Employee representation

In September 1997, the Italian Prime Minister appointed a committee to assess the operation of the tripartite central agreement on incomes policy and the structure of collective bargaining, among other issues, signed in July 1993. This article reviews the agreement's contents and its implementation.

There are several reasons for the unequal labour market position of men and women. A significant factor is horizontal segregation on the labour market, that is, the fact that men and women end up in different sectors and occupations. Around 40% of all those at work in Belgium are women; however

On 5 September 1997, the Lower House of the Dutch Parliament completed its debates on a bill to amend the Works Councils Act. Not counting various periodical adjustments, this is the seventh revision since the original 1950 Act. It has been repeatedly stressed by both the Cabinet and the members of

A long-running debate over the position of "working partners" in cooperatives - partners who also work in the organisation - has caused a dispute between Italian trade unions and cooperative associations, which came to a head when negotiations broke down in July 1997. We review the controversy and

One of the biggest stumbling blocks for the effective implementation in the UK of successive EU industrial relations Directives has been the so-called "representation gap" - whereby a significant and growing proportion of the UK workforce lacks collective representation at work. Labour Force Survey

In December 1993 the Trades Union Congress (TUC) stated its intention to become a campaigning organisation and abandoned much of its committee structure in favour of a series of "Task Groups", each dedicated to a single campaign issue. As part of this campaigning initiative, a New Unionism Task

In May 1997, the executive committee of Italy's CGIL trade union confederation approved a plan to create a single union centre by 2000, a development welcomed by the CISL confederation. This article reviews the moves towards trade union unity and their background.

In the Netherlands, trade unions were originally poorly represented at workplace level, where works councils have traditionally been viewed as the appropriate forum for representing employees' interests. Although works councils and trade unions are cooperating to an increasing degree, this has not