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Collective Bargaining on Working Time: Recent European Experiences.

Article Excerpt
Collective Bargaining on Working Time: Recent European Experiences, edited by Maarten KEUNE and Bela GALGOCZI, Brussels: ETUI-REHS, 2006, 290 pp., ISBN-10: 2-874520-14-4.

The relationships between work and time have become increasingly complex in recent decades, with shifts away from standard working hours, the growth in nonstandard employment, and an increased blurring of boundaries between work and non-work time definitive of new working time patterns. In particular, pressure for employer-oriented "flexibility"--through either demands for longer hours or increases in part-time and temporary employment contracts--is driving key working time transitions.

Working rime has historically been a central issue around which unions organized and bargained collectively. In the 19th century, unions in both North America and Western Europe organized to regulate the length of the working day. In the post-World War II era, collective bargaining contributed to the normalization of the standard workweek, with additional compensation for overtime hours, in unionized sectors of industrialized labour markets. Through the 1980s and 1990s, however, an employer-led offensive to...

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