Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan - 27-30 June 2011

61, Avenue du Président Wilson 94235 Cachan Cedex, France (south of Paris)
http://www.ens-cachan.fr/version-anglaise/

Conference Organizers :
Isabel da Costa, Senior Researcher CNRS-IDHE, President ISA/RC10; France
Alain Chouraqui, CNRS Research Director, Director of the IFEP, past President ISA/RC10, France
György Szell, Prof. em. Dr., University of Osnabrück, Germany, past President ISA/RC10, Germany
Scientific Committee :
Claude Didry, CNRS Research Director, Director of IDHE, France
Annette Jobert, CNRS Research Director, IDHE, France
Janine Goetschy, Senior Researcher CNRS-IDHE, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, France
Udo Rehfeldt, Senior Researcher IRES, France)
Jean Philippe Agresti, Deputy Director IFEP, Université Paul Cézanne, Aix-Marseille, France
Francesco Garibaldo, President RLDWL, Vice-President ISA/RC10, Italy
Volker Telljohann, Senior Researcher IRES Emilia Romagna, Italy)
Heinz Sünker, University of Wuppertal and past President ISA/RC10, Germany
Julia Rozanova, Yale University, USA and the University of British Columbia, Canada, ISA/RC10 Secretary


Democratic Participation in Employment and Societal Regulation
Regulation issues have become priorities in the political agendas of most European countries confronted with global economic, financial and social crises, while the capability of some of the institutions of the political and civil society to deal with these changes has come under scrutiny and even sometimes questioning. This evolution has once more brought to the fore the issue of democratic participation, particularly in the field of industrial relations where it has been an important concern ever since the publication of the book Industrial Democracy by Sidney and Beatrice Webb in 1897 launched the first international debate around this issue. Democratic participation in employment and societal regulation will thus constitute the main theme of this conference.
Major reforms, notably those concerning social security and industrial relations arrangements, have recently taken place in many European countries. Old arrangements are being challenged and new actors and interaction arenas have emerged. These trends will be discussed in several plenary sessions and workshops by participants coming from different disciplines as well as backgrounds bringing complementary perspectives to an open and pluralistic debate. Beyond academic achievement we also hope that our exchanges might contribute to an increased awareness of these issues that might help orient the future actions of the European social actors. Some of these actors are expected to directly participate in the discussions during several round tables as well as in the networking during the conference.
The conference will be organized around several main themes that will be addressed both in plenary sessions and workshops. It will also include round tables with invited guests, a forward looking session and a joint session between ISA RC10 (International Sociological Association, Research Committee 10 on Participation, Organizational Democracy & Self-Management) and ESA RN17 (European Sociological Association, Research Network 17 on Industrial Relations, Labour Market Institutions and Employment), resulting from a collaboration between our two networks started when Franz Traxler was President of RN17 (this joint session will be dedicated to his memory).
1. Social Actors in a Multi-level and Multi-modal Regulation
Organized by Alain Chouraqui, Jean Philippe Agresti & György Széll
The aim of this stream is to contribute to the understanding of the interaction between rights and regulations on the one hand, and social transformations, crises and diverse types of changes on the other hand.
The communications will focus on the role of social actors in the process of social transformation in a perspective of multi-level and multi-modal regulations.
This will be done in a multidisciplinary manner, in order to analyse:
* how law affects social regulation, but at the same time, it is also affected or produced by social interaction;

• the effects of crises and other social transformations on the forms, levels and articulations of different regulations, (legal, social, political, economic or other);

* and the evolution of the roles of the actors and institutions in these regulatory processes.
This should be done as well in the global dimension and focussing on European experiences.
2. Democratic participation and civil society in the world of work
Organized by Francesco Garibaldo & Volker Telljohann

The cultural aspiration for participatory democratic society and more equitable social distribution of power continues to be formally highly valued in European societies. Yet, as a number of social analysts have observed, many aspects of democratic practices have seriously diminished in some key areas of social life in recent years. Economic processes seem to be less controlled by social, political, administrative and cultural instances of regulation. This lack of control entails a divide between economic institutions and society at large.
The world of labour is an important area where this divide can be observed. The world of labour and employment, which since the mid-20th century has been regarded as a vital arena for the advancement of participatory democracy, appears at the present time powerfully influenced by forces and interests that weaken and undermine this social project. The aspiration for wide social participation in the regulation and governance of labour and workplaces encounters a crisis. Current tendencies in the management of production organizations and industrial relations require workers’ integration not through democratic citizenship and representation, but through conformity to elite-established rules and systems. The recalibration of capital and labour relations that has ensued has weakened not only workers and their trade unions in socio-political roles but threatens the practices and values of social democracy itself. The search for socio-cultural innovation is thus a pressing theoretical and practical project.
The aim of this theme will be to analyze current concerns in regard to the conditions of labour markets, production organizations, working conditions, and industrial and employment relations. Prominent among these concerns is the crisis in trade unions and in democratic labour market institutions, and the rise of what many critics regard as technocratic administrative powers displacing democratic practices. These concerns, which may be seen as part of broader crisis in democracy, require careful evidence-based analysis. What are the principal factors of the crisis? How successful are current efforts in response? Has a recalibration of labour and capital relations set an institutional path dependency for a long time to come? What are the options for social and economic policies? In this context, theoretical approaches analyzing the need for new governance systems at all societal levels will be discussed as well as the need for a new definition of the role of the State and the civil society.
3. Participation throughout life: from Childhood and Youth Education to Aging.
Organized by Julia Rozanova & Heinz Sünker
Democracy is based on the existence of educated and informed citizens. Real education is based on the competences of all members of a society, and is a life-long process. To accomplish this we need to deal with experiences of participation in the lives of people of all ages, from children and youth to young adults, to individuals in mid-life and to older adults. As the opposite of participation is exclusion, it is also essential to consider mechanisms by which society may exclude some groups of citizens from participation because of their age (or other characteristics). It is particularly relevant in the case of young children, who may be considered too young to be competent to meaningfully participate in the process of making decisions that have direct impact on their lives, and the oldest ones, who are considered too old to have competencies for meaningful participation. This exclusion from participation of certain age groups on the assumption of their political and social incompetence may be rife with potential controversies and neglect of their interests and ultimately exploitation. Therefore participation is a key component in concepts of politics of childhood and youth as well as later life. The papers addressing this theme will deal with different approaches concerned with participation across the life-course in different societies, with particular emphasis on participation in childhood and youth and in later life (separately or in comparative perspective).
4. European Governance: a model of employment and societal regulation?
Organized by Janine Goetschy (IDHE) & tbc
Social Europe developments have been closely linked to three major factors: a) the dynamics of the European integration project – in particular the nature of its successive enlargements, b) its successive political economy objectives (internal market, EMU, the Lisbon Strategy, Europe 2020), and c) EU Members States’ own social and employment evolving policy agendas.
Over the last 50 years, the EU level has been displaying a complex web of substantive and procedural rules in the field of employment and social policy. This stream aims at understanding the ways in which such a European web of rules was built over time. What is their degree of internal coherence or fragmentation? What can be said about their relevance vis-à-vis evolving social and employment agendas at national and world levels?
Similar questions will be addressed as regards EU rule-making procedures. Indeed, the profound legitimacy component inherent to social matters, the EU treaties content (and their limitations) as well as growing EU internal diversity have been leading over time to a plurality of EU regulatory modes (legislative, open method of coordination, corporatist).
Social Europe has been built as a result of contradictory forces among Member States, among social partners as well as among EU supra-national institutions around evolving policy agendas. Over recent years, one could witness new tensions regarding the balance to be found between deepened freedom of movement and the respect of social rights, and as concerns the question of migrant workers. This stream aims at taking stock of past Social Europe developments as well as of the more recent tensions which have arisen in last years – tensions likely to have been increasing even more with the two economic and financial crises (2008 and 2009).

5. European Social Dialogue
Organized by Annette Jobert & Claude Didry
European Social Dialogue (ESD) is now a Treaty procedure associating the European Social Partners to the elaboration of European legislation on employment relations and workers’ participation in certain enterprises’ choices or decisions. It originated in the 1980’s under the Delors Presidency alongside the theme of the ‘democratization of the economy’ in the 1970’s. Twenty years after its institutionalisation, ESD poses several major questions to be addressed in this stream.

• How does ESD deepen the dynamic of European integration launched by Jacques Delors, through an extension of the Dialogue from specialised negotiations on the issues of the employment contract and the working time, to more general deliberations on new European policies that imply choices of models of society? Its contribution to the discussion on the work life balance, the general interest services or the energy policies for example, involves exchanges with civil society representatives which could lead to a renewal of the social dialogue through its opening to what has been called the ‘civil dialogue’.
• The institutions produced by the ESD such as the EWC directive or the Workers Information and Consultation directive are major contributions to the enhancement of the capabilities of the workers representatives to weigh on the choices of the firms. What are the concrete results of such directives in the European economy? Do the national implementations of these directives give actual capability for voices to the workers, especially in countries where unions and workers representations have been weakened by liberal policies, such as the UK or the PECO? Do the new forms of representation resulting from these directives provide capabilities to the restructuring processes that firms face in an internationalised economy?

6. Employee participation through EWCs and in the framework of the European Company (SE)
Organized and led by Udo Rehfeldt (IRES) & Michael Stollt (ETUI)
The 1994 European directive on European works councils (EWCs) was a late outcome of a project of European legislation dating back to 1970, the European Company Statute, in which the European Commission provided simultaneously three channels for employee participation:

• European collective agreements concluded directly between the company and the unions represented in the various institutions,
• a European works council to be regularly informed on the evolution of economic and social parameters of the company and to be consulted prior to any major changes,
• participation of employee representatives in the supervisory board for at least a third of its members.

In the 1970s, the Commission's draft, which was largely inspired by the German system of codetermination, had provoked hostile reactions not only by employers’ organizations but also by most of the EC-9 unions. It was only in 1994 that a European directive finally imposed negotiations on the establishment of EWCs with information and consultation rights in transnational companies. This legislation was complemented in 2000 by a regulation and a directive on the European company (SE), which imposes negotiations on employee involvement including board level participation. The third part of the initial Commission project, transnational collective bargaining, has developed in the last ten years without a legal basis. It will be subject of another session of this conference.
There are several similarities between the EWC directive and the SE directive. They share a common model of voluntary negotiations with a special negotiation body (SNB) backed by minimal subsidiary provisions in case of failure of the negotiations. The main differences concern the initiative for these negotiations (employee representatives for the EWC, management for the SE) as well as the time constraint (three years for the EWC, six months for the SE).
The stream will try to make an assessment of both forms of workers participation. How have EWC and SEs spread over the years? What is the quality of these agreements? What is the impact of the participation rights for the defence of workers’ interests in practice? How were strategic decisions of the company influenced, in particular in the case of transnational restructuring? How are unions involved in these fields? What will be the impact of the 2009 revision of the EWC directive when it comes into effect in 2011?
7. Joint session ISA/RC10 and ESA/RN17: Evolutions in labour and employment relations
dedicated to the late Franz Traxler
Organized by Bernd Brandl & Isabel da Costa
The organization of labour has always been sensitive to crises and has faced fundamental changes in the past. The impact of previous crises on organized labour has frequently been perceived as dramatic particularly as regards the evolution of employment and restructuring. Communications in this session will focus on the implications of the current economic crisis for the interaction between policy and organized labour taking into account past experiences and past changes: will labour relations undergo restructuring processes on a scale similar or even larger than the alterations caused by shocks of 1929 or the oil crisis of the 1970s? To what extent will industrial relations affect and be affected by policy responses to the crisis? How has the public sector been affected in different countries? At what levels have what changes been more often addressed – local, sector, region, national, European, international? What hypothesis and methods have researchers, analysts and/or actors used to address these issues? What kind of new issues have emerged with the recent crisis?
The joint session will also include communications dedicated to Franz Traxler's contribution to the understanding labour and employment relations.

Deadlines:
* Abstract proposals indicating in which conference theme to be included preferably should be sent to : rc10conference2011@gmail.com before 15 February 2011.
The deadline for sending abstracts has been extended to the 6th of March 2011.

* The Scientific Committee will notify its acceptance of the abstracts to authors by 15 March 2011
* Full papers should reach the same electronic address by 15 June 2011
Please don’t hesitate to contact us via the electronic address if these deadlines should be a problem for financial demands to your institution