The Ethical Deficit of the United Kingdom's Proposed Universal Credit: Pimping the Precariat?

Universal Credit is a proposed means‐tested cash benefit scheme in the UK that will serve, inter alia, to top‐up the wages of low‐paid workers. This article will argue first, that the moral justification for the scheme that is offered by the UK government is specious; second that the reconfiguration of existing wage top‐ups may be counterproductive and will in any event do little, if anything, to promote the work ethic; third, that the new scheme will not relieve but add to the injustices borne by the ‘precariat’ (the workers engaged in low‐paid precarious employment); finally, that far from having a justifiable moral purpose, Universal Credit is ethically flawed.     

关于非公企业开展工资集体协商的思考

目前非公企业开展工资集体协商，还存在着诸多问题，需要从加大工资集体协商的宣传教育力度、推行区域性和行业性工资集体协商工作、建立上级工会与相关部门指导协调机制、加强培训指导等方面，采取些强有力的措施，以谋求收到良好的协商结果。     

论辩诉交易制度在我国的构建

辩诉交易制度产生于美国,是美国特有的一项司法制度,它具有结案快、效率高等优点。在我国,司法机关也进行了有益尝试,取得了一定的效果,显示了该制度的可行性,应当引入并加以借鉴。应从辩诉交易在我国的制度名称、应遵循的基本原则、适用范围、适用条件、审查机制和救济机制等方面,结合国情对现行的刑事诉讼制度进行相应修改和完善,构建起具有中国特色的辩诉交易制度。     

非公企业工资集体协商问题研究

工资集体协商问题，早在2000年我国颁布的《工资集体协商试行办法》中已作相应规定，但这一法律制度近年才得到应有重视，非公企业工资增长机制并未得到相应建立。因此，非公企业工会的维权工作，应得到政府的强力支持，其谋求劳动者收入同企业利润增长保持同步的努力，是符合有关生产要素分配理论的。     

18—20世纪初俄国价格和工资的变化趋势

18世纪中叶全俄市场形成。在统一的空间框架下,俄国不同地区之间的价格和工资变化趋于同步。彼得堡工人实际工资水平的变化反映了俄国所有工人物质状况的变化,虽然各地区的价格和工资水平存在差异,但变化的一致程度非常高。     

Backing Out or Backing In? Commitment and Consistency in Audience Costs Theory

Audience costs theory posits that domestic publics punish leaders for making an external threat and then backing down. One key mechanism driving this punishment involves the value the public places on consistency between their leaders’ statements and actions. If true, this mechanism should operate not only when leaders fail to implement threats, but also when they fail to honor promises to stay out of a conflict. We use a survey experiment to examine domestic responses to the president's decision to “back down” from public threats and “back into” foreign conflicts. We find the president loses support in both cases, but suffers more for “backing out” than “backing in.” These differential consequences are partially explained by asymmetries in the public's treatment of new information. Our findings strongly suggest that concerns over consistency undergird audience costs theory and that punishment for inconsistency will be incurred, regardless of the leader's initial policy course.     

Pares Inter Pares? The Bargaining Success of the Commission,the Council,and the Parliament in European Union Legislative Negotiations

This research note tries to determine how politically successful the Council, the Commission, and the European Parliament are in the area of EU legislative decision‐making. After reviewing the literature, a research design is presented which incorporates information on the policy preferences of the different institutional actors for 70 recent EU legislative decisions that were negotiated under the consultation and the codecision procedure. We use correlation and OLS regression to analyze the distances between what the EU institutional actors want and what they eventually get out of the process. The findings of the analysis are that (1) the preference profiles of the three actors are rather dissimilar, and that (2) the success rates of the Council are higher than the rates of the Commission and Parliament.     

Industrial Relations and the Limits of the State: Can a Left Labour Government Resurrect Comprehensive Sectoral Collective Bargaining and Restore Trade Union Power?

Since 2017 the British Labour Party has proposed mandatory sectoral collective bargaining (SCB) as a comprehensive strategy to rebuild the trade union voice across the entire economy. The intellectual roots lie in the Institute of Employment Rights’ (IER) Manifesto for Labour Law (2016). First, this article explains the core IER approach, questioning its feasibility given current low levels of union membership and bargaining coverage and whether it would produce the stable and productive economy promised. Second, the article develops four social science objections to this state-driven approach centred on industrial relations history; political sociology; economics; and political philosophy. The conclusion argues that while stronger voluntary trade unions could help, it is neither practicable nor desirable for the state to impose a trade union, single-channel approach to employee voice. Instead, a ‘mixed economy of voice’ is proposed, perhaps including statutory works councils, which speaks directly to all employees—union and non-union—and wins broader political, employer and public support.     

Gradualism and uncertainty in international union formation: The European Community’s first enlargement

This paper introduces a new theoretical framework of international unions qua coalitions of countries adopting a common policy and common supranational institutions. I make use of a three-country spatial bargaining game of coalition formation, in order to examine the endogenous strategic considerations in the creation and enlargement of international unions. Why would we observe a gradualist approach in the formation of the grand coalition even if the latter is assumed to be weakly efficient? I propose asymmetric information about the benefits of integration as a mechanism that can generate gradual union formation in equilibrium. As it turns out, it may well be in the ‘core’ countries’ interest to delay the accession of a third, ‘peripheral’ country in order to (1) stack the institutional make-up of the initial union in their favor and (2) signal their high resolve to wait out the expansion of their bilateral subunion. A related case from the European experience provides an interesting illustration.