Industrial relations and transnational trade unions coordination

The potential Second Automotive Revolution involves major technological disruption and a repositioning of the products and activities linked to the automobile. This will impact significantly on traditional training and employment practices and firms will be faced with the need to identify their core competencies and manage the transition of large numbers of employees. GERPISA’s previous research has successfully highlighted the large diversity of practices adopted by firms in this respect, termed “national models”. These existing differences will be both altered and renewed in the current context technological rupture and these changes are  worthy of study from both an operational and a scientific perspective.
Industrial relations settings at company and national levels and transnational union strategies at international level will also have to deal with these changes. Under the present context of crisis the shift toward a more sustainable development will probably imply more trade-offs than synergies, and the place and the future of the employment in the industry appear to be very much at stake. How this will affect the evolution of company compromises of governement and of national social compromises will be also of particular interest here.

Proposals could encompass the organisational restructuring of the activities of design, manufacturing and the commercialisation of automobiles in the past and in the future at the level of the firm, of labor pools and of individual countries. Papers focusing on the role and input of union actors at local, regional and national levels will be also particularly welcome.