Facing the market: organized labor in Germany and Britain after the welfare state

摘要: This dissertation examines the capacities of traditional manufacturing sector unions in Germany in Britain in the early 1990s. The premise of the study is that two decades of pressures on advanced industrial societies to sustain international economic competitiveness have altered the power relationships between state, capital and labor that prevailed during the early post-World War II decades. This shift in the distribution of power domestically has had three important consequences. First, manufacturing industry has attempted to adjust by seeking forms of production that employ labor more flexibly. Secondly, states have pursued policies that broaden capital's adjustment latitude. And thirdly, pressures from the market, employers and states have exacerbated cleavages within labor's ranks and thereby threatened the ability of unions to defend their members' interests. The dissertation considers the extent to which …