IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/woemps/v29y2015i5p808-825.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Trade unions and labour market dualisation: a comparison of policies and attitudes towards agency and migrant workers in Germany and Belgium

Author

Listed:
  • Valeria Pulignano

    (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium)

  • Guglielmo Meardi

    (University of Warwick, UK)

  • Nadja Doerflinger

    (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium)

Abstract

This article addresses the questions of the extent to which, and the reasons why, western European trade unions may have privileged the protection of ‘insiders’ over that of ‘outsiders’. Temporary agency workers, among whom migrant workers are over-represented, are taken as a test case of ‘outsiders’. The findings from a comparison of Belgian and German multinational plants show that collective agreements have allowed a protection gap between permanent and agency workers to emerge in Germany, but not in Belgium. However, the weaker protection in Germany depends less on an explicit union choice for insiders than on the weakening of the institutional environment for union representation and collective bargaining. The conclusion suggests that European unions are increasingly trying to defend the outsiders, but meet institutional obstacles that vary by country.

Suggested Citation

  • Valeria Pulignano & Guglielmo Meardi & Nadja Doerflinger, 2015. "Trade unions and labour market dualisation: a comparison of policies and attitudes towards agency and migrant workers in Germany and Belgium," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 29(5), pages 808-825, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:29:y:2015:i:5:p:808-825
    DOI: 10.1177/0950017014564603
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0950017014564603
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0950017014564603?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Anke Hassel, 2007. "The Curse of Institutional Security - The Erosion of German Trade Unionism," Industrielle Beziehungen - Zeitschrift fuer Arbeit, Organisation und Management - The German Journal of Industrial Relations, Rainer Hampp Verlag, vol. 14(2), pages 176-191.
    2. Grimshaw, Damian & Rubery, Jill, 1998. "Integrating the Internal and External Labour Markets," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 22(2), pages 199-220, March.
    3. Nathan Lillie, 2012. "Subcontracting, Posted Migrants and Labour Market Segmentation in Finland," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 50(1), pages 148-167, March.
    4. Bruno Palier & Kathleen Thelen, 2010. "Institutionalizing Dualism: Complementarities and Change in France and Germany," Politics & Society, , vol. 38(1), pages 119-148, March.
    5. Berger,Suzanne & Piore,Michael J., 1980. "Dualism and Discontinuity in Industrial Societies," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521231343, September.
    6. Virginia Doellgast & Ian Greer, 2007. "Vertical Disintegration and the Disorganization of German Industrial Relations1," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 45(1), pages 55-76, March.
    7. Assar Lindbeck & Dennis J. Snower, 2001. "Insiders versus Outsiders," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 15(1), pages 165-188, Winter.
    8. repec:aia:aiaswp:wp52 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Hajo Holst & Oliver Nachtwey & Klaus Doerre, 2010. "The Strategic Use of Temporary Agency Work – Functional Change of a Non-standard Form of Employment," International Journal of Action Research, Rainer Hampp Verlag, vol. 6(1), pages 108-138.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Virginie Xhauflair & Benjamin Huybrechts & François Pichault, 2018. "How Can New Players Establish Themselves in Highly Institutionalized Labour Markets? A Belgian Case Study in the Area of Project†Based Work," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 56(2), pages 370-394, June.
    2. Hyman, Richard & Gumbrell-McCormick, Rebecca, 2017. "Resisting labour market insecurity: old and new actors, rivals or allies?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 84658, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Benassi, Chiara & Dorigatti, Lisa & Pannini, Elisa, 2018. "Explaining divergent bargaining outcomes for agency workers: the role of labour divides and labour market reforms," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 89371, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Arthur Corazza, 2020. "Power, interest and insecurity: A comparative analysis of workplace dualization and inclusion in Europe," LEQS – LSE 'Europe in Question' Discussion Paper Series 153, European Institute, LSE.
    2. Guglielmo Meardi & Melanie Simms & Duncan Adam, 2021. "Trade unions and precariat in Europe: Representative claims," European Journal of Industrial Relations, , vol. 27(1), pages 41-58, March.
    3. Smirnykh, Larisa & Wörgötter, Andreas, 2019. "The importance of institutional and organizational characteristics for the use of fixed-term contracts in Russia," Journal of East European Management Studies, Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, vol. 24(1), pages 89-121.
    4. Torben Krings, 2021. "‘Good’ Bad Jobs? The Evolution of Migrant Low-Wage Employment in Germany (1985–2015)," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 35(3), pages 527-544, June.
    5. Niccolo Durazzi, 2015. "Inclusive unions in a dualised labour market? The challenge of organising labour market policy and social protection for labour market outsiders," LEQS – LSE 'Europe in Question' Discussion Paper Series 99, European Institute, LSE.
    6. Chiara Benassi & Lisa Dorigatti, 2015. "Straight to the Core — Explaining Union Responses to the Casualization of Work: The IG Metall Campaign for Agency Workers," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 53(3), pages 533-555, September.
    7. Ochsenfeld, Fabian, 2018. "The Relational Nature of Employment Dualization: Evidence from Subcontracting Establishments," SocArXiv ta4r6, Center for Open Science.
    8. Milla Salin & Jouko Nätti, 2019. "Who Wants to Work More? Multilevel Study on Underemployment of Working Mothers in 22 European Countries," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 8(10), pages 1-22, October.
    9. John T. Addison & Paulino Teixeira & Katalin Evers & Lutz Bellmann, 2016. "Is the Erosion Thesis Overblown? Alignment from Without in Germany," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(3), pages 415-443, July.
    10. Diane Confurius & Herman van de Werfhorst & Jaco Dagevos & Ruben Gowricharn, 2023. "Flexible labour market and trade unions: Surprising career paths of Dutch sub‐Saharan Africans," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 61(2), pages 336-365, June.
    11. Kirchner, Stefan, 2013. "Embedded Flexibility Strategies and Diversity within Na-tional Institutional Frameworks: How many Flexibility Profiles are in the German Model?," management revue - Socio-Economic Studies, Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, vol. 24(1), pages 12-29.
    12. Chiara Benassi, 2016. "Liberalization Only at the Margins? Analysing the Growth of Temporary Work in German Core Manufacturing Sectors," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 54(3), pages 597-622, September.
    13. Carla Lima Aranzaes & Christian Lyhne Ibsen & Philip S. DeOrtentiis & Maite Tapia, 2024. "Solidarity with atypical workers? Survey evidence from the General Motors versus United Auto Workers strike in 2019," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 62(1), pages 72-97, March.
    14. Jens Arnholtz, 2023. "The embedded flexibility of Nordic labor market models under pressure from EU‐induced dualization—The case of posted work in Denmark and Sweden," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 17(2), pages 372-388, April.
    15. Georg Kanitsar, 2019. "Segmented Labor Markets – Segmented Solidarities?," Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft - WuG, Kammer für Arbeiter und Angestellte für Wien, Abteilung Wirtschaftswissenschaft und Statistik, vol. 2019(2), pages 179-201.
    16. Lorenzo Frangi & Tingting Zhang & Rupa Banerjee, 2021. "Constructing Inequalities: Tenure Trajectories of Immigrant Workers and Union Strategies in the Milan Construction Sector," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 59(2), pages 474-502, June.
    17. Durazzi, Niccolo, 2017. "Inclusive unions in a dualized labour market? The challenge of organising labour market policy and social protection for labour market outsiders," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 69527, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    18. Anke Hassel, 2014. "The Paradox of Liberalization — Understanding Dualism and the Recovery of the German Political Economy," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 52(1), pages 57-81, March.
    19. Sean O'Brady, 2021. "Fighting precarious work with institutional power: Union inclusion and its limits across spheres of action," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 59(4), pages 1084-1107, December.
    20. Lucas RONCONI & Ravi KANBUR & Santiago LÓPEZ‐CARIBONI, 2023. "Who demands labour (de)regulation in the developing world? Revisiting the insider–outsider theory," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 162(2), pages 223-243, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:29:y:2015:i:5:p:808-825. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.britsoc.co.uk/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.