Regulating Social Europe : Reality and Myth of Collective Bargaining In the EC Legal Order

Abstract

Introduction - subject and scenario - defining the framework of the study. Part 1 A based on the rule of law: from the White Paper on completing the internal market to today - apogee and decline of the community harmonisation model the role of in the European integration process labour and the institutional context - a methodological note. Part 2 Social complexity and regulatory dilemmas in the community system: regulatory deficit and alternatives to legislation - the post-positivist labour tradition - at the root of the regulatory illusion - loss of the epistemic authority of law, an evergreen paradigm - legal pluralism the peculiar nature of the community legal order - legal sovereignty lost twice over - some symptoms of the community harmonisation model's regulatory deficit, first generation alternatives - mutual recognition, regulatory competition, standardisation, second generation alternatives - the model, and in labour - the quomodo of social Europe. Part 3 European collective bargaining - between old systems and new realities: in the beginning there were collective autonomy, pluralism and collective laissez-faire and on the seventh day the Maastricht Summit created European Collective Bargaining the functional singularity of European Collective Bargaining and interpretative tools - an interim summing up. Part 4 European Collective Bargaining and hermeneutic categories - the need for a new theoretical framework: private classification of collective agreements and trade union agency in the community system collective autonomy and European Collective Bargaining - the many reasons for an incompatibility - a collective autonomy without employees? pluralism and collective autonomy in the community system - social pluralism and rationalisation in terms of collective labour law. Part 5 An unhappy alternative: inconsequential collective bargaining - the normative function of collective bargaining and the (non-existence of the) principle of freedom of association in the community legal order, a European collective laissez-faire?, state and the of the industrial relations system, freedom of association and the legal status of collective agreements tied collective bargaining - pre-set limits, and subsequent assessments, legality, representative status, small and medium-sized enterprises, general approval lessons from experience - Directive 96/34/EC on parental leave, Directive 97/81/EC on part-time work and Directive 99/70/EC on fixed-term work. Part 6 Collective agreements as a resource of the community legal order: public law collective agreements and neo-corporatist models in the community system - a still unlikely prospect collective bargaining as a resource of the community legal order - European collective bargaining as a regulatory resource, European collective bargaining as a legitimacy resource regulatory techniques and a European social constitution.