Book Review: Industrial Relations Theory: Understanding European Trade Unionism: Between Market, Class and Society
Book Review: Industrial Relations Theory: Understanding European Trade Unionism: Between Market, Class and Society
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书评:劳资关系理论:理解欧洲工会主义:市场、阶级和社会之间
DOI:
10.1177/001979390205600110
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发表时间:
2002
期刊:
影响因子:
--
通讯作者:
N. Lillie
中科院分区:
文献类型:
--
作者:
N. Lillie
Understanding European Trade Unionism is a well-written, thought-provoking book. Those familiar with Richard Hyman's writings will recognize this book's argument as the logical extension and synthesis of his past work. The book's central thesis is that European trade unionism (and, by implication, trade unionism elsewhere) is undergoing an ideological crisis that is undermining its power base, causing, or at least contributing to, labor's long decline. At the root of this ideological crisis, Hyman argues, is the decline of unions as "schools of war" in class struggle. Hyman does not regard unions purely, or even mainly, as agents of class struggle. Rather, he identifies three roughly co-equal roles for them. First, unions are economic actors, seeking to improve the welfare of their members through industrial strength and collective bargaining. Second, they are "social partners," and as such are an essential part of stable, democratic societies. Third, they are vehicles for class struggle, fighting the commodification of labor under capitalism. All unions are all three of these things, in some combination, although each facet is more or less evident at different