The Global Evolution of Industrial Relations - Events Ideas And The IIRA

The initial impetus for this book was the desire of the International Industrial Relations Association (IIRA) to provide an institutional history recording the contributions of the Association during the nearly four decades of its existence. However, as the author shows convincingly in this book, the origin and role of the liRA are part of a larger story of the globalization of industrial relations, whose roots were in the United Kingdom, evolved in the United States and then spread to continental Europe and other societies. A detailed and exhaustive phase-by-phase account of this evolutionary process is synthesized by the author, demonstrating the beginnings of industrial relations in the nineteenth century as a response to the Labour Problem, and recounting and explaining its later emergence as an academic and professional field.The book admirably presents the inspirational role of the International Labour Organization (ILO), right from its founding in 1919 to date, in mobilizing the expertise of scholars, practitioners and policy-makers in the promotion of employment and labour values around the world. The author also demonstrates that the founding of the IIRA in 1966 complemented part of ILO's global campaign for a rights-based labour policy.Thus the story of the liRA and its symbiotic relationship with the ILO is embedded within the globalization of industrial relations. The book makes clear the enormous influence of the ILO in the promotion of industrial relations worldwide, notably in the developing countries, and provides a thorough analysis of its role in promoting fair labour practices and social justice in the world of work among the emerging democracies of Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America. As the book suggests, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that that without the ILO and the liRA, the spread of the field of industrial relations in these regions would not have attained its present significance.