Employment Practices of Multinationals in the Spanish and German Quick-Food Sectors: Low-Road Convergence?
Royle, Tony
Royle, Tony
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2004
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Abstract
This article examines the labour relations practices of multinational corporations (MNCs) in the German and Spanish quick-food service sectors. The demand for greater profitability and lower costs is leading to a greater standardization of work methods across a widening range of food service operators, resulting in the gradual elimination of more expensive, skilled and experienced workers, and an increasingly non-union approach in employee relations practices. The outcome involves increasing standardization, union exclusion, low trust, low skills, and low pay. These sectoral characteristics appear to outweigh both country-of-origin and host-country effects. The findings therefore confirm continuing variation within national industrial relations systems and the importance of sectoral characteristics and organizational contingencies in understanding MNC cross-border behaviour.
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Royle, T. (2004) Employment Practices of Multinationals in the Spanish and German Quick-Food Sectors: Low-Road Convergence?, European Journal of Industrial Relations, 10, 1: 51-71.
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