ABSTRACT
Prompted by the fundamental work carried out by Lester Thurow and Michel Albert, 1 the following deliberations represent an attempt to outline the basic elements of a labour relations model within the European Union (EU) as compared with the USA and Japan. In doing so, account is taken of the fact that Europeanisation and globalisation are exercising a destructive influence on national labour relations models 2 while, on the other hand, it is precisely for this reason that there is a growing need for a common intersection of the basic elements of national labour relations, related to the respective hemisphere (in this case Europe). An attempt of this kind can only adopt an ideal type of approach as it is not possible for it to cover all the national labour relations models practised in the countries of Europe with the same degree of thoroughness. The most it can do, rather, is to trace the “main stream” of the reality and tendencies of labour relations and, given the circumstances currently prevailing, confine its attention to Western Europe or, more specifically; the core of EU member states. Labour relations in Eastern Europe are still too much in a state of flux for any meaningful longer-term predictions to be made (Lecher and Optenhögel, 1995). The following comparison will restrict itself to zooming in on the most conspicuous and important differences that exist and concentrate less on the fine mesh of labour relations, which can display considerable overlaps, so as to focus on significant variations.
