Industrial Relations in Europe 2012 - European Commission - Europa

from the European IndustrialRelations Observatory (EIRO) of the European Foundation for
the Improvement of Livingand Working Conditions, in particular the EIRO country profiles
(http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/eiro/), the OECD's Labour Force Statistics and other
sources. In addition to the ICTWSS, the ILC –Internationalization, Labor Relations and
Competitiveness - database, developed by Franz Traxler and maintained and updated by
Bernd Brandl is used (Brandl and Traxler, 2012).
Data for industrial relations in the public sector is based to a large extent on data collection
from the European Industrial Relations Observatory (EIRO) and in particular its
representativeness studies and national country profiles. Another EIRO source was the report
on Industrial Relations in the Public sector (Bordogna, 2007).
Data on the structure of collective bargaining in the public sector was derived from the report
for the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU) by the Labour Research
Department in 2008 (http://www.epsu.org/a/4443), the European Public Administration
Network (EUPAN) survey (Bossaert and Kaeding, 2009) and the report on Institutional
Representativeness of Trade Unions and Employers’ Organisations in the Central and Public
Services (Mormont, 2004).
1.2 Industrial relations indicators
The principle of voluntary collective bargaining is a cornerstone of the governance of labour
in the EU. Even though the organisation, structure and relevance of collective bargaining
varies widely across the EU Member States, the principle of free, independent and voluntary
collective bargaining is a key element of industrial relations in each country.
Chart 1.1: Bargaining coverage rates, 1997/99 and 2007/09
Source: J. Visser, ICTWSS database 3.0, 2011.
The coverage remains the same as in the 2010 report because of lack of new data
Collective bargaining coverage
The importance of collective bargaining is indicated by collective bargaining coverage, as this
indicates the number of employees that are covered by collective agreements. Operationally,
collective bargaining is defined as the number of employees covered by a collective
agreement as a proportion of all employees. As highlighted in the Industrial Relations Report
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