Europeanization of industrial relations: national impacts of European sectoral social dialogue
(2013) 10th European Conference of the International Labour and Employment Relations Association (ILERA) — Location: Amsterdam (20.June.2013)
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- Abstract
- European social dialogue refers, at the strict sense of the term, to bilateral negotiations between European trade unions and employers’ federations. Social dialogue committees are organized at the cross-sectoral level as well as at the sectoral level. Currently, 40 professional sectors such as agriculture, chemical industry or telecommunications, have created a social dialogue committee. If social dialogue committees were at first mainly consultative bodies, in the 1990’s European social partners were encouraged to develop bilateral relations and to sign joint texts. In terms of outcomes, 70 joint texts were issued by the cross-sectoral organisations and more than 500 texts at the sectoral level (European Commission 2010). If social partners have the possibility to transform their text in Council decisions such as Directives, most part of the texts consist in process-oriented texts such as frameworks of actions, guidelines or joint opinions (Degryse & Pochet 2011, European Commission 2004). National transposition rely thus on voluntary processes that are largely dependent on the national social partners goodwill and capabilities (Pochet et al. 2009). Because of the non-binding character of the texts, questions about the legitimacy and the efficiency of the European social dialogue were raised (Keller 2008). For now, there is no systematic evaluation of the implementation and the European social partners themselves meet difficulties to receive information about it. Yet, to understand the implementation process better is crucial because it raises the possibility of a European coordination and eventually the construction of a social Europe. In this communication, from an empirical research comparing two sectors and ten countries, we will highlight the mechanisms and the conditions that could favor an effective transposition of the joint texts within the EU member States. Through Europeanisation and multi-level governance approaches, we show that by exploring the actors’ games and their actions and interactions on the national level and on the European level, we can seize the Europeanisation process at stake. Consequently, implementation seems to be linked to the mobilisation of the national social partners in the European social dialogue committees as well as the constraints and the opportunities of their national context.
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Perin, E. (2013). Europeanization of industrial relations: national impacts of European sectoral social dialogue. 10th European Conference of the International Labour and Employment Relations Association (ILERA), Amsterdam. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/47167