Industrial Relations in Europe 2012 - European Commission - Europa

Chapter 1: Overview of European, national and public sector
industrial relations
Industrial relations in Europe are characterised by two main trends. A continuation of
long-term secular developments, combined with significant changes in industrial relations
practices and institutions in some Member States. Industrial relations in the public sector
differ significantly from private sector industrial relations, due to factors such as the types
of actors and collective bargaining practices. Nevertheless, some recent trends and most
recently the impact of the crisis are playing a part in blurring this distinction to some
extent.
Based on a draft by Barbara Bechter and Bernd Brandl (University of York)
1.1. Introduction
This chapter presents an overview of recent developments in industrial relations in the EU.
The period since the last Industrial Relations in Europe (2010) has been marked by a
continuation of the crisis and its extension to the public sector as Member State governments
have been increasingly obliged to undertake fiscal consolidation measures.
In the European Union, taken as a whole and compared to other world regions, the collective
relationship between workers, employers and their respective representatives is based on
representative actors, institutionalised processes and established practices. 1 However, the
picture is not uniform across all EU Member States or across sectors and has changed over
time. Industrial Relations in Europe 2010 highlighted a high degree of variation of industrial
relations systems among the EU Member States. The main reason for this is that industrial
relations are deeply embedded in national economic, political and societal environments. This
also explains why differences among countries persist even though there are common trends
in terms of the transformation of national industrial relations systems.
This chapter reports on the current state of industrial relations in the EU, and then looks at the
impact on industrial relations in the public sector, which has become the main focus of the ongoing
changes in industrial relations practices and institutions in many Member States. (For
data sources, see Box 1.1)
Box 1.1: Data sources
The source of data at a national level used for this chapter is the ICTWSS – Institutional
Characteristics of Trade Unions, Wage Setting, State Intervention and Social Pacts – database,
which contains data on some 90 variables from 1960 to 2010 in 34 countries. The database
was developed by Jelle Visser and can be consulted at the website of the Amsterdam Istitute
for Advanced Labour Studies AIAS (http://www.uva-aias.net/). Integrated in the database is
information from national surveys, the European Social Survey
(http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org), administrative data obtained from the unions and
1 See Industrial Relations in Europe 2008, chapter 1.
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