Topic - Wages and Collective Bargaining

Collective bargaining constitutes one of the core tools for trade unions. The ILO defines it as "voluntary negotiations between employers or employers' organisations and workers' organisation, with a view to the regulation of terms and conditions of employment by collective agreements" (ILO Convention No.98). Furthermore, collective bargaining refers to the process or means of bargaining through dialogue between the partners involved. The result thereby is not necessarily an agreement. Collective bargaining is used as a method to improve terms and conditions of employment. Key issues for the collective bargaining process are wages, working time, training and education, safe and healthy and equal treatment. It can also institutionalise dispute settlement methods through dialogue. Since it facilitates coordination between the actors involved, trade unions may use collective bargaining also in order to cope with economic and social change by consensual solution finding process with the employers or employers' organisation. Trade unions and employers share power of rule making in this process. Outcomes of the collective bargaining process, as agreements are, may provide for ensuring security for workers as well as for industrial peace for employers. Thus, collective bargaining can improve the industrial relations' climate. This is also the base for a trusty relationship between the social partners which are the trade unions and workers representatives on the one side and the employers and employers' organisations on the other side. Because of the sharing of decision power, collective bargaining is also called "social partnership" if it concerns a partnership between organised employers institutions and organised labour institutions. The aim of this web site is to provide a basis of information and orientation for practitioners like trade unionists, trade union leaders and secretaries, for works councils and shop stewards as well as for researchers and scholars.

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News

Launch of the New Wages and Collective Bargaining Page 30.03.07 (English/Español/Français)

Main Information on Collective Bargaining

The information concerning Africa, Americas, Asia and Pacific and the Middle East has been collected via a questionnaire to the different countries' union organizations. This part contains an overview of the main features of the collective bargaining system of the different countries. Each country link is the union's answer to the questionnaire on the following information:

• Trade union structure: density, fragmentation, links to political party, peak bodies, umbrella organisation, influential trade unions, organisation level.
• Employers' organisations: dominating level, links to the state, coordination, major employer organisation.
• Collective bargaining: coverage, level, duration and content of agreements.
• Wage setting systems: GDP, wage inequality, linkage to productivity and inflation and mechanisms.

Since information on this is not yet complete, you are invited to contribute by filling the questionnaire about countries not yet in the regional lists (see respective regions).

The information concerning Europe consists of 11 comparative sheets and 25 country sheets.
It draws heavily on the following publications:

• European Commission (2005 January), Industrial Relations in Europe 2004, Luxembourg (see under reports)
• Thorsten Schulten (2005) Changes in national collective bargaining systems since 1990, EIRO
• Labour Research Department (2004) Worker representation in Europe, London
• The national reports elaborated under the project 'The Evolving Structure of Collective Bargaining in Europe', directed by Prof. Silvana Sciarra and financed by the University of Florence and the European Commission