Industrial Relations in Europe 2012 - European Commission - Europa

argaining in the same way so that different developments can be expected. These trends are
explored more fully in chapter 3 of this report.
The importance of collective bargaining
Chart 1.9: Public sector and national collective bargaining coverage, 2009
For details about reference year see Box 1.4.
Source: National collective bargaining coverage: J. Visser, ICTWS database 3.0. Public sector
collective bargaining coverage: Adam (2011)
Note: The red dotted line is the 45 degree line which indicates points where the two %s are equal. The
black line is the least squares regression line indicating the average relationship between the two.
Collective bargaining coverage rates continue to exhibit a high degree of variation across
countries in both the overall economy and in the public sector. Chart 1.9 shows collective
bargaining coverage for the public sector, and compares public sector collective bargaining
coverage with collective bargaining coverage in the entire economy. On the whole-economy
level, collective bargaining coverage is low in Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and the
UK, where fewer than 30% of all employees are covered by a collective agreement. On the
other hand, there are countries in which collective bargaining coverage is higher than 85%
(i.e. Finland, France, Slovenia and Sweden) and in some countries almost all employees are
covered by a collective agreement (i.e. Austria and Belgium).
This variation in collective bargaining coverage can also be found in the public sector. In
Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary and Lithuania public sector collective bargaining coverage does
not exceed the 30% margin. On the other hand, in a number of countries public sector
collective bargaining is almost 100%, which indicates that collective bargaining coverage is
usually higher in the public sector compared to other sectors in the economy.
However, the most striking issue shown by Chart 1.9 is the fact that collective bargaining is
generally higher in the public sector compared to the whole economy. In many countries the
gap between public and national sector collective bargaining coverage is significant. For
instance public sector collective bargaining is more than 40 percentage points higher in
Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Ireland, Malta, Slovakia and the UK, compared to the national
figure. There are only a few countries in which public sector collective bargaining coverage is
not substantially different to the overall economy, e.g. in Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Lithuania
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