Variable Pay and Collective Bargaining: A Cross-National Comparison of the Banking Sector

Abstract

This article analyses the challenge of variable pay to collective bargaining, based on a cross-national comparison that takes banking organizations in Austria, Norway, Spain and the UK as representatives of Europe's principal bargaining systems. The hypothesis is that the capacity of collective bargaining to govern variable pay varies with the bargaining system. As the findings show, articulated multi-employer bargaining is more able to govern variable pay than its unarticulated counterpart and single-employer bargaining. Within the case of articulated multi-employer bargaining, single-channel systems of employee workplace representation are superior to dual systems, all the more since the former equip the unions with selective incentives for membership.

Variable pay, collective bargaining and trade unions: A comparison of machinery and banking companies in Norway

“…As spelled out in other articles from the project Nergaard et al, 2009a;Traxler et al, 2008), the main advantage of the Norwegian -or Nordic -model in this respect is the two-tier structure of collective agreements, providing a developed arena for company bargaining within a framework of sector agreements and single channel trade union representation. As shown also in other recent comparative studies (Due and Madsen, 2008;Ilsøe et al, 2007;Stokke, 2008), such institutional configurations tend to enable an extent of articulation between local and central trade unions that seems to enhance a level of trust and parity between the local actors that is more rarely seen in the other countries.…”

The effects of market economy type and foreign MNE subsidiaries on the convergence and divergence of HRM

“…This may be explained by the ongoing trend of decentralization and hybridization of collective bargaining in the CME context. National level bargaining in CMEs has come under pressure and is increasingly combined with bargaining at lower levels in order to leverage more flexibility in terms and conditions of employment (Traxler, Arrowsmith, Nergaard, & Molins Lopez-Rodo, 2008;Kalmi, Pendleton, & Poutsma, 2012). There is also a significant positive association between national and individual level bargaining in CMEs suggesting more leeway in setting labor terms and conditions individually.…”

Multinational enterprises: Comparing performance-related pay between companies in Eastern and Western Europe

“…In this case we refer to deregulation and decentralisation of agreements, which opens up the possibility for more flexible working and flexible pay practices. Traxler et al (2008) found this result in continental Europe. For Belgium, Rusinek and Rycx (2008) found that pay is more sensitive to performance when wage setting is decentralised.…”