Industrial Relations in Europe 2012 - European Commission - Europa

predominant national industrial relations system on the basis of seven key dimensions
(Bechter, Brandl and Meardi, 2012). These are union density, union fragmentation, employer
association density, fragmentation of employers’ associations, collective bargaining coverage,
centralisation of collective bargaining, and the interaction of social partners with the state on
questions of public policy. With the exception of the interaction dimension, all dimensions
have already been discussed in the previous sections of the chapter. In the analysis here the
interaction of both employers’ associations and unions is considered as a further key
dimension of the industrial relations system as it expresses a further mode of actors’ activity.
Box 1.6: Comparing sectoral and national industrial relations systems
By comparing and classifying public sector industrial relations systems with national systems
the Visser (2008) typology is used as a reference as it provides a classification of industrial
relations systems for all EU-27 countries. The main advantage of the Visser (2008) typology
is that it is empirical and linked to classifications of varieties of capitalism, welfare states and
employment regimes. Three indicators of dimensions (union density, employer density,
collective bargaining coverage) are identical between the public sector and Visser’s (2008)
national level indicators. In order to compare public sector industrial relations and Vissers’
(2008) national industrial relations typology for two indicators slight definitional differences
have to be considered. First, centralisation of collective bargaining and policy involvement
are used as correspondents in the public sector for Visser’s indicator for corporatism. Also,
Visser’s union concentration and sector organisation corresponds here with fragmentation of
the actors. In addition to these definitional differences another difference has to be
considered as the dimension workplace representation is excluded for the (public) sector
level, due to missing data. Because of these definitional differences several robustness tests
for the classifications have been made including the consideration of collective bargaining
levels and indicators for coordination instead of centralisation. All robustness tests support
the results shown here. Thus, given these peculiarities, it is possible to identify
commonalities and peculiarities in public sector industrial relations and national industrial
relations.
By analysing public sector data in the EU-27 it is possible to test whether the types of
industrial relations systems apparent at the public sector level holds any resemblance to the
national typology. This also facilitates the classification of public sector industrial relations
systems for the EU-27, and shows how far they deviate from the national-level
correspondents.
Public sector industrial relations systems in all EU Member States are classified using the k-
means clustering method in order to distribute public sector industrial relations alongside the
same attributes of industrial relations dimensions at national level as Visser has done (2008).
This means that the attributes of the national and (public) sector types correspond with each
other, e.g. Organised corporatism system attributes correspond with Dense system attributes,
Liberal system attributes with Fragile system attributes, etc. For the indicators that do not
directly match the Visser (2008) indicators, the average of the national-level characteristics of
the countries that belong, according to Visser, to that cluster is used. Chart 1.12 shows the
classification first (a) of the EU-27 countries according to Visser (2008), and then (b) the
distribution for the public sector.
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