ILO principles concerning collective bargaining

Abstract

Collective bargaining, as was only to be expected, has felt the impact of the major changes affecting the world over the past 25 years: the general acceptance of the market economy following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the debate on the role and structure of the State, economic restructuring and globalization, the ready availability of efficient ways of fighting inflation, the growth of non-standard forms of work and temporary contracts, the ongoing process of political and social democratization, the growing autonomy of trade unions from political parties, and many other factors too numerous to mention. All these factors have had a varied and significant impact on collective bargaining. The scope of collective bargaining in terms of the categories covered has diminished, owing to inter alia high levels of unemployment and the growth of the informal sector, of subcontracting and of the various forms of nonstandard employment relationship (which make unionization more difficult); there has, however, been a certain tendency for collective bargaining to develop in the public sector. Collective bargaining has also lost some of its margin for manoeuvre as a result of the successive economic crises and the subjection of national economic policy to processes of rationalization and economic integration and agreements with the Bretton Woods institutions. The increasingly harsh competition brought about by technological innovation and globalization has led to a reduction in the influence exercised in many countries by sectoral agreements and has given added importance to collective bargaining at the enterprise level (and at lower levels, such as the work unit, the factory or the workplace), strictly taking into account the criteria of productivity and output. Flexibilization and deregulation of work have thus encouraged the growth of collective bargaining at enterprise level. At the same time, there has been an increasing need for bilateral and tripartite agreements at national level, since certain issues of collective interest cannot be treated in enterprise- or even branch-level bargaining, especially when a country displays significant regional or sectoral differences. The bilateral or tripartite pacts agreed in many countries have a scope reaching beyond conditions of work in the strict sense, given that they cover employment, vocational training, inflation and other social issues ( see, for example, ILO,