Regulating for mutual gains? Non-union employee representation and the Information and Consultation Directive

Interest in ‘mutual gains’ has principally been confined to studies of the unionised sector. Yet there is no reason why this conceptual dynamic cannot be extended to the non-unionised realm, specifically in relation to non-union employee representation (NER). Although extant research views NER as unfertile terrain for mutual gains, the paper examines whether NER developed in response to the European Directive on Information and Consultation (I&C) of Employees may offer a potentially more fruitful route. The paper examines this possibility by considering three cases of NER established under the I&C Directive in Ireland, assessing the extent to which mutual gains were achieved.

Successful but Unappealing: Fifteen Years of Workplace Partnership in Ireland:Special Issue: Partnership, Collaboration and Mutual Gains

This paper presents the first comprehensive review and assessment of Ireland's influential 15-year experiment with workplace partnership. The paper reviews the outcomes of workplace partnership and explains the limited adoption of partnership in the private and public sectors, drawing on the authors' experiences as participants in policy initiatives concerned with promoting partnership in the workplace. Although the promotion of partnership was to the fore in public policy between the late 1990s to the onset of the recession and successful outcomes were reported for the main stakeholders where partnerships were established, the paper explains why the concept nevertheless remained largely unappealing across the private and public sectors.

Employment regulation, game theory, and the lacuna in employee participation in liberal economies

Employee participation is a vital ingredient of what the International Labour Organization (ILO) calls ‘representation security’. This article provides theoretical and empirical insights relating to social policy impact of worker participation, specifically the European Information and Consultation Directive (ICD) for employee voice rights. While existing research on the ICD offers important empirical insights, there is a need for further theoretical analysis to examine the potential effectiveness of the regulations in liberal market economies (LMEs). Drawing on data from 16 case studies, the article uses game theory and the prisoner's dilemma framework to explain why national implementing legislation is largely ineffective in diffusing mutual gains cooperation in two LMEs: UK and the Republic of Ireland. Three theoretical (metaphorical) propositions advance understanding of the policy impact of national information & consultation regulations in LMEs.

Mutual Solubilities of Water and Hydrophobic Ionic Liquids

The ionic nature of ionic liquids (ILs) results in a unique combination of intrinsic properties that produces increasing interest in the research of these fluids as environmentally friendly "neoteric" solvents. One of the main research fields is their exploitation as solvents for liquid-liquid extractions, but although ILs cannot vaporize leading to air pollution, they present non-negligible miscibility with water that may be the cause of some environmental aquatic risks. It is thus important to know the mutual solubilities between ILs and water before their industrial applications. In this work, the mutual solubilities of hydrophobic yet hygroscopic imidazolium-, pyridinium-, pyrrolidinium-, and piperidinium-based ILs in combination with the anions bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide, hexafluorophosphate, and tricyanomethane with water were measured between 288.15 and 318.15 K. The effect of the ILs structural combinations, as well as the influence of several factors, namely cation side alkyl chain length, the number of cation substitutions, the cation family, and the anion identity in these mutual solubilities are analyzed and discussed. The hydrophobicity of the anions increases in the order [C(CN)3] <[PF6] <[Tf2N] while the hydrophobicity of the cations increases from [Cnmim] <[Cnmpy] [Cnmpyr] <[Cnmpip] and with the alkyl chain length increase. From experimental measurements of the temperature dependence of ionic liquid solubilities in water, the thermodynamic molar functions of solution, such as Gibbs energy, enthalpy, and entropy at infinite dilution were determined, showing that the solubility of these ILs in water is entropically driven and that the anion solvation at the IL-rich phase controls their solubilities in water. The COSMO-RS, a predictive method based on unimolecular quantum chemistry calculations, was also evaluated for the description of the water-IL binary systems studied, where it showed to be capable of providing an acceptable qualitative agreement with the experimental data.

Mutual Solubilities of Water and the [Cnmim][Tf2N] Hydrophobic Ionic Liquids

Ionic liquids (ILs) have recently garnered increased attention because of their potential environmental benefits as "green" replacements over conventional volatile organic solvents. While ILs cannot significantly volatilize and contribute to air pollution, even the most hydrophobic ones present some miscibility with water posing environmental risks to the aquatic ecosystems. Thus, the knowledge of ILs toxicity and their water solubility must be assessed before an accurate judgment of their environmental benefits and prior to their industrial applications. In this work, the mutual solubilities for [C2-C8mim][Tf2N] (n-alkyl-3-methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide) and water between 288.15 and 318.15 K at atmospheric pressure were measured. Although these are among the most hydrophobic ionic liquids known, the solubility of water in these compounds is surprisingly large, ranging from 0.17 to 0.36 in mole fraction, while the solubility of these ILs in water is much lower ranging from 3.2 × 10-5 to 1.1 × 10-3 in mole fraction, in the temperature and pressure conditions studied. From the experimental data, the molar thermodynamic functions of solution and solvation such as Gibbs energy, enthalpy, and entropy at infinite dilution were estimated, showing that the solubility of these ILs in water is entropically driven. The predictive capability of COSMO-RS, a model based on unimolecular quantum chemistry calculations, was evaluated for the description of the binary systems investigated providing an acceptable agreement between the model predictions and the experimental data both with the temperature dependence and with the ILs structural variations.

Mutual impedance between two dipole antennas fed by single source

We present a new circuit-model approach which can be used to compute the mutual impedance between two dipoles fed at the same feed point. The validity of the method is confirmed by comparison with mutual impedance values obtained when the dipoles are individually excited and orientated at angles between 0degrees and 90degrees. (C) 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Parent-off spring associations in wintering brent geese: parental investment or mutual assistance?

The continued parent-offspring associations in the Eastern Canadian High Arctic light-bellied brent goose Branta bernicla hrota was examined to determine whether this is an example of continued parental investment or mutual assistance. Adults with juveniles spend more than twice as much time being vigilant and aggressive than do those without offspring. The loss of a partner, however, does not result in the remaining parent increasing parental care but does result in increased 'self-care' by the juveniles. Neither parents nor single-parent juveniles appear to pay an energetic cost relative to non-parental adults and two-parent juveniles, respectively. Differences in the feeding distribution of parents and non-parents and equivalent or better physical condition suggests that families are able to maintain access to a superior food supply over the winter. Passive 'assistance' by juveniles may assist in maintaining this position in favoured areas, and this is achieved with little overt aggression. The present study thus provides no data that show a net cost to parents by remaining with their juveniles over the winter period. Thus, mutual assistance might be a better explanation of the prolonged association rather than a period of parental investment with an overall cost.