Employment Practices of Multinationals in the Spanish and German Quick-Food Sectors: Low-Road Convergence?

• Main Author: Royle, Tony
• Language: en
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: Multinational corporations; Spain; Germany; Fast-food industry; Employment practices; Trade unions
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10454/6589

No === This article examines the labour relations practices of multinational corporations (MNCs) in the German and Spanish quick-food service sectors. The demand for greater profitability and lower costs is leading to a greater standardization of work methods across a widening range of food service operators, resulting in the gradual elimination of more expensive, skilled and experienced workers, and an increasingly non-union approach in employee relations practices. The outcome involves increasing standardization, union exclusion, low trust, low skills, and low pay. These sectoral characteristics appear to outweigh both country-of-origin and host-country effects. The findings therefore confirm continuing variation within national industrial relations systems and the importance of sectoral characteristics and organizational contingencies in understanding MNC cross-border behaviour.