Level Of Collective Bargaining Research Articles

The effects of the decentralization of collective bargaining on wages and wage dispersion: Evidence from the Finnish forest and IT industries

AbstractRecently, Finnish forest industries shifted from sectoral collective bargaining to firm‐level bargaining, and the IT services industry shifted to a hybrid of sector‐ and firm‐level bargaining. Using administrative data on monthly wages and the synthetic difference‐in‐differences method, I study the causal effects of collective bargaining decentralization on the level and dispersion of wages. Despite the substantial change in the level of collective bargaining, I generally find muted effects on the level and dispersion of wages. I find positive and economically and statistically significant effects on wage levels and within‐firm wage dispersion only for blue‐collar workers in the paper industry.

Collective bargaining levels, employment and wage inequality in Spain

After the increase in inequalities following the Great Recession, studies on wage bargaining systems have increasingly focused on wage inequality. This research examines wage inequality associated with collective bargaining levels in Spain, based on matched employer–employee microdata and quantile regression methods. These methods are applied across the wage distribution, following the method proposed by Firpo et al. (2011), to estimate wage premiums associated with agreement levels and to decompose the wage differentials observed at different points of the wage distribution. From the evidence obtained it can be concluded that, although the higher wages found in firm-level agreements are explained by the better observed characteristics of firms and workers covered by these collective agreements, there remains a positive wage premium. Although this premium is seen throughout the wage distribution, it favours mostly workers in the middle and upper-middle end. This slightly increases wage inequality in comparison with sectoral agreements. In contrast, workers without collective bargaining coverage generally suffer a wage penalty. This penalty is only observed on the left of the wage distribution. It becomes a significant wage premium in the upper end of the distribution, which implies a significant increase in wage inequality. In short, the evidence of this research suggests that reducing the coverage of collective bargaining could be associated with a significant increase in wage inequality. A better policy option for countries with a predominant sectoral model, such as Spain, would be to move towards an organized decentralization model. This would cause significant gains in employment as suggested by OECD (2019) and only a slight increase in wage inequality.

Racism as a Workload and Bargaining Issue

My main contention is that racism should be read beyond the registers of discrimination, human rights, or harassment – rather, I approach racism as a workload issue that labour organizations and employers need to address at the level of collective bargaining. To illustrate this argument, I focus on racism and workload as it relates to Black faculty, faculty of colour, and Indigenous faculty in universities and colleges in Canada, although the argument can be applied to other job types and other places. While many unions have policies and statements in support of local, national and international anti-racist struggles, the idea of racism as a workload issue has not been seriously taken up by unions/associations, or for that matter by anti-racist activists on university/college campuses. I offer reasons why racism is a workload issue, and consider the potential role of unions in addressing racism.

The future of collective bargaining in Italy between legislative reforms and social partners’ responses

In recent years, Italian legislation seems to have accomplished a ‘corporatisation’ of collective bargaining in response to employers’ demands, without the filter of national collective bargaining. Article 8 of Law No. 148/2011 made it possible to deviate from legislative provisions and industry-wide collective bargaining on a wide range of topics. The Legislative Decrees implementing the Jobs Act in 2015 have gone even further, allowing the possibility of a different regulation both through different levels of collective bargaining and through individual agreements. Faced with these changes in the balance of power, collective bargaining has been weakened. Nevertheless, a number of national sectoral agreements have provided for ambitious efforts to establish a new relationship between the levels of collective bargaining or the mechanisms of collective agreements, as well as to re-regulate forms of workers’ representation. As these national agreements are based on the voluntary compliance of workers’ organisations and employers’ associations, their implementation and enforcement in order to be effective will need to be accompanied by a re-establishment of the role of collective bargaining.

Flexible collective bargaining agreements: Still a moderating effect on works council behaviour?

We analyse the interaction between different labour market institutions in Germany, namely, industry‐level bargaining and firm‐level codetermination by works councils. In particular, we are interested in the moderating effect of flexibility measures on the link between the existence works councils and collective agreements on wages and productivity. In presence of institutional changes, the question is whether works councils in covered plants still generate rather than redistribute rents, given recent decentralisation processes in the German system of industrial relations. We augment a theoretical model to provide hypotheses, which are then tested using empirical analysis of representative German plant level data. We find that the existence of flexibility provisions in collective bargaining agreements does not alter the effect of works council on firms' wages. We find, however, that with flexibility provisions works council presence is associated with higher productivity levels than without such provisions. These findings, however, depend on the level of collective bargaining: they can only be observed in plants covered by industry‐level contracts, but do not hold in plants covered by firm‐level contracts.

The effects of the distribution of mortgage credit on the wage share: Varieties of residential capitalism compared

The financialisation of advanced economies has developed in part through the widespread engagement of workers with the financial sector, specifically through the increasing adoption of household debt. Taking on debt establishes “investor identities” for borrowers, which disciplines borrowers to demand employment and marginalises worker bargaining power. Although increased levels of household debt have been linked with a declining wage share of national income, there has been little examination of the effects of the specific channel of mortgage credit, the largest source of household debt, on the wage share. A series of regression models were implemented to test the relationship between the total mortgage stock and the wage share of GDP in four different countries, across three different Varieties of Residential Capitalism. While the panel data results demonstrate a negative relationship between mortgage credit and the wage share across the typologies, the relationship is concentrated in the liberal markets of the UK and the USA, and does not hold independently in Sweden and Denmark. There are four important differences that may explain the divergent results: (1) mortgages in liberal markets are provided at a higher cost than in non-liberal markets; (2) the use of mortgage bonds in non-liberal markets facilitates renegotiations in periods of borrower uncertainty; (3) the level of collective bargaining in Social Democratic states may strengthen worker wage negotiations; and (4) workers in liberal markets are reliant on mortgage finance to access the home as a financial asset in systems of asset-based welfare. The combination of which may explain how the increased disciplinary effects of mortgage finance have resulted in the reproduction of the conditions for capital accumulation in liberal capitalist states.

Convergence and Disparities in European Industrial Relations

The aim of the article is to present the areas of the greatest convergence and disparities in industrial relations in the EU. This paper also aims to identify the causes of such situations and to determine the influence of the economic crisis on the shape of these relations and the attempt to achieve convergence. The study is composed of an introduction, three main sections and a conclusion. Following the introduction, the section 2 discusses the evolutionary process of European industrial relations and social dialogue. The next section is devoted to employee participation in the management of a company, the area of greatest convergence in industrial relations. Special emphasis is placed on the dual system of employee representation (trade unions and works councils), and in particular on the European Works Councils. The final section examines the greatest disparities between the old and new EU member states with reference to trade union density, range, and the level of collective bargaining. This is followed by a summary of conclusions.

Achieving Democracy: Implementing the 1992 Salvadoran Peace Accords

The literature on negotiations and bargaining has been dominated by academics in business and public administration. Given the interests and orientation of the academic disciplines, it is not surprising that the academic studies predominantly have examined the processes and dynamics at the level of collective bargaining and to a lesser extent organization leadership and management. Dispute resolution has a distinctly intra–organizational character. In 1991 the warring factions in El Salvador came together to negotiate both an end to the fighting, but also to create a framework for the introduction of a democratic government for the country. Over a period of several months the two sides shaped an agreement. Finally in late December of 1991 with a flurry of decisions an agreement was drafted and signed. Twenty years later the country continues to implement the peace accord, but there is no consensus that the task is complete.

Unions and learning: an historical overview

This article traces the history of union involvement in learning and skills policy from the neo‐corporatism of the 1960s and 1970s through the voluntarism of the 1980s and 1990s to the present ‘post‐voluntary’ era. It sets out the political background against which the development of union learning representatives can be contextualised. The article outlines the significant capacity building in unions such as union learning representatives under New Labour. This has been seen as contributing to the Government’s skills strategy, particularly in opening learning opportunities to those with few or no qualifications. It suggests, however, that the low level of collective bargaining over learning and skills and continuing employer prerogative over job‐specific training and skill utilisation limits delivering the broad union learning agenda at the workplace. If unions and union learning representatives are to advance this agenda, then this will require increased collective bargaining over training and a greater role for unions in policy development within a new statutory framework.

The employer's perspective on collective bargaining centralization: an analytical framework

Despite the continuing debates about the performance implications of different degrees of collective bargaining centralization, our understanding of the determinants of bargaining structures is still limited. While recent research has largely focused on macro-level factors, the role of micro-level determinants has still not been systematically scrutinized. This article develops a multi-disciplinary framework for analysing the employer's perspective on collective bargaining centralization and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of different forms and levels of collective bargaining from the perspective of management, the main focus being on the comparison between single-employer and multi-employer collective bargaining. This framework can be used for qualitative and quantitative empirical research as well as for discussions of the costs and benefits of different levels of collective bargaining.

Collective bargaining in public services

This article shows that regulation of the employment relationship in European public services has tended to give more importance to collective bargaining than to unilateral employer regulation. Although collective bargaining is a general trend, it is not the same in every country. This article concentrates on collective bargaining levels and the outcomes of collective bargaining in selected European states. A major explanatory factor of the extent of collective bargaining is the nature of the civil service system. Reformed “non‐career” systems tend to adopt collective bargaining institutions, resulting in binding collective agreements between employers and unions, while classical “career” systems do not.

Pacts for employment and competitiveness in the electricity sector

The European Union Energy Sector Directive no. 96/62 laid down that Member States were to initiate a market liberalisation process in the electricity sector. In this context Pacts for Employment and Competitiveness (PEC) represent part of a strategy enterprises are adopting in order to face the challenge of managing the changeover from near-monopoly to internationally competitive structures. The article, based on ten case studies carried out in five EU Member States, looks at the thinking underlying these pacts, the changes at the level of collective bargaining, and how the PECs are interpreted by the parties involved: not only the contents of the PECs, but also the underlying motives, the processes of negotiation and the effects of the agreements. It points to areas in which PECs have been able to contribute to generating win-win situations, but also to possible ambiguities and contradictions linked to the negotiation and implementation of such pacts.

Competitive consensus: bargaining on employment and competitiveness in the Netherlands

This article shows how bargaining on the conflicting issues of fighting unemployment and increasing competitiveness has evolved. It offers an empirical insight into the degree to which the national framework agreements that form part of the now famous Dutch polder model are implemented. At the national level framework agreements are set up and recommendations are made on a wide range of issues. It is shown that these are then interpreted and partly adopted by negotiators at lower collective bargaining levels. At company level, three cases illustrate differences in the degree to which companies implement the outcomes of collective agreements: from ‘dedicated follower’ to ‘rebels with a cause'. Looking at the evidence, it seems the Dutch have experienced a form of organised decentralisation.

Determinants of Trade Union Membership in OECD Countries: A Survey

Reviews the literature on trade union membership in OECD countries. After considering the ways in which trade union membership is measured, trends in both membership and density since 1970 are examined. When cross‐sectional determinants are considered, density is found to be unrelated to size of employment in the manufacturing sector and the share of female employment, but it is related to the level of collective bargaining and the size of the public sector. An examination of individual and job‐related characteristics finds membership is higher among males, those with family responsibilities, those with lower occupational status and those with low educational achievements and that job dissatisfaction and left‐wing views are also important. Time‐series studies find that while union growth and decline are linked to the business cycle, with wages, prices and unemployment affecting membership, economic factors are not the sole explanation. Concludes by surveying the causes of union decline since 1980, together with recent error‐correction and cointegration approaches to modelling trade union membership.

Teachers’ unions and excellence in education: Comment

In a recent article in this journal, Michael Kurth presented what he considered evidence that teachers’ unions impair educational achievement and that what they must do to increase teachers’ salaries is harmful to educational excellence. This comment critically examines Kurth’s misspecified model and the misleadingly defined variables that led to the erroneous empirical support for his conclusion. Our own estimates indicate that states with a high level of collective bargaining had higher SAT scores in 1982.