Abstract: This book analyses and compares recent shifts in patterns of industrial relations across late-industrializing and post-socialist economies. The book features chapters on labor relations at national, local, and workplace levels, as economic and political actors cope with the similar challenges associated with economic adjustment measures and the impact of “globalization”. The book reveals that while globalization has threatened the position of organized labor and prompted business and state elites to accommodate greater labor market flexibility, the legacies of past institutions remain evident in destinctive trends in labor politics within and across late-industrializing and post-socialist settings. The comparisons suggest that globalization is best understood not as a source of covergence but as a set of common pressures that are mediated by specific historical inheritances, that spur varied responses on the part of industrial relations actors, and that facilitate quite diverse institutional outcomes.

Keywords: industrial relations, labor relations, economic adjustment measures, globalization, labor politics