Project: Decentralised Wage Finding Systems in the EU: The Operationalisation of the Performance Principle on the National and Workplace Level and its Impact on Collective Bargaining (LoFi-EU)

News

Shift in our research agenda due to the Covid-19-Pandemic
Despite the heterogeneity of wage policies in many european countries, decentralization has been the main common feature of wage policy as a regulative response to the economic crisis of 2007/08, with a peak in 2011/12 . In view of the far-reaching interventions, one could speak of cross-border wage coordination in the Euro zone - not by the bargaining partners, but largely by the troika. In order to increase competitiveness, Slovenia, Spain, Italy and Greece, for example, were forced to decentralize their wage bargaining systems on order to enable companies to fall below collective (wage) agreements. How the bargaining partners trade unions and employers’ associations reacted to the new institutional and legal framework is of our mayor concern. In case of a high level of individualization: Do wage finding procedures rely on informal norms and traditions of industrial relations? Do different trade union or employer strategies change the picture?

We approach the topic with a comparative approach analyzing the transformative policies and the reactions of both unions and employer associatins. The case of Britain is especially interesting for a contrasting comparison, as a similar decentralization due to state regulation has started decades ago in the 1970s. The experiences can therefore illuminate path dependencies and adaptation strategies, and in addition, Britain is of particular interest as a current case of transition (Brexit means a possible departure from European labour standards).

Our second step - conducting contrasting case studies of (collective) wage agreements on the level of workplace, locality, business or branch/sector, and in particular, to analyze the enforcement power of the parties to collective agreements – is unfortunately difficult to achieve in Covid-Times, so currently we focus on in-depth expert interviews with the bargaining partners.

Presentation with preliminary results at the GIRA annual meeting in Frankfurt
Jule Westerheide(Universität Duisburg-Essen), Ingo Matuschek(HdBA)und Frank Kleemann(Universität Duisburg-Essen): Dezentralisierung von Tarifsystemen im europäischen Vergleich–länderspezifische Reaktionen der Akteure der Industriellen Beziehungen auf arbeitspolitische Reformen seit der Eurokrise
More information: https://www.giraweb.de/jahrestagungen

 

In Slovenia, Greece and Spain, contacts have been made and multiple Interviews have been conducted
A productive Interview about the decentralisation of collective bargaining with Luis Antonio Fernández Villazón and Ana Rosa Argüelles Blanco from the Universidad de Oviedo, who are in charge of the AUNAS Project, results in future scientific exchange.