Labour Relations in the Global Fast-Food Industry

The fast-food industry is one of the few industries that can be described as truly global, not least in terms of employment, which is estimated at around ten million people worldwide. This edited volume is the first of its kind, providing an analysis of labour relations in this significant industry focusing on multinational corporations and large national companies in ten countries: the USA, Canada, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and Russia.
The extent to which multinational enterprises impose or adapt their employment practices in differing national industrial relations systems is analysed, Results reveal that the global fast-food industry is typified by trade union exclusion, high labour turnover, unskilled work, paternalistic management regimes and work organization that allows little scope for developing workers'' participation in decision-making, let alone advocating widely accepted concepts of social justice and workers'' rights.

Dr Tony Royle is Reader in International and Comparative Industrial Relations at the Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University. He has published widely in the field of industrial relations in multinational corporations and is the author of Working for McDonald’s in Europe: The Unequal Struggle?,
Professor Brian Towers is currently Associate Fellow at the Industrial Relations Research Unit at the University of Warwick. He has held a number of teaching and research appointments at British and American universities. He is Consulting and Founding Editor of the Industrial Relations Journal and has arbitrated for ACAS since 1975. He has published widely on trade unions and industrial relations public policy including The Representation Gap: Change and Reform in British and American Industrial Relations.