of the product and the nature of the tasks requirement which derives
therefrom. In Italy a buffer for engineers is created by using external contractors, which are
assigned “work packages” in case of production peaks, a solution that seems to satisfy both
management and unions. It is true that measures to foster the combined use of internal and
numerical flexibility are, if anything, impacting more on engineers than on blue collar
workers. However, career progression schemes do not seem to be targeted on blue collar
workers, which is where agency workers are mostly concentrated. For example, when asked
whether career plans defined the salary that workers would have in the following years
according to the time spent in the company, the Belgian HR Director of EU1 answered that
this occurred only for technicians, and that blue collar workers did not have a career plan at
all. The “production” area is in any case only one of the 15 professional families in the career
path framework developed by EU1’s HR. Training investments are also mainly focused on
general skills transferred to engineers2, reinforcing their already high employment security.
Finally, while wage flexibility impacts more on the core (skilled) than on the peripheral (less
skilled) workforce, income security is still arguably guaranteed only by high wage levels.
Therefore, differences in terms of employment and income security are strong between the
highly skilled core (stable) and the lowly skilled periphery (unstable). This contributes to the
argument that we assist in a deepening of the existing institutional dualisms, with insiders’
2
Cf. EU1 Training Guide Autumn/Winter 2012-2013.
30
(core-regular-highly skilled) and outsiders’ (periphery/non-regular/lowly skilled) differential
treatment being significantly pronounced.
Differently than in EU1, management in EU2 has the strategic option of
accommodating production fluctuations by transferring employees to other sites within the
group, thanks to the high degree of vertical integration of its operations. Management does
indeed use this option by resorting to the transfer of employees across sites, and the
redeployment of workers from dismissed to profitable sites, as in Italy. Also, EU2 highly
relies on polyvalence and job rotation in order to be able to have personnel available for all
tasks. However, these requirements do not affect all employees in the same way. Agency and
temporary workers are widely used for lower added-value activities, and their use is part of
the strategy of focus on R&D activities, and on after-sale services. The former implies the
increasing use of a white-collar and strongly trained but somewhat flexible workforce, where
a trade-off between flexibility and security is in place. A UK HR manager states:
“What we’re trying to do is to develop the classic model of - I mean a core work force and then
apparently outside of that having either our own temporary people that we will use an agency to recruit
for us, or if appropriate and we don’t have the capacity from a manufacturing point of view, we will
subcontract some of the - the metal bashing. They’re sort of blue-collar.”
(EU2-UK HR Manager – November 9th 2012)
The latter causes instead pressure on the blue-collar core, since former production
workers are being shifted to after-sale tasks, which require higher degrees of working time
and functional flexibility. While these workers are strongly unionised, their level of
employment security is reduced by the weakness of training programmes compensating for
the strong pressure put on them by management’s requirements. Union representatives from
the UK and Italy shed light on their respective problems:
“At the moment there are always staff shortages and they’re calling people out on overtime. They’re
calling people out on overtime, um, regardless of what they have to do. And basically, if you’re
talking about flexibility then they’re asking other people to do jobs they’re not competent in.”
(EU2-UK Union local rep – November 9th 2012)
“Please, have mercy. Until yesterday, you couldn’t force me to work on Sundays; you could convince
me by paying me in a more satisfying way. Nowadays, you can force me, you won’t pay me in a more
satisfying way, and moreover, you tell me that you can’t care less about staff retention for people
working for you for 25 years. […] Briefly, they want to treat us like the newly-recruited ones, who
don’t have such privileges.”
(EU2-ITA Union local rep – November 16th 2012)
31
Segmentation between regular and non-regular workers is clearly observable.
Although both regular and non-regular workers will have to be highly flexible, the
corporation has the interest and the capacity to invest heavily at least in those workers
considered the future of the company, such as white collar engineers and highly skilled blue
collar workers. A schematic summary of the effects of the flexicurity trade-offs on workforce
dualisation at the firm-level is reported in Table 3.
Table 3: Effects of the flexicurity trade-offs on workforce dualisation
Company
Market uncertainty
Degree of Integration
Effects of flexicurity
trade-off on
workforce dualisation
US1
medium-high
High
“Converging”
dualisation:
US2
High
Low
“Converging”
dualisation:
EU1
Low
Low
“Diverging”
dualisation:
EU2
Medium-low
high
“Diverging”
dualisation:
Core (regular) being
treated increasingly
more as the periphery
(non-regular)
Core (regular) being
treated increasingly
more as the periphery
(non-regular)
Difference in treatment
between core (regular)
and periphery (nonregular) becoming more
pronounced
Difference in treatment
between core (regular)
and periphery (nonregular) becoming more
pronounced
Conclusion
The results of this study make a number of important contributions to the flexicurity
debate in Europe. The present study is the first to develop a systematic attempt on the
intersection of the labour markets, contextual (market) and firm level characteristics of
flexibility-security trade-offs. It identifies four flexibility-security trade-offs, each of which is
a unique combination of the degree and nature of market competition and firm-related
organisational factors. While these classifications broaden and deepen our understanding of
flexicurity bargaining at the firm (micro)-level in Europe, it has also sufficient similarities
with previous theoretical and empirical work to indicate that it is credible and valid. For
example, the broad distinction between compensated and non-compensated trade-offs (Ibsen
and Mailand, 2009; Glassner et al., 2010) is reflected in the “balanced”/“unbalanced”
distinction. Furthermore, the fact that within country (and across firm) variation exists in the
way in which flexibility is enacted resembles what the literature and studies already outlined
indicate in terms of how flexibility measures vary among different firms (Chung, 2007).
Nevertheless, two aspects contribute to make the paper original in its analytical and
theoretical contribution within the flexicurity debate in European labour markets.
Firstly, the study provides a more nuanced understanding of the typical ways in which
flexibility-security, as the result of bargained activity at the local level, might differ. The
flexibility-security taxonomy the paper proposes suggests that, for example, although there
may be a category of balanced trade-off in which flexibility is exchanged for security, not all
categories of workers may equally benefit from it.
32
Moreover, and as a consequence of this issue, the taxonomy also shows that not all
firms will automatically produce different types of flexibility-security arrangements. These
will depend on the degree of market competition and uncertainty, and on the degree of
international integration of the firm. These factors will mediate the local bargaining power of
the union, which will be negotiating at the plant level on the flexibility-security trade-off. We
found evidence of this by comparing a 2-by-2 matrix of multinationals’ subsidiaries with the
same country or origin, technology and nature of the product. This highlights the importance
of market forces and organisational features of the firm to understanding differences in how
companies organise internally, particularly on the combination flexibility-security. However,
it must be recognised that the manner and extent to which and flexibility and security are
combined can vary due to local negotiations.
Secondly, this study is the first to provide an empirical test of institutional theory in
relation to the flexibility-security nexus at the firm level. This approach contrasts with some
previous studies on flexicurity that focus on the macro-institutional level of labour markets.
By using multinational companies as a useful empirical tool, linking the macro-institutional
(“home” “host”-country effects) with the micro-political level, the findings are consistent with
the general thrust of current neo-institutionalist studies, that illustrate that cross-country
similarity – as well as within country variation – within Europe does exist and that it is partly
the result of firm-level behaviours. Firms are promulgators of “institutional entrepreneurship”:
they act as active and dynamic agents of change, circumventing macro-institutional
constraints (Crouch 2005) and eliciting heterogeneity within (and across) national business
systems. This finding suggests that the key element that shapes flexibility-security policies is
the capacity of organised actors at the local level and their interests, primarily trade unions
and local management. For example, higher security appears to be more prevalent in those
environments where local unions had power to bargain practices promoting employment
stability. This may derive from the organised labour capacity to use specific contextual and
organisational firm resources proactively to influence decision-making within firms. On the
other side, also firms influence the flexibility-security trade-offs by investing in skilled and
core workers.
Finally, the third original contribution of this study is that it examines the effects of the
aforementioned taxonomy of flexibility-security trade-offs on different categories of workers
(regular and non-regular) while drawing some analytical considerations regarding the
“dualisation” of the labour market divide. It highlights a shift in patterns of existing
dualisation, from the traditional core-periphery to the “widening” of existing dualisms
(converging dualism), that is core (insiders) being increasingly threated as the periphery
(outsiders), and the periphery getting some features of the core, with a consequent blurring of
the borders between the two groups on one hand, or towards a “deepening” of existing
dualisms (diverging dualism), that is the core (regular) and the periphery (non-regular)
33
becoming more distanced from each other. Future research clearly needs to provide more
empirical evidence aimed at considering how recent policy reforms within different
institutional regimes interact with contextual and organisational factors, and employee
agency, to shape these new divides.
Although this study has a number of advantages, it also has some limitations. In
particular, the empirical research was developed while the effects of the economic crisis were
still harsh. Although we tried to correct for this bias by looking retrospectively while
interviewing and collecting the empirical data, it is likely that the effect of the crisis may yet
scarcely affect the findings. One possible further limitation is that while examining the effects
of trade-offs on different groups of workers, the study does not examine the variation of job
factors within these categories to establish whether each category was broadly comparable
across different plants and institutional regimes. However, evidence to suggest that there is a
high degree of commonality comes from the fact that the technology, and therefore the nature
of the production process, was similar across the different firm clusters.
In conclusion, this study sheds light on the fact that although institutional macro-level
labour market theories and employment policies are helpful in explaining cross-national
variation in the level of macro-level flexicurity, they appear less well equipped to explain
cross- (and within-) country differences in the extent, nature and outcomes of flexicurity.
Clearly, an important role in this respect is played by firm-level organisational and contextual
market factors.
Acknowledgment
This research received a grant from the Onderzoektoelage OT/10/015 and Federale
Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek G.0773.11 (“Multinationals in Europe between flexibility and
security”).
References
Bekker S and Wilthagen T (2008) Europe’s pathways to flexicurity: Lessons presented from
and to the Netherlands. Intereconomics 43(2): 68–73.
Bredgaard and Tros (2007) Alternatives to early retirement? Flexibility and security for older
workers in the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany and Belgium. ILP Innovating Labour
Market Policies: Transitional Labour Markets and Flexicurity, Amsterdam, 30 November
and 1 December 2006
Bredgaard, T., Larsen, F., Madsen, P. K., and Rasmussen, S. (2009) Flexicurity på dansk,
CAR- MA, Aalborg Universitet, Aalborg.
34
Brown W, Hayles J., Hughes, B. Rowe L. (1984) “Product and labour Markets in Wage
determination: some Australian evidence”, British Journal of Industrial Relations, XXII
(2): 169-176
Brown W. (2008) “The Influence of Product Markets on Industrial Relations” in Blyton P.,
Bacon N., Fiorito J., Heery E. (eds) The Sage Handbook of Industrial Relations, London:
Sage
Burroni L. and Keune M. (2011) Flexicurity: A conceptual critique, European Journal of
Industrial Relations, 17 (1), 75-91
Chung H. (2007) “Flexibility for employers or for employees? A new approach to examining
labour market flexibility across Europe using company level data”, In: Jørgensen H and
Madsen PK (eds) Flexicurity and Beyond. Copenhagen: DJØF Publishing, 243-277.
Crouch C. (2005) Capitalist Diversity and Change: Recombinant Governance and
Institutional Entrepreneurs. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Crouch C. and Keune M. (2012) « The governance of economic uncertainty: beyond the ‘new
social risks’ analysis”. In G Bonoli & D Natali (Eds.), The Politics of the New Welfare
States in Western Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Crouch C (2010) Beyond the Flexibility/security Trade off: Reconciling Confident
Consumers with Insecure Workers. British Journal of Industrial Relations. Early View, 16
November 2010.
Crouch C. (2012) Confronting Uncertainty in Work and Social Policy in the Crisis. The Work
of EU Research Project GUSTO, Paper presented at the final conference of GUSTO,
Brussels May 2012
Doeringer, P. and M. J. Piore (1971), Internal Labor Markets and Manpower Analysis (Lexington, Heath Lexington Books).
Edwards T (2011) The Nature of International Integration and Human Resource Policies in
Multinational Companies. Cambridge Journal of Economics 35(3): 483-498
Emmenegger, P., Häusermann, S., Palier, B. and Seeleib-Kaiser, M. (2012) The Age of
Dualization. The Changing Face of Inequality in Deindustrializing Societies, Oxford and
New York: Oxford University Press.
European Commission (2006) Employment in Europe 2006, Luxembourg: Office for Official
Publications of the European Communities.
European Commission (2007) Employment in Europe 2007, Luxembourg: Office for Official
Publications of the European Communities.
Glassner, V., Keune, M., Marginson, P. (2011) Collective Bargaining in a Time of Crisis:
Developments in the private sector in Europe. Transfer 17( 3): 303-321.
35
Godard, J. (1997) “Managerial Strategies, Labour and Employment Relations and the State:
the Canadian Case and Beyond.” British Journal of Industrial Relations 35(3):399-426.
Hagen, Inger M. and Trygstad CS. (2009), «Local flexicurity: resolving the conflict between
direct and representative participation.» Transfer 3-4/2009.
Hall P and Soskice D (eds) (2001) Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of
Comparative Advantage, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ibsen, C. L. and Mailand, M. (2009) Flexicurity and Collective Bargaining - Balancing acts
across sectors and countries, FAOS, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen.
Ibsen CL and Mailand M (2010) “Striking a balance? Flexibility and Security in Collective
Bargaining”. Economic and Industrial Democracy 32(2):161-180.
Ibsen C. (2011) “Strained Compromises? Danish Flexicurity During Crisis”, Nordic journal
of working life studies, 1 (1), 45-65.
Ilsøe A (2010) “Between trust and control: company-level bargaining on flexible working
hours in the Danish and German metal industries“, Industrial Relations Journal , 41 (1):
34-51.
Ilsøe, A (2008) Trade-offs on flexible working hours at the company level: case studies from
Denmark and the United States in AE Eaton (red.), Labor and Employment Relations.
Association Series: Proceedings of the 60 th Annual Meeting. Labor and Employment
Relations Association, Champaign, Illinois, s. 42-50.
Keller, B., and Seifert, H. (2004) “Flexicurity—the German trajectory”, Transfer, 10 (2),
226–247.
Keune M and Jepsen M (2007) “Not balanced and hardly new: The European Commission’s
quest for flexicurity”, in Jørgensen H and Madsen PK (eds) Flexicurity and Beyond.
Copenhagen: DJØF Publishing, 189–211.
Kochan, T.A. (1980) Collective Bargaining and Industrial Relations. Homewood, Illinois:
Irwin.
Kochan, T. A., Katz, H. C. and McKersie R (1986) The Transformation of American
Industrial Relations. New York: Basic Books, 1986.
Madsen P.K. (2002) The Danish Model of Flexicurity‖ – A Paradise with some Snakes,
Brussels: European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions.
Madsen P. (2006) “How can it possibly fly? The paradox of a dynamic labour market in a
Scandinavian welfare state”, in Campbell J, Hall J and Pedersen O (eds) National Identity
and the Varieties of Capitalism: The Danish Experience. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s
University Press, 321–355.
36
Marginson P and Galetto M. (2013) Engaging with flexibility and security: rediscovering the
role of collective bargaining, Paper to be presented at the European Conference of ILERA,
June 2013, Amsterdam.
Marginson, P., Edwards, P., Martin, R., Purcell, J. and Sisson, K., (1988) Beyond the
Workplace, Managing Industrial Relations in the Multi-establishment Enterprise.
Blackwell, London..
Marginson P. (1992) “European Integration and Trans- national Management-Union
Relations in the Enterprise”, British Journal of Industrial Relations, 30 (4), 529-545.
Molina, O. and Rhodes, M. (2007) ‘Conflict, Complementarities and Institutional Change in
Mixed Market Economies’, in B.Hancké,M.Rhodes and M.Thatcher (eds) Beyond
Varieties of Capitalism: Contradictions,Complementarities & Change, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 223-252.
Muffels R. (2008) “Flexibility and Employment Security in Europe: Setting the Scene” in
Muffels R. (ed) Flexibility and Employment Security in Europe, UK: Edward Elgar.
Pulignano V. and Dörflinger N. (2013) A head with two tales. Trade unions influence on
temporary agency work in Belgian and German workplaces, Paper Presented at IRRU
Seminar Series, University of Warwick, 6 March.
Pulignano V. and Keune M. (2013) Institutional Variation and the Governance of the
Flexibility- Security Nexus in Multinationals. Theoretical Proposals for Future Research,
Paper presented at the 2011 SASE conference and currently under review.
Rydell, A. and Wigblad, R. (2011) ‘Company-level flexicurity during the restructuring
process: A model’, Transfer 17(4): 547–562.
Schmid, G. (2010) Beyond Flexicurity: Active securities for flexible employment
relationships, Draft contribution to the conference on ‘Alternatives to Flexicurity – New
Concepts and Approaches,’ organised by ETUI, AIAS/HSI, UCM, and TRANSOC, in
Madrid, May 6–7, 2010.
Turnbull P., McGurk J., Martinez Lucio (1994) “Strategic Choice and Industrial Relations: A
Case
Study
of
British
Airways”,
accessed
on
http://www.mngt.waikato.ac.nz/Departments/Strategy%20and%20Human%20Resource%2
0Management/airaanz/old/conferce/queenstown2002/pdf/volume1/TurnbulletalRefStrategicchoice.pdf
Viebrock E and Clasen J (2009) Flexicurity: A state of the art review. Working Papers on the
Reconciliation of Work and Welfare in Europe, Network of EC Sixth Framework
Programme, REC-WP01/2009.
Wilthagen T. and Tros F. (2004) “The concept of 'flexicurity': a new approach to regulating
employment and labour markets”. Transfer, 10 (2), 166-186
Wilthagen T., Muffels R. and Chung H. (2013) “The ‘state of affairs’ of flexicurity in
industrial relations: assessing country performance using transition indicators” in
37
Arrowsmith J. and Pulignano V. (eds) The Transformations of Employment Relations in
Europe. Institutions and Outcomes in the Age of Globalisation, London: Routledge
38