Employee Representation in Multinational Companies: The Articulation of Interests in Multilevel Action Fields

301 Pages·2019·2.06 MB·English

by  Thomas Haipeter

Thomas Haipeter · Markus Hertwig
Sophie Rosenbohm
Employee
Representation in
Multinational
Companies
The Articulation of
Interests in Multilevel
Action Fields
Employee Representation in Multinational
Companies
Thomas Haipeter • Markus Hertwig
Sophie Rosenbohm
Employee
Representation in
Multinational
Companies
The Articulation of Interests in
Multilevel Action Fields
Thomas Haipeter Markus Hertwig
Institute for Work, Skills and Training Chemnitz University of Technology
University of Duisburg-Essen Chemnitz, Germany
Duisburg, Germany
Sophie Rosenbohm
Institute for Work, Skills and Training
University of Duisburg-Essen
Duisburg, Germany
Translated by Pete Burgess
ISBN 978-3-319-97558-0 ISBN 978-3-319-97559-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97559-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018954892
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Preface
Over the past two decades, the multi-level architecture of transnational
industrial relations has become a commonsense concept in industrial
relations research, its institutions and associations, and also in policy and
politics. Previous research strongly suggests that the practice and out-
come of industrial relations are highly dependent on the interplay of the
many types of representative actors, institutions, and procedures.
Articulating employee interests vis-à-vis management, in the traditional
sense of the term, is shaped by the ‘articulation’ established between dif-
ferent elements within the multi-level framework. This book highlights
articulation in the latter sense. It deals, firstly, with the interplay between
transnational and national levels of employee representation in multina-
tional companies (MNCs), and, secondly, with the question of how artic-
ulation affects representational outcomes. While European Works
Councils (EWCs) have become acknowledged as pivotal institutions in
the multi-level architecture of industrial relations in Europe, our study
seeks to extend the scope of research in this area to encompass national
and local forms of employee representation, including trade unions, and
their national and transnational organisations.
We are grateful to the German Research Foundation (Deutsche
Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG), which provided funding for the three-
year research project, enabling us, firstly, to develop a theoretical approach
to articulation and, secondly, to carry out the field work necessary to
v
vi Preface
investigate how articulation operated in practice during a number of
restructuring episodes at a sample of major multinational companies. We
would like to thank the many interviewees from the companies we anal-
ysed who openly shared their information and experiences with us. We
are also grateful to a number of German trade unions (IG BCE, IG
Metall, and ver.di) for enabling us to gain access to many of the compa-
nies in our research sample. Furthermore, we would like to express our
thanks to our student assistants, Hanna Lena Buschan and Lena Römer,
for their indispensable work in transcribing the recorded interviews that
totalled nearly a hundred hours of audio material. We would also like to
thank the participants of a workshop on articulation that was held at the
University of Duisburg-Essen in May 2017. This provided an opportu-
nity for us to discuss our empirical findings with an audience of acknowl-
edged experts in the field. Christian Dufour, Adelheid Hege, and Marcus
Kahmann were generous in their support for our research in companies
based in France and in conducting interviews in French.
Finally, we are especially grateful to Pete Burgess for his help with the
translation and proofreading of the text and for patiently discussing with
us all the problems of translation that result from looking at different
institutional systems of labour relations from diverse linguistic, and cul-
tural, angles.
Duisburg and Chemnitz Thomas Haipeter
June 2018 Markus Hertwig
Sophie Rosenbohm
Contents
1 Introduction: Transnational Interest Representation and
the Articulation of Employee Interests 1
2 Articulation, Structuration, and Action Fields: Theoretical
Approaches 19
3 Research Strategy and Design 47
4 Patterns of Articulation 79
5 Varieties of Articulation: Interest Representation
in Multinational Companies at National and Local Level 183
6 Patterns of Articulation Between Transnational Workplace
Employee Representatives and Trade Unions: Coordination
and Trade Union Networks 225
vii
viii Contents
7 Articulation Practices in Comparison: Patterns,
Conditions, and Outcomes of Employee Interest
Representation 251
Index 289
List of Figures
Fig. 2.1 Contents of the dimensions of the social in the structures of
various action fields. (Source: Authors) 27
Fig. 2.2 Articulation patterns of interest representation 36
Fig. 4.1 Typology of articulation patterns and case-study companies.
(Source: Authors) 80
ix
List of Tables
Table 2.1 Action fields of interest representation 24
Table 3.1 Case studies: main characteristics 53
Table 3.2 ISO country codes and identifiers 57
Table 5.1 Case studies and locations 190
Table 5.2 Local employee representation arrangements 191
Table 6.1 Trade union structures at transnational level 229
Table 7.1 Forms of coordination and integration of interest articulation 252
Table 7.2 Forms of coordination and integration at the case-study
companies 254
Table 7.3 Elements of articulation 261
Table 7.4 Outputs of interest representation 278
xi