Industrial Relations in Europe 2012 - European Commission - Europa

SI
SK
UK
Centralised social dialogue.
Voluntary negotiations in the civil service cover the terms and conditions of
performance of civil service duties, working time, leaves, salary scales and social
security coverage.
Joint consultation and voluntary negotiations are more common in the public
sector than in the private sector. Most unions focus on the representation of a
particular occupational group.
Sources: Mormont (2004), Hessel (2008), Bossaert and Kaeding (2009), Adam (2011), Vaughan-
Whitehead (2012).
Further discussion of country clustering can be found in chapter 3 of this report.
Trends in bargaining regulation
Since the 1970s, a trend away from unilateral regulation towards collective bargaining or
towards mixed regulation systems can be observed (Traxler, 1999). This process started with
Finland shifting from unilateral regulation to collective bargaining in the early 1970s,
followed by Belgium in the mid-1970s and France to a very limited extent in the early 1980s.
The Italian public sector system of collective bargaining also shifted from a unilateral to a
mixed system in the early 1980s (the right to collective bargaining was introduced in Italy in
1983, although with several limitations, see Bordogna and Neri 2011), followed by Spain at
the end of the 1980s. Considering that in the Central and Eastern European countries
(CEECs), the mode of regulation in the public sector was similar to unilateral regulation and
shifted in the 1990s to collective bargaining or a mixed system, the dominance of public
sector collective bargaining is a “recent” phenomenon.
The Industrial Relations in Europe Report 2010 reported for the majority of the CEECs highly
decentralised collective bargaining structures in the private sector. This highlights a major
difference between private and public sector collective bargaining as the majority of public
sector collective bargaining systems in the CEECs are characterised by relatively centralised
collective bargaining. The reason for this difference between private and public sector
collective bargaining can be explained by well-established tripartism in the public sector in
many CEECs. According to the country case studies documented in Hessel (2008), in many
CEECs employer and employee organisations have built up forms of cooperation and
consultation from scratch in which central state authorities have a key role in collective
bargaining. See also chapter 2 of this report for a discussion of collective bargaining
structures in the CEECs.
In many countries the level and structure of collective bargaining has also changed
considerably over time. Frequently these changes are the direct result of various forms public
sector reforms, or liberalisation and privatisation of public services in the same period (see
Hessel, 2008). These changes lead to an increasing fragmentation of the collective bargaining
system which is expressed by a diffusion towards multiple levels of collective bargaining and
by differentiating within collective bargaining between different occupations and/or sectors
(e.g. public administration, health, education) and second, by an increasing relevance of
decentralised levels of collective bargaining. The main rationale behind this trend towards deconcentration
and decentralisation of collective bargaining is guided by the idea that it allows
more flexibility in regulating employment relationships and conditions, which in turn
increases the efficiency of the public sector as a whole. However, not all EU Member States
follow this idea of increasing the efficiency of the public sector by restructuring collective
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