National Sector Agreements: The Foundations under Threat?

Recent years have seen significant changes in national systems of industrial relations which, Chapter 5 emphasized, are contributing to the development of a multi-level system. As well as strengthening of the national level through the negotiation of social pacts, there has also been the rise of company bargaining — examined in this and the following chapter. Seemingly contradictory — the one involving centralization, the other decentralization — they represent complementary responses to the twin problems posed by the ‘regime competition’ that European integration is promoting and the greater adaptability required to handle the widespread restructuring that it has set in train. These twin developments are both a response to the deficiencies, and a challenge to the long-term viability, of the sector multi-employer bargaining that has been the cornerstone of most national systems. The development of social pacts recognizes that national systems are operating within a single market and also that, with the growth of the service economy, sector bargaining no longer has the coverage that it did. The rise of company bargaining reflects the inability of the ‘one-size-fits-all’ regulation associated with sector agreements to deal with the increasingly diverse business circumstances faced by companies within a sector. Seemingly, a combination of national, cross-sectoral and company bargaining questions the need for sector arrangements — the former can set the overall framework and the latter fill in the details.