Dealing with austerity and migration in the northern European cleaning sector

Industrial cleaning shares some common features across countries. Institutions for collective wage regulation are fragile, the market is highly price-sensitive and skewed competition has exerted pressure on wages and conditions. Increased cross-border mobility of labour and enterprises after EU enlargement brought new sources of competitive pressure, which was amplified by the subsequent economic crisis. Trine P. Larsen, Sissel Trygstad and Kristine Nergaard studies changes in collective regulation in industrial cleaning in Denmark, Germany, Norway and the UK since the turn of the century, and find that the social partners have responded differently to the challenges. They discuss these responses in the light of national differences in industrial relations regimes and the regulatory tools available for the organized actors.

Read the full article "Dealing with austerity and migration in the northern European cleaning sector: Social partner strategies to strengthen wage floors" by Sissel Trygstad, Trine P. Larsen and Kirstine Nergaard. Login required.