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`The book is well written and clearly structured, bringing together much dispersed material. The most interesting part of the book is the case study of the Czech engineering firm CKD. The case study gives an insight into the continuing processes of transition: transition is a process, rather than a jump from Socialism to capitalism. The author provides solid evidence on the ways in which adjusting to the market has proved painful, and in the end unsuccessful for CKD, which has been merged with another firm. Overall, Transformation at Work provides a valuable insight into the realities of the t

What is the lived experience of routine wage labour? Why does it matter? In the mid-1970s, Miriam Glucksmann/Ruth Cavendish, committed as a socialist and feminist and frustrated at the political isolation of academia from working class life, went to find out. She worked in a factory, and while not originally intending to write about it, ended up producing a rich ethnography:Women on the Line. Why was it important, and does it remain so? In the preface toThe Making of the English Working Class, E. P. Thompson explained his choice of title: "Making, because it is the study in an active process, which owes as much to agency as to conditioning." It is this interaction between agency and structure that is important to understanding how consciousness, identity, and action work—including the possibilities of challenging the status quo. Glucksmann gained the insight into what it felt like to "work on the line"; how work felt, the memories, experiences, everyday realities of her work colleagues; the control of the labour process, class and gender relations and collectivity; how wage exploitation operated; and resistance, including unionization, a dispute, division, and defeat.

Drawing on a 2004 survey of 501 low-paid, non-unionized workers with problems at work, this paper explores the types of difficulties encountered and responses to these, including expressions of collectivism. It finds that not only did most workers take action to resolve their problems, but a quarter did so collectively. However, such spontaneous collectivism did not develop into effective mobilization of power. The paper also explores workers' views on trade unions. While most workers were broadly pro-union, this was no more likely among those who attempted collective resolutions than it was among others. The relationship between collectivism in consciousness, and action and positive attitudes to union representation, remains as complex a problem among today's unorganized workers as ethnographic studies demonstrated several decades ago.

In the 'Warwick Agreement' with trade union leaders in 2004, the British government pledged support for 'vulnerable workers' and developed this policy in 2006. However, there is no policy acknowledgement that weak collective organization is the cause of worker vulnerability. This article is based on a definition of vulnerability as non-unionism and low pay and presents findings based on in-depth interviews with low-paid, non-unionized workers with employment grievances who approached the major British charity providing free advice, the Citizens Advice Bureau. This is framed in a contemporaneous survey of 500 low-paid, non-unionized workers with problems at work, which provides data on the kinds of problems experienced, responses to them and the pattern of outcomes for such workers. The study found a very low level of successful resolution. The significance of the qualitative evidence is that it illuminates the lived experience of isolation and poor resolution among workers seeking external help.

There is much evidence that the 'European social model' is under threat, with neoliberalism increasingly dominating policy both at EU and national levels. Within this trend, Britain stands out as already having a long-established free market tradition-Anglo-American in both industrial relations and corporate governance systems. This article seeks to illustrate how British state allegiance to a 'flexible' labour market has brought new restrictions to accessing statutory employment protection, the chief defence for 'unorganized' workers those who are neither unionized nor covered by collective agreements and who now comprise the majority of workers in Britain. The New Labour government, committed to voluntarism and fiexibility, has used the very instrument it avers to avoid legal regulation to limit access to employment tribunals, the final resort for legal enforcement of employment rights. The government has thus constrained its concessions to the European social model, which comprise a range of laws since 1997 enhancing individual employment rights, in its overarching neoliberal policy, by ensuring legal regulation remains difflcult to achieve and does not 'burden' business. This article, based on research both on legal developments, and on the social support mechanisms for non-unionized workers, seeks to demonstrate the extreme vulnerability of the unorganized worker in an increasingly free market Britain. How far this portrait has relevance to the rightward drift of Europe depends on the degree to which it can be exported, how far continental European systems are sufflciently institutionally embedded to resist this, and how successfully the European social model is defended.

This article discusses gender and employment in 10 central eastern European countries: eight new EU member states and two candidate countries. The context is set with demographic, economic, and labour-market trends, including population, GDP, and gender disaggregated employment, activity, and unemployment rates. Changes in horizontal and vertical gender segregation are then addressed, especially the uneven gender effect on employment patterns of sectoral restructuring during capitalist transformation. Lastly, the gender pay gap is examined, and compared to patterns in western Europe. The article concludes with a discussion of the advances, but also the limits of harmonization through EU gender-equality legislation.

Ten years on from the 'revolutions' of 1989 which overthrew the state command economies of Central Eastern Europe (CEE), this article explores progress in the democratic reform of industrial relations as a key area of change. Worker interest representation both at state level, at the intermediate industry level and at the workplace level is reviewed and analysed. The competing dynamics of building tripartite and corporatist institutions, encouraged by the ILO, and the neoclassical thrust of the transformation process, which has encouraged deregulation and decentralization, are explored. Trade unions' focus on and faith in this institution-building has arguably deflected attention from developing deeper processes of democratizing industrial relations. This leaves labour with a weak influence over the reregulation of the employment relationship, as the CEE embarks on harmonization prior to accession to an enlarged EU.

Ten years on from the 'revolutions' of 1989 which overthrew the state command economies of Central Eastern Europe (CEE), this article explores progress in the democratic reform of industrial relations as a key area of change. Worker interest representation both at state level, at the intermediate industry level and at the workplace level is reviewed and analysed. The competing dynamics of building tripartite and corporatist institutions, encouraged by the ILO, and the neoclassical thrust of the transformation process, which has encouraged deregulation and decentralization, are explored. Trade unions' focus on and faith in this institution-building has arguably deflected attention from developing deeper processes of democratizing industrial relations. This leaves labour with a weak influence over the reregulation of the employment relationship, as the CEE embarks on harmonization prior to accession to an enlarged EU. (Economic and Industrial Democracy / FUB)

This paper examines the concept of `patriarchy' as a tool for analysing gender inequality, while signalling the problems which arise from a common confusion between its use as short-hand description and as explanation. It first enters a substantive critique of a theory of `patriarchy', highlighting its reductionism and circularity. It then broadens to the form of abstract structuralist theorisation used, and its flattening and mechanistic effect on analysis. As an alternative to a dualist approach to `structures of' capitalism as `patriarchy', it argues that gendering needs to be understood as integral to all social relations at the start. To unravel the mediations of this intermeshing, theory, rather than being abstract, needs to be embedded in the substantive empirical analysis of social process which might be called feminist historical materialism. The discussion finally considers why it is that a `grand narrative' of `patriarchy' survives amid the fashion of post-structuralist fragmentation, pointing to theoretical continuities of self-enclosed theorisation in abstract structuralism and in post-modernist sociology, as one dimension of explanation.

AbstractThis paper examines the logic and implications of the Single European Market for the food manufacturing sector. It points to the role of multinationals in this sector and the process of concentration through merger and acquisition as a central growth strategy. It suggests that rather than encourage further concentration, European policy should concern itself with the benefits as well as the problems of regional differentiation and the complementarity rather than the conflict of different scales of production and distribution.

Examines the implications of the single European market for the food manufacturing sector, focusing on the role of multinationals & the process of concentration through merger & acquisition as a central growth strategy. It is suggested that, rather than encourage further concentration, European policy should concern itself with the benefits as well as the problems of regional differentiation & the complementarity rather than the conflict of different scales of production & distribution. 48 References. Adapted from the source document.