Employment Relations in the Public Sector

The course aims to pursue the following objectives: 1) to provide the conceptual and analytical tools for the study of employment and industrial relations in Italy and in other European countries (France, Germany, UK, Nordic Countries, others), with particular attention to their recent evolution; 2) to analyze the specificity of the regulation of labour in the public sector compared with the private sector, and to undesrtand the reasons of such specificity; within this framework, to examine also the peculiarities of labour disputes in the public services, their analytical implications and the regulatory problems they raise in Italy and other European countries; 3) to address the processes of reform of public sector employment relations that started in Italy and many European countries in the 1990s, in connection with a wider process of public sector restructuring (with some references also to extra-European countries like the USA, Japan, Australia).

To acquire critical mastery of the essential conceptual tools for the analysis of employment relations in Italy and in Europe, with particular reference to employment relations in the public services, and knowledge of the actors, processes and past and recent dynamics of such relations. To acquire knowledge of recent reform processes of public service employment relations in Italy and other European countries and of their shortcomings. Students will acquire the ability to use the specific terminology of employment relations research and to critically examine employment relations issues in general and specifically in the public services.