IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/ilrrev/v77y2024i2p227-250.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Employer Discretion: The Role of Collective Agreements in the Liberalization of Industrial Relations

Author

Listed:
  • Saskia Boumans

Abstract

The gradual shift in power relations between organized employers and employees since the 1970s has increasingly affected the functioning of national industrial relations systems. According to a broad literature, the most important of these consequences is an increase in employer discretion. This article tests this claim by performing a longitudinal content analysis on three Dutch collective contracts. It develops an analytical framework based on four dimensions of employer discretion. Results show that although employer discretion did increase on all four dimensions between the mid-1970s and the 2020s, significant temporal and sectoral variation has occurred. In addition, the article argues that a loss of democratic influence by employees intensified the increase of the one-sided decision-making powers of employers, and that the collective contract is being transformed from a joint labor–capital effort to solve workplace problems to a management instrument.

Suggested Citation

  • Saskia Boumans, 2024. "Employer Discretion: The Role of Collective Agreements in the Liberalization of Industrial Relations," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 77(2), pages 227-250, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:ilrrev:v:77:y:2024:i:2:p:227-250
    DOI: 10.1177/00197939231220049
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00197939231220049
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/00197939231220049?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Guglielmo Meardi, 2018. "Economic Integration and State Responses: Change in European Industrial Relations since Maastricht," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 56(3), pages 631-655, September.
    2. Jelle Visser, 2016. "What happened to collective bargaining during the great recession?," IZA Journal of Labor Policy, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 5(1), pages 1-35, December.
    3. Colja Schneck, 2021. "Trends in Wage Inequality in the Netherlands," De Economist, Springer, vol. 169(3), pages 253-289, August.
    4. Elena Baglioni & Liam Campling & Gerard Hanlon, 2020. "Global value chains as entrepreneurial capture: insights from management theory," Review of International Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(4), pages 903-925, July.
    5. Eve Chiapello & Luc Boltanski, 2005. "The New Spirit of Capitalism," Post-Print hal-00680089, HAL.
    6. Thomas Paster & Dennie Oude Nijhuis & Maximilian Kiecker, 2020. "To Extend or Not to Extend: Explaining the Divergent Use of Statutory Bargaining Extensions in the Netherlands and Germany," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 58(3), pages 532-557, September.
    7. Dukes, Ruth & Streeck, Wolfgang, 2020. "From industrial citizenship to private ordering? Contract, status, and the question of consent," MPIfG Discussion Paper 20/13, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    8. Hyman, Richard, 2015. "The very idea of democracy at work," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 65573, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    9. Wolfgang Streeck, 1987. "The Uncertainties of Management in the Management of Uncertainty," International Journal of Political Economy, M.E. Sharpe, Inc., vol. 17(3), pages 57-87, October.
    10. Bruno Palier & Kathleen Thelen, 2010. "Institutionalizing Dualism: Complementarities and Change in France and Germany," Politics & Society, , vol. 38(1), pages 119-148, March.
    11. Ylva Ulfsdotter Eriksson & Bengt Larsson & Petra Adolfsson, 2021. "Under the Surface of Individual and Differentiated Pay in Sweden: A Zero‐Sum Game of Performance‐Based Pay?," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 59(2), pages 398-417, June.
    12. Thelen,Kathleen, 2014. "Varieties of Liberalization and the New Politics of Social Solidarity," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107679566, January.
    13. Thelen,Kathleen, 2014. "Varieties of Liberalization and the New Politics of Social Solidarity," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107053168, January.
    14. Damian Grimshaw & Mat Johnson & Stefania Marino & Jill Rubery, 2017. "Towards more disorganised decentralisation? Collective bargaining in the public sector under pay restraint," Industrial Relations Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(1), pages 22-41, January.
    15. Eve Chiapello & Luc Boltanski, 2005. "The New Spirit of Capitalism," Post-Print hal-00678024, HAL.
    16. Maarten Klaveren & Kea Tijdens, 2012. "2011-1: Collective bargaining in the Dutch metal and electrical engineering industry," Labour markets and industrial relations in the Netherlands - Working Papers 2011-1, AIAS, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Guglielmo Meardi & Melanie Simms & Duncan Adam, 2021. "Trade unions and precariat in Europe: Representative claims," European Journal of Industrial Relations, , vol. 27(1), pages 41-58, March.
    2. Arthur Corazza, 2020. "Power, interest and insecurity: A comparative analysis of workplace dualization and inclusion in Europe," LEQS – LSE 'Europe in Question' Discussion Paper Series 153, European Institute, LSE.
    3. Adam Mrozowicki & Vera Trappmann, 2021. "Precarity as a Biographical Problem? Young Workers Living with Precarity in Germany and Poland," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 35(2), pages 221-238, April.
    4. Donato Di Carlo & Christian Lyhne Ibsen & Oscar Molina, 2024. "The new political economy of public sector wage-setting in Europe: Introduction to the special issue," European Journal of Industrial Relations, , vol. 30(1), pages 5-30, March.
    5. Marius R Busemeyer & Martin B Carstensen & Patrick Emmenegger, 2022. "Orchestrators of coordination: Towards a new role of the state in coordinated capitalism?," European Journal of Industrial Relations, , vol. 28(2), pages 231-250, June.
    6. Leone Leonida & Marianna Marra & Sergio Scicchitano & Antonio Giangreco & Marco Biagetti, 2020. "Estimating the Wage Premium to Supervision for Middle Managers in Different Contexts: Evidence from Germany and the UK," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 34(6), pages 1004-1026, December.
    7. Torben Krings, 2021. "‘Good’ Bad Jobs? The Evolution of Migrant Low-Wage Employment in Germany (1985–2015)," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 35(3), pages 527-544, June.
    8. Martí López‐Andreu, 2019. "Employment Institutions under Liberalization Pressures: Analysing the Effects of Regulatory Change on Collective Bargaining in Spain," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 57(2), pages 328-349, June.
    9. Weisstanner, David, 2019. "Insiders under pressure: Flexible employment and wage inequality," INET Oxford Working Papers 2019-06, Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford.
    10. Ochsenfeld, Fabian, 2018. "The Relational Nature of Employment Dualization: Evidence from Subcontracting Establishments," SocArXiv ta4r6, Center for Open Science.
    11. Paulo Marques & Dora Fonseca, 2022. "Understanding the positions taken by moderate union confederations and centre-left parties during labour market reforms in Portugal and Spain: Why the configuration of left parties and trade union con," European Journal of Industrial Relations, , vol. 28(1), pages 65-84, March.
    12. Patrick Emmenegger & Lina Seitzl, 2019. "Collective Action, Business Cleavages and the Politics of Control: Segmentalism in the Swiss Skill Formation System," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 57(3), pages 576-598, September.
    13. Hertog, Steffen, 2020. "Segmented market economies in the Arab world: the political economy of insider-outsider divisions," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 103677, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    14. Saskia Boumans, 2022. "Neoliberalisation of industrial relations: The ideational development of Dutch employers’ organisations between 1976 and 2019," Economic and Industrial Democracy, Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden, vol. 43(4), pages 1610-1631, November.
    15. Jens Arnholtz, 2023. "The embedded flexibility of Nordic labor market models under pressure from EU‐induced dualization—The case of posted work in Denmark and Sweden," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 17(2), pages 372-388, April.
    16. Maarten Keune, 2021. "Inequality between capital and labour and among wage-earners: the role of collective bargaining and trade unions," Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, , vol. 27(1), pages 29-46, February.
    17. Fleckenstein, Timo & Lee, Soohyun Christine, 2018. "Organised labour, dualisation and labour market reform:Korean trade union in economic and social crisis," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 86340, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    18. Valentina Paolucci & Paul Marginson, 2020. "Collective bargaining towards mutual flexibility and security goals in large internationalised companies—why do institutions (still) matter?," Industrial Relations Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(4), pages 329-350, July.
    19. Anna Mori, 2024. "Explaining varieties of social solidarity in supply chains: Actors, institutions and market risks distribution in outsourced public services," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 62(2), pages 449-479, June.
    20. Werner Eichhorst & Paul Marx, 2021. "How stable is labour market dualism? Reforms of employment protection in nine European countries," European Journal of Industrial Relations, , vol. 27(1), pages 93-110, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:ilrrev:v:77:y:2024:i:2:p:227-250. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.ilr.cornell.edu .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.