Industrial relations under global stress: fragmentation and the potential for representation of workers in the Norwegian hospitality sector

The proposed research project seeks to understand social relations in the Norwegian hospitality sector. The relationships between employers and employees, and between different groups of employees and their representatives, are shaped by globalisation, ec onomic restructuring and international labour migration. The research will address how these processes of social inclusion and exclusion affect workers ability to influence employment and other work issues. A key ambition behind this project is to examine how global stress affects the ability of organised labour to represent the diversity represented by the Norwegian hospitality sector? By focusing on a sector dominated by women and migrant workers - characterised by low wages, low unionisation rates and precarious forms of employment - this project will challenge our understanding of the "Nordic model" of industrial relations, both in terms of its normative sustainability and its ability to adapt to a globalising world. At the centre of the theoretical framework are recent advances in human geography exploring the new geographies of work: both from the employer side, through flexibilisation, outsourcing and human resource management, and from the labour side, through the challenges of fragmentation, so cial partnership and multicultural integration in the sector. Moreover, the potential for representation of workers in this sector will be examined both at the level of the workplace and in industrial relations in the sector. Based on both quantitative an d qualitative research methods, the project is designed as four independent, but mutually informative, work packages: a quantitative study of hotel workplaces in the Oslo region will be combined with 5 qualitative workplace studies in Oslo and a Norwegian mountain resort, and interviews with union officials and corporate management. Finally, 4 fieldwork- and literature-based cases will compare the Oslo case with innovative Anglo-American organising experiences.