Trajectories of liberalisation on the European industrial relations systems

Abstract

The main hypothesis of this article is that labour liberalisation in the post-Fordist period has affected the three principal areas of collective bargaining coordination (coverage, dominance and control) in two different ways: by attacking the core (deregulation) and the margins (dualisation) of industrial relations. Due to differences in the institutional structures of European countries, these processes could have different effects in each country, resulting in differentiated and gradual path-dependent transformations. This hypothesis is tested by studying the institutional frameworks of industrial relations in several representative European economies: France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Finally, we conclude that there has been a substantial modification of the role, activity and weight of collective actors in the economic system of each country as a consequence of the effect of the different forms of liberalisation on the coordination of collective bargaining. As a corollary, a shift in European Union labour policies towards a further strengthening of collective bargaining spaces is needed to give social partners greater capacity to seek coordinated solutions to contemporary economic and social problems.

The Fate of Social Modernity

“…Since the 1980s, however, labour organisations across Western Europe have seen a strong decline in both membership and influence, with this affecting their role in both industrial relations and politics (López-Andreu 2019; Arribas Camara and Cárdenas 2022;Waddinton et al 2023). Scholars explain this development by the wider transformation of the (political) economy, inducing a shrinking role of manufacturing industries, a decline of bargaining coverage, as well as growing diversification of the working population, with young cohorts and workers in new occupations less willing to join unions and to participate in industrial action.…”

Dissenting behaviours at work

“…On the one hand, digital technologies allow for more comprehensive controls and work is subject to increasing subjectivisation and precarisation, so that the pores of the working day are compressed and labour agency is apparently restricted. In contrast, atypical forms of employment (ILO, 2016;Eurofound, 2017) and the erosion of institutionalised industrial relations have increased in recent decades (Arribas Camara and Cárdenas, 2022). As a result, while secondary power has become less important, primary power, expressed through industrial action and organisational misbehaviour, may become more relevant.…”