TY - JOUR

T1 - Collective wage bargaining under strain in northern European construction

T2 - Resisting institutional drift?

AU - Arnholtz, Jens

AU - Meardi, Guglielmo

AU - Oldervoll, Johannes

PY - 2018

Y1 - 2018

N2 - Internationalization, trade union decline, enforcement problems and rising self-employment all strain the effectiveness of collective wage bargaining arrangements in northern European construction. We examine Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and the UK, and show that these strains have pushed trade unions to seek assistance from the state to stabilize wage regulation, but with results that vary according to employer strategies and the power balances between the actors. While Denmark and the UK have barely introduced any state support, Norway has followed the Netherlands and Germany in introducing legal mechanisms for extension of collectively agreed minimum wage terms. The country studies suggest that state assistance alleviates some of the strain, but does not reverse the trends, and the comparison indicates that both institutional innovation and reorganization may be required if wage bargaining is not to drift into different functions.

AB - Internationalization, trade union decline, enforcement problems and rising self-employment all strain the effectiveness of collective wage bargaining arrangements in northern European construction. We examine Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and the UK, and show that these strains have pushed trade unions to seek assistance from the state to stabilize wage regulation, but with results that vary according to employer strategies and the power balances between the actors. While Denmark and the UK have barely introduced any state support, Norway has followed the Netherlands and Germany in introducing legal mechanisms for extension of collectively agreed minimum wage terms. The country studies suggest that state assistance alleviates some of the strain, but does not reverse the trends, and the comparison indicates that both institutional innovation and reorganization may be required if wage bargaining is not to drift into different functions.

KW - Det Samfundsvidenskabelige Fakultet

KW - Constuction sector

KW - Denmark

KW - Germany

KW - Institutional change

KW - labour migration

KW - Norway

KW - self-employment

KW - wage regulation

KW - The Netherlands

KW - UK

U2 - 10.1177/0959680118790816

DO - 10.1177/0959680118790816

M3 - Tidsskriftartikel

VL - 24

SP - 341

EP - 356

JO - European Journal of Industrial Relations

JF - European Journal of Industrial Relations

SN - 0959-6801

IS - 4

ER -