The handbook, Industrial relations in Central and Eastern Europe, offers a comparative study of industrial relations in the new EU member states. A set of individual country reports, based on wide-ranging empirical findings, describe the process of changing industrial relations and developments currently underway. For purposes of comparison, an examination of mainstream trends in the countries of the former EU is also included.

An analysis of the underpinnings of industrial relations in labour law, and of practices at the company, sectoral and national levels, reveals the particular contours of the situation in each national setting. In spite of the general orientation to western European practices which characterises the overall process of transformation, individual industrial relations developments are shown to be extremely varied, against a background of structural features that provide evidence of a highly differentiated transformation typology. Specific instances of structural deficit are encountered, alongside innovative forms of workplace participation in some cases and higher levels of concertation and distribution policy in others.

Alongside the east-west comparison of industrial relations, considerable space in this information-rich and thought-provoking handbook is devoted to the repercussions of eastwards enlargement on the central tasks of labour policy and collective bargaining and the challenges posed to the European Social Model.

English edition based on the second, newly revised and updated German edition, Nomos-Verlagsgesellschaft, Baden-Baden, 2004.