Between policy and market - Interest organisation and wage regulation on the municipal/regional market within the European Union

PhD thesis by Søren Kaj Andersen

The central welfare sectors such as hospitals, the primary school system and social services have in recent years been the subject of growing attention on the cross of national borders in Europe. This is due to a general trend towards increased international information and communication where price, quality, efficiency, etc. in relation to these welfare services are compared across European borders. The co-operation within the European Union also contributes to bringing both the central welfare fields and the municipal/regional labour market in Europe closer to each other.

The theoretical foundation for analyses of the relations between the social partners on the national labour markets - both in a national and in a cross-national perspective - has been characterised by a theory on industrial relations. The concept industrial relations (IR) covers a mainly Anglo-American research tradition which deals with all aspects of the regulation of pay and working conditions; at the same time, it has been a characteristic feature of the IR analyses that the three main actors on the labour market - the employer and employee organisations and the state - have been the pivot for these analyses.

In recent years, industrial relations research has to an increasing extent been supplemented with - and to a certain extent replaced by - research on employment relations (ER). This 'shift of name' reflects a pragmatic wish to make it clear that the research in labour market relations is not solely targeted on the traditional object of IR research - the social partners and the state - but may also include relations and thus the regulation at enterprise level, including the consequences of staff policies and management techniques (cf. Lubanski et al. 2000, Bamber & Lansbury 1998). But it is the fact that the attention in relation to the public labour market has generally, and the municipal/regional labour market specifically, has been modest, both as regards IR and ER research in spite of the fact that there has been a market growth in the number of employees in the public sector from the 1960's and up to the 1990's in Western Europe. Today, about 1/6 and 1/3 of all employees in these countries are typically employed in the public sector, and the majority of them in the municipal/regional labour markets (OECD 1999).

Against this background, the overall objective of this thesis is to discuss characteristic features and development trends in the municipal/regional industrial relations systems within the European Union in a comparative perspective. The problem complex dealt with in the thesis is the following:

To identify and explain similarities and dissimilarities between, as well as development trends, in industrial relations systems in the municipal/regional labour markets within the European Union. This problem complex is associated with three general questions.

The first question is related to the identification of differences and dissimilarities between industrial relations system in the municipal/regional labour markets within the European Union. The studies of this question is confined to organisational and collective bargaining issues, and, more specifically, the question of how employer and employee interests are organised in the municipal/regional sectors and how pay is negotiated. The question about organisation of interests will primarily be dealt with in relation to the employer side. The reason for this is that it has been emphasised in earlier studies of labour market relations on the public labour market that it is mainly the special characteristics of the public employer which leads to the differences in IR systems in the public and the private labour market (Beaumont 1992, Ponak & Thompson 1989, Ferner 1988). These analyses have focused on the state as employer. In this thesis, the focus will be on municipalities and regions as employers in selected countries. The focus on pay is due to the fact that this is a core field in the labour market relations between the social partners.

In relation to the second question, the objective is to identify and explain development trends in the IR systems on the municipal/regional labour markets. The question has been delimited to illustrating whether a decentralisation of wage regulations has taken place on the municipal/regional labour markets within the European Union. It has been a general trend of analyses over the last decades that a decentralisation has taken place of bargaining systems generally, and also of the wage regulation on the private labour markets (Ferner & Hymann 1998, Van Ruysseveldt et. al. 1995, Crouch & Traxler 1995). In the light of this knowledge, the question is raised whether a similar development can be recorded on the municipal/regional labour markets within the European Union.

Finally, the third objective is to explain similarities and dissimilarities in the IR systems among the different countries. More specifically, the question is raised why differences and dissimilarities exist in the interest organisation and wage regulation systems in the municipal/regional sector among the countries.

PhD thesis, Jurist- og Økonomforbundets Forlag, Copenhagen, 2001 (230 pages).