Marginson, Paul

This reports analyses 386 agreements which had been signed when the Directive came into force on 22 September 1996, and Article 13 ceased as an option for the establishment of a European Works Council.

The objectives of the report are to investigate how companies in three sectors: the automobile industry, the banking business and road haulage experience EMU with regard to the practicalities of the introduction of the EURO, industrial relations, pay, employment, working conditions, restructuring of the companies and forms of business organisation.

In March 2007, the Department of Constitutional Affairs (DCA [1]) put forward pay reforms that would see five regional pay bands introduced for staff employed in courts of justice across England and Wales. [1] http://www.dca.gov.uk/

The study aims to provide new information on the impact of new governance tools on the different actors of the European system of industrial relations – European institutions, governments and European social partners. Furthermore, it endeavours to: promote awareness and understanding of the new forms of governance and their impact on the different levels of industrial relations in the European Union; contribute to the ongoing debate on the Europeanisation of industrial relations in the context of the modernisation of employment relations and the evolving role of the social partners in an enlarged EU, especially against the background of the Lisbon agenda; contribute to the transparency of the results of new forms of governance in European industrial relations; and examine the interrelationship between the different levels of industrial relations as well as between different tools of new governance, such as European social dialogue and the open method of coordination.

The report /Inside the Workplace: Findings from the 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey/, published in July 2006, examines a wide range of issues in this field and follows on from the previous survey in 1998 [1]. As such, it offers the ‘definitive diagnosis of the state of employment relations in Britain in 2004 and charts changes over the period of the Labour government since 1997’. [1] http://www.dti.gov.uk/employment/research-evaluation/wers-98/index.html

Britain’s 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey provides an up-to-date and comprehensive picture of employment practices in the workplace. It also offers the opportunity to assess the effects of policies pursued by the Labour Government in this area since its election in 1997.

Britain’s 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey provides an up-to-date and comprehensive picture of employment practices in the workplace. It also offers the opportunity to assess the effects of policies pursued by the Labour Government in this area since its election in 1997.

The first findings of the 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey [1] (WERS 2004) were published in July 2005. WERS 2004 is the fifth in a series of surveys which dates back to 1980. These provide an authoritative portrait of the institutions and practice of industrial relations at the workplace. Like its predecessors, the 2004 survey is representative of workplaces across Great Britain and covers virtually all sectors of activity (the main exceptions being agriculture, forestry and fishing, and mining and quarrying). The 2004 survey was the first to include small workplaces employing between five and nine people. However, the first release of findings is limited to workplaces employing 10 or more (which nonetheless account for 83% of all employees) to provide comparability with the previous survey in the series, conducted in 1998 (UK9811159F [2]). WERS 2004 links a survey of management and, where present, employee representatives at over 2,000 workplaces with a survey of up to 25 employees working at each of these workplaces. [1] http://www.routledge.com/textbooks/0415378133/pdf/insideWP.pdf [2] www.eurofound.europa.eu/ef/observatories/eurwork/articles/undefined-industrial-relations/comprehensive-survey-maps-contemporary-workplace-relations

Recent decisions by Norwich Union, one of the UK’s largest insurance businesses, Lloyds TSB bank and the National Rail Enquiries service to transfer call centre operations involving, respectively, 2,350, 1,000 and 600 UK jobs to India, are part of a growing trend amongst large UK businesses to move call centre and 'back-office' operations to lower labour cost locations in south and east Asia. HSBC bank has also announced that it intends to shed 4,000 jobs in the UK as it relocates such work to India, Malaysia and China over the coming two years. The bank already runs global processing hubs in Hyderabad and Bangalore. These four companies are amongst 28 large firms identified by the Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) that have moved offshore, or announced plans to move offshore, some 50,000 'customer-facing' and back-office service sector jobs from the UK.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer’s budget statement on 9 April 2003 contained a commitment to introduce measures to ensure that pay systems in the public services become more responsive to differences in labour market conditions between the UK’s regions. In particular, the pay review bodies which determine levels of pay for 40% of the public service workforce would have a new remit to take into account regional and local factors. To augment the economic data available to negotiators and pay review bodies, the government also announced plans to publish regional inflation figures. Supporting its proposals, the government cited evidence from its 2002 review of the public sector labour market which showed that wages in the public sector vary far less than those in the private sector. The review found that 'public-sector workers outside of London are probably better paid than their private-sector counterparts. But those in London are worse off than equivalent workers in the private sector' (quoted in the /Financial Times/, 11 April 2003). The review concluded that the problem lay with national pay bargaining and review body arrangements.