The insertion in June 1997 of a Title on employment in the Treaty on European Union has accelerated the drafting of European policy in this field over the last few years. This European dynamic has had widespread impact on the themes and mechanisms that characterise national systems of industrial relations. On the one hand, employment is increasingly governed by rules negotiated between the social partners and, depending on the circumstances, the State. This phenomenon of joint labour market regulation is confirmed by a marked desire on the part of employers' associations and trade unions to integrate employment-related issues into their actions and negotiations. On the other hand, the incorporation of employment-related themes by employers’ associations and trade unions, usually in concertation with government policies, is related with greater coordination of bargaining and concertation mechanisms established at European level and within each Member State. Today, the various national realities appear to be directed to various degrees by these two general tendencies. These phenomena active in the field of employment bargaining must therefore be analysed on three counts: the first focuses on the development of the coordination mechanisms that structure these negotiations, and more specifically raises the issue of co-responsibility for the labour market; the second deals with the strict content of employment bargaining, and examines the question of negotiated flexibility of working conditions and employment; the third addresses the autonomy of collective bargaining in Europe. This analysis informs our research, which is in turn intimately linked to recent changes taking place in national systems of industrial relations.

Collective bargaining and workers’ voice are often discussed in the past rather than in the future tense, but can they play a role in the context of a rapidly changing world of work? This report provides a comprehensive assessment of the functioning of collective bargaining systems and workers’ voice arrangements across OECD countries, and new insights on their effect on labour market performance today.

Does collective bargaining play a role in employment in the European Union today? The European Employment Strategy implemented in the European Union since 1997 invites social partners in all member states to participate in the promotion of employment at all levels. Is this the role of trade unions and employers organisations? Do social partners in the member states negotiate employment? Do they contribute to an objective of full employment? Do they want to improve 'employability'? Do they, finally, negotiate and reach agreements on such issues? Building on a in-depth study conducted by a European-scale network of experts for the DG Employment and Social Affairs of the European Commission, this report addresses these crucial issues. It analyses processes of collective bargaining and agreements on employment in the fifteen member states in 2000 and 2001. It includes national insights as well as comparative analyses of current trends. Researchers at the Institut des Sciences du Travail, a Department of the Catholic University of Louvain, here produce a fourth review of recent developments observed in the field of employment bargaining in Europe. This analysis, which has been conducted at the request of DG Employment and Social Affairs, focuses on agreements negotiated in the field of employment, and on the identification of the coordination mechanisms that structure these negotiations. The study contains 15 national contributions.

Since the 1980s, the process of European economic integration, within a wider context of globalization, has accelerated employment change and placed a new premium on ‘flexible’ forms of work organization. The institutions of employment relations, specifically those concerning collective bargaining between employers and trade unions, have had to adapt accordingly. The Transformation of Employment Relations focuses not just on recent change, but charts the strategic choices that have influenced employment relations and examines these key developments in a comparative perspective. A historical and cross-national analysis of the most important and controversial ‘issues’ explores the motivation of the actors, the implementation of change, and its evolution in a diverse European context. The book highlights the policies and the role played by different institutional and social actors (employers, management, trade unions, professional associations and governments) and assesses the extent to which these policies and roles have had significant effects on outcomes. This comparative analysis of the transformation of work and employment regulation, within the context of a quarter-century timeframe, has not been undertaken in any other book. But this is no comparative handbook in which changes are largely described on a country-by-country basis, but instead, The Transformation of Employment Relations is rather focused thematically. As Europe copes with a serious economic crisis, understanding of the dynamics of work transformation has never been more important.

A large set of recent studies tends to show that employment is currently gaining increased importance in the content of collective bargaining in the European Union member states. The notion of bargaining on employment refers to negotiation processes that may take place among unions and employers' organizations and, sometimes, the state, and that aim to increase employment levels and to reduce unemployment. In other words, this type of bargaining consists in defining joint rules organizing, or at least attempting to organize, employment volumes and flux, with the objective of preserving or creating jobs, on the one hand, and of assisting the unemployed to find a job, on the other. It is sometimes contrasted with bargaining focused on more traditional issues such as wages or working conditions, because it has a specific objective, trying not only to regulate employment relations, but more generally to regulate employment as such, defined in terms of number of jobs. In the European Union, and more precisely in the EU-15, this takes place in a context where employment rates steadily remain below those of Japan and the United States, the two countries with which comparisons are traditionally made in the official figures published by the European Commission. Similarly, even if some countries have now virtually achieved full employment, such as Austria and the Netherlands, for instance, average unemployment rates in the European Union remain around 8%, higher than in either Japan or in the USA. It is important to keep this context in mind when one considers the fact that social partners in the European Union participate in various bargaining processes aimed at building joint solutions for a more efficient labour market. This takes place at several levels: first, at the European level, social partners are invited to participate in the “European employment strategy” that annually defines guidelines for all member states and that stresses the contribution of unions and employers' organizations in the preparation and implementation of those guidelines at national level; second, within the member states, it also includes tripartite agreements and “social pacts” that reflect the revival of neo-corporatism in European countries since the early 1990s and that include not only wage moderation clauses but also joint projects for employment; third, employment is also taken into consideration at lower levels of bargaining, e.g. at the level of branches, regions and companies. The article examines collective bargaining on employment issues with a focus on the nature of the processes involved and shows that they represent a specific type of bargaining, both in terms of the rules produced and in terms of the relationships between the actors involved. The first part briefly summarizes some important data on the context of employment in Europe and key points of the European employment strategy. It also discusses the notion of bargaining on employment and refers to the concept of regulation to analyse this type of bargaining. The second part examines the characteristics of bargaining on employment, successively looking at the subjects negotiated, the uncertainty that accompanies this type of bargaining, the relationship between the state and social partners and, finally, the nature of emerging compromises. In terms of content, bargaining on employment touches a very wide range of issues, extending from measures oriented towards the protection of existing jobs to programmes to support the unemployed, through changes in work organization intended to preserve or to create jobs. In fact, if there is in Europe a broad consensus on the fact that employment is a priority for all, and here more particularly for states, unions and employers' organizations, the specific content of bargaining behind the general objective is much less consensual. It is, moreover, highly uncertain as arrangements concluded aim to stimulate employment but very rarely include a clear and quantified commitment to a specific number of jobs. In terms of processes, bargaining on employment, to the extent that it contributes to the regulation of the labour market, implies intertwined roles between governments and social partners. More generally, neo-corporatist processes have attracted renewed interest in European countries since the 1990s, and the search for joint solutions to regulate the labour market has contributed to these developments. Tripartite programmes for employment along with social pacts reflect the search, on the part of social actors, for transformed trade-offs organizing the labour market, in which the notion of “employability” holds a growing place. In conclusion, collective bargaining on employment tends to reflect an apparent paradox: it opens greater space for flexibility, for company-based solutions, for a notion of “employability,” but through the means of joint regulation from the state and social partners. As such, it raises original issues on the role of collective bargaining in the definition of the rules organizing current labour markets in Europe, in other words on the role of collective bargaining as a regulator of the labour market, beyond the regulation of employment relationships.

This book presents an original multidisciplinary conceptual framework for the analysis of the processes of construction/transformation of workers' social rights. The framework was developed by taking an analysis of employment and social protection in the Latin European countries as starting-point, and thus offers an innovative alternative to the dominant approaches. It takes account of the institutional forms determining employees' resource flows and associated rights, and introduces a new analytical category of «resource regimes». Four spheres are identified for the observation of recent resource regime changes: employment systems, public policy frameworks, social hierarchies and industrial relations systems. The various chapters explore how each of these spheres participates in the institution of social rights over resources, and identify key vehicles of change such as transformations in forms of employment, labour market policies, pension reforms, the swing to a logic of competencies, social pacts, and the processes involved in the construction of the European Union. The book brings to the fore the dynamic relation between employment, wages and social rights and aims to contribute to current debates on social protection reforms and employment policies implemented at both national and European levels.

Research Handbook on EU Labour Law features contributions from leading scholars in the field. Part I addresses cross-cutting themes, such as the relationship between EU law and national law, the role of human rights in EU labour law, and the impact of austerity measures. In Part II, the contributors focus on topics in individual and collective labour law at EU level, including working time and job security. Finally, Part III offers a comprehensive overview of the EU’s interventions in equality law.