Forces of reproduction and change in collective bargaining: A social field perspective

Abstract

The paper addresses the endurance of sector collective bargaining despite many announcements of its demise. Bourdieusian social theory is used to interpret collective bargaining as a dominated social field that is distinct and relatively autonomous from other economic, political and transnational fields. Empirically, we trace the trajectories of German and Italian metal sector’s collective bargaining fields. In Germany, field agents contributed to a continuing erosion of collective bargaining, regional differentiation of membership strategies, and a reorientation of dominated employers’ associations towards their members. In Italy, some field agents resisted supranational and national liberalization demands and contributed to the adaptation and innovation of bargaining practices and hence, to the preliminary re-stabilization and re-balancing of collective bargaining between industry and company level.

The social policy preferences of EU employers’ organizations: An exploratory analysis

“…Recent literature has qualified both views, in that the preferences of employers are more varied, updating the factions of capital approach (see Mares, 2001Mares, , 2003. Such heterogeneity depends on a firm's sector, size or territory and has led, in the face of disruptive external forces, to the stabilization of aspects of industrial relations and welfare regimes including, for example, collective bargaining in continental and southern Europe (Bulfone and Afonso, 2020;Pernicka et al, 2021) and VET in Switzerland (Trampusch, 2020).…”

Arbeitssoziologie als transformative Wissenschaft? Ein Debattenbeitrag

“…"One central task we face is decoding particular aspects of what is still represented or experienced as national, which may in fact have shifted away from what historically has been considered or constituted as national" (Sassen 2003, 3). Forschungen zur Transnationalisierung von Wertschöpfungsketten (Huws et al 2009), aber auch von grenzüberschreitenden Arbeits-und Sorgebeziehungen (Flecker et al 2013;Lutz 2010) und den Implikationen für gewerkschaftliche Interessenvertretung (Pernicka et al 2021) verweisen darauf, dass sich grenzüberschreitende Institutionen, Sozialräume und Beziehungsstrukturen etabliert haben, die "genuin auf einer transnationalen Ebene konstituiert sind" (Flecker 2017, 223). Die Relationalität ist nicht nur im Hinblick auf die sozialen Positionierungen und Privilegierungen einer nationalen Gesellschaft von Bedeutung, sondern auch im globalen Maßstab.…”

Defining the problem of low wage growth in Australia and Denmark: From the actors’ perspectives

“…Although there have been studies of why industrial relations actors may seek to defend and reaffirm existing institutions (Thelen, 2014), or seek to change these institutions (Baccaro and Howell, 2017), aside from some notable exceptions (e.g. Pernika et al, 2021) there is relatively little focus on how the actors explain or make sense of the challenges they face. We seek to address this gap by extending the political science and public policy literature relating to how actors develop narratives to explain policy problems.…”

“…Actor-focused perspectives have become more prominent in recent scholarship to explain, among other things, the capacity of local actors to mobilise various power resources to reshape institutions (e.g. Doellgast et al, 2018; Hauptmeier, 2012; Pernicka, et al, 2021). However, there has been relatively minimal attention within comparative industrial relations scholarship to actor engagement in national-level decision-making processes, which remains important for determining how institutional or economic pressures are translated into wage growth trajectories.…”