Richard Hyman

The Europeanization - or the Erosion - of Industrial Relations?
This article considers the impact of European integration on industrial relations. An industrial relations regime can be understood as a tension between employment structured by market dynamics and broader social regulation, between the principles of contract and status. Economic Europeanization threatens this relationship. Its survival may depend on new forms of supranational regulation, but not necessarily as the 'social dimension' of Europeanization is customarily conceived.

Peter Waterman

The Trade Union Internationalism in the Age of Seattle
Recognising that labour is in profound crisis worldwide, this text proposes a critique of the union internationalism of the national/industrial/colonial era and a reconceptualisation of unionism and labour internationalism appropriate to a globalised/networked/informatised capitalist era. It also discusses the millennial dialogue on labour and globalisation, one of the new academic approaches to international labour/labour internationalism, and the role of communication, culture and the new information and communication technology. The conclusion stresses the centrality of networking, communication and dialogue to the creation of a new labour internationalism.

Hermes Augusto Costa

Trade Union Action in the EU and MERCOSUR: Limits and Challenges
This article focuses on the discussion of the limits and challenges faced by trade union action within the European Union (EU) and the Common Market of South America (MERCOSUR). Although the different degrees of consolidation of these regional blocs may translate into distinct union practices, the author suggests that it is possible to find some symmetries in what concerns the difficulties faced by trade unionism in both spaces. The text also presents a review of the principal social stages of each bloc, and, following the presentation of the major challenges faced by European and MERCOSUR unionism, puts forward some proposals for trade union cooperation that involve Portuguese and Brazilian unionism.

Roberto Véras

The Boldness of Resistance: The Struggle of Ford Workers against 2,800 Dismissals
This text analyzes the movement of the Ford workers at São Bernardo, São Paulo, against the company's announcement of 2,800 dismissals in December of 1998. It discusses the conditions and possibilities provided by CUT unionism for resisting the ongoing processes in Brazil. The main trends point to the flexibilization of rights, the precarization of labour relations, the disempowerment of collective subjects which place themselves in an autonomous position, and, as a consequence, the disarticulation of the public space.

Virgínia Ferreira

The Salieri Effect: Trade Unionism vis-à-vis the Inequalities between Women and Men in Employment
The current patterns of gender segregation in the labour market are still partly an expression of the exclusionary and segregating practices displayed by unions since the beginning of the industrial revolution. These patterns began to take shape when the payment of smaller salaries to women was accepted. It was only at a later stage that unions started to demand equal pay for women and men as a way of defending male employment. The first part of the text gives an account of some of the insulation practices of trade unions in Portugal. The second part discusses the major lines of change in the orientations of the trade union movement in what concerns gender inequalities in the labour market, and refers to some of the initiatives taken to promote equality between women and men.