Collective wage bargaining under strain in northern European construction: Resisting institutional drift?

Jens Arnholtz; Guglielmo Meardi; Johannes Oldervoll

doi:10.1177/0959680118790816

Collective wage bargaining under strain in northern European construction: Resisting institutional drift?

Jens Arnholtz, Guglielmo Meardi, Johannes Oldervoll

Employment Relations Research Centre

15 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Internationalization, trade union decline, enforcement problems and rising self-employment all strain the effectiveness of collective wage bargaining arrangements in northern European construction. We examine Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and the UK, and show that these strains have pushed trade unions to seek assistance from the state to stabilize wage regulation, but with results that vary according to employer strategies and the power balances between the actors. While Denmark and the UK have barely introduced any state support, Norway has followed the Netherlands and Germany in introducing legal mechanisms for extension of collectively agreed minimum wage terms. The country studies suggest that state assistance alleviates some of the strain, but does not reverse the trends, and the comparison indicates that both institutional innovation and reorganization may be required if wage bargaining is not to drift into different functions.

Original language	Danish
Journal	European Journal of Industrial Relations
Volume	24
Issue number	4
Pages (from-to)	341-356
ISSN	0959-6801
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/0959680118790816
Publication status	Published - 1 Dec 2018

Keywords

Faculty of Social Sciences

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10.1177/0959680118790816

Cite this

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title = "Collective wage bargaining under strain in northern European construction: Resisting institutional drift?",

abstract = "Internationalization, trade union decline, enforcement problems and rising self-employment all strain the effectiveness of collective wage bargaining arrangements in northern European construction. We examine Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and the UK, and show that these strains have pushed trade unions to seek assistance from the state to stabilize wage regulation, but with results that vary according to employer strategies and the power balances between the actors. While Denmark and the UK have barely introduced any state support, Norway has followed the Netherlands and Germany in introducing legal mechanisms for extension of collectively agreed minimum wage terms. The country studies suggest that state assistance alleviates some of the strain, but does not reverse the trends, and the comparison indicates that both institutional innovation and reorganization may be required if wage bargaining is not to drift into different functions.",

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T2 - Resisting institutional drift?

AU - Arnholtz, Jens

AU - Meardi, Guglielmo

AU - Oldervoll, Johannes

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AB - Internationalization, trade union decline, enforcement problems and rising self-employment all strain the effectiveness of collective wage bargaining arrangements in northern European construction. We examine Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and the UK, and show that these strains have pushed trade unions to seek assistance from the state to stabilize wage regulation, but with results that vary according to employer strategies and the power balances between the actors. While Denmark and the UK have barely introduced any state support, Norway has followed the Netherlands and Germany in introducing legal mechanisms for extension of collectively agreed minimum wage terms. The country studies suggest that state assistance alleviates some of the strain, but does not reverse the trends, and the comparison indicates that both institutional innovation and reorganization may be required if wage bargaining is not to drift into different functions.

KW - Det Samfundsvidenskabelige Fakultet

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KW - Denmark

KW - Germany

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KW - labour migration

KW - Norway

KW - self-employment

KW - wage regulation

KW - The Netherlands

KW - UK

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DO - 10.1177/0959680118790816

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