Exit, Voice, and Solidarity : Contesting Precarity in the US and European Telecommunications Industries / Virginia Doellgast

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Doellgast, Virginia, (author).

Series:

Oxford Academic

Oxford scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Precarious employment--Europe.

Precarious employment.

Precarious employment--United States.

Telecommunication--Employees--Labor unions--United States.

Telecommunication.

Industrial management--Employee participation--United States.

Industrial management.

Industrial management--Employee participation--Europe.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (313 pages)

Edition:

First Edition.

Place of Publication:

New York, NY Oxford University Press 2022

Summary:

Work has become more insecure and unequal. Corporate restructuring strategies hold a good share of the blame, as managers seek to cut costs and shift risk through downsizing, outsourcing, and intensifying performance management. Under what conditions do companies take alternative approaches to restructuring, that balance market demands for profits with social demands for high-quality jobs? In Exit, Voice, and Solidarity, Doellgast argues that labor unions can play a central role in encouraging high road practices. But they face steep challenges where they lack strong and inclusive social institutions, based on high minimum standards and worker rights to participate in management decisions. Based on detailed case studies in the US and European telecommunications industry, Doellgast shows that cross-national differences in these institutions have led to significant differences in restructuring strategies, with implications for worker pay, security, and well-being. However, building and defending these strong social institutions required solidaristic organizing strategies, to push back against intensifying competition across workers and within the labor movement. Constraints on employer exit, support for collective worker voice, and strategies of inclusive labor solidarity together proved to be crucial sources of worker power within core firms and across increasingly fissured and outsourced workplaces. Findings from Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Germany, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, the United States, the Czech Republic, and Poland give both a wide-ranging and in-depth look at why unions succeed or fail in fights to contest intensifying precarity at work and to propose more socially sustainable alternatives.

Contents:

Contents: Preface and Acknowledgments - Introduction - 1. Theorizing Exit, Voice, and Solidarity - 2. Mapping Exit, Voice, and Solidarity in the Case Studies - 3. Downsizing - 4. Performance Management - 5. Externalization: Outsourcing, Agency Work, and Subsidiaries - 6. Conclusions - References - Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0197659799

0197659810

0197659802

9780197659793

9780197659816

9780197659809

9780197659779

0197659772