The Interrelationship of Collective Bargaining at Industry and Company-Levels in Wage Determination

Abstract

The combined increase in firm or company-level and industry-level collective bargaining over recent decades in France has renewed the debate over the potential complementarity or the substitution effect between the two bargaining levels. In this article we study how the two bargaining levels are associated at the workplace level in France in the wage determination process. Our study is based on the REPONSE 2004-2005 survey –which provides information on the role given to industry-level bargaining and the current process of negotiations in the workplace– and on two case studies: one in the automotive sector, the other in call service centres. Three company profiles are defined. In the first two profiles, one of the two bargaining levels has greater emphasis than the other while the third profile is characterised by the weakness of negotiations, whatever the level. Whatever the profile, our analysis shows that the content of negotiations is different at each bargaining level –the company level being more focused on wage determination and the branch level on wage regulation. Besides these key levels of collective bargaining, we stress the growing influence in wage determination of individual performance interviews within the company, and of third parties such as the prime contractor or the parent company, outside the firm.