European Trade Unions: Change And Response

European Trade Unions During the last two decades, trade unions in the European Union have faced an increasingly hostile environment, conditioned by growing globalization and structural changes in the contemporary European economies. This book considers the problems this new environment poses for trade unions and, in particular, the responses they have been developing to these problems. The volume: • explores the extent to which European industrial relations systems are converging • looks at what has been the unions’ responses to changes in the economic environment • includes studies from key sectors: electronics, food manufacturing, banking, and central government administration • compares trade unions in these sectors in five of Europe’s most important economies: Germany, the UK, Spain, Italy, and Denmark. Taken together, these considerations illustrate some of the most important industrial relations tendencies in Europe. Mike Rigby is Principal Lecturer in Human Resource Management at the South Bank University, London. Roger Smith is Principal Lecturer in Employment Relations at the South Bank University, London. Teresa Lawlor is Head of the School of Languages, Kingston University, London. Routledge Studies in the European Economy 1 Growth and Crisis in the Spanish Economy, 1940–1993 Sima Lieberman 2 Work and Employment in Europe A new convergence? Edited by Peter Cressey and Bryn Jones 3 Trans-European Telecommunication Networks The challenges for industrial policy Colin Turner 4 European Union—European Industrial Relations? Global challenges, national develop