Joint Regulation and Labour Market Policy in Europe during the Crisis: a seven-country comparison
01 Feb 2016-pp 1-128
About: The article was published on 2016-02-01 and is currently open access. It has received 22 citations till now.
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Dissertation•
01 Jan 2017
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated the relationship between collective bargaining and legal regulation and its current evolution in the national contexts and in the EU internal market, and argued that collective autonomy and collective bargaining in contemporary Europe present challenges that alter their basic features.
Abstract: ‘Collective Autonomy in the European Union’ explores the question of collective autonomy by investigating the relationship between collective bargaining and legal regulation and its current evolution in the national contexts and in the EU internal market. The thesis aims at achieving a comprehensive understanding of the notion, function and exercise of collective autonomy and collective bargaining, and it argues that collective autonomy and collective bargaining in contemporary Europe present challenges that alter their basic features. To this end, the thesis undertakes a multifaceted analysis integrating three perspectives: a theoretical perspective analysing and combining the conceptual elements of collective autonomy and collective bargaining as defined in industrial relations theories, labour law theories, and in the discourses on global labour rights; a comparative perspective analysing how collective autonomy and collective bargaining have found legal regulation in the Italian and Swedish labour law and industrial relations contexts; a cross-border perspective examining how the EU regulation of the internal market freedoms of establishment and to provide services impacts on the features of collective autonomy and collective bargaining.By combining elements of international, European and comparative labour law, EU internal market law, and industrial relations, this thesis explores the unique features of collective autonomy and collective bargaining as socio-economic mechanisms having a normative power, whose functioning is however influenced by legal dynamics. Eventually, it examines the transformation that the foundations of collective autonomy and collective bargaining undergo in relation to the challenges deriving from both the processes of company-level decentralisation and the dynamics of the cross-border scenarios in the EU internal market. Ultimately, the thesis contributes to advancing the understanding of the foundations of collective autonomy and to exploring its operations beyond national borders. (Less)
95 citations
16 Apr 2016
41 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a cross-country comparison of key features of industrial relations in Europe in a context where consolidated post-war institutions are under attack on many fronts is performed, and a number of key similarities and differences across the countries of Europe, and end by considering whether progressive alternatives still exist.
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to perform a systematic cross-country comparison of key features of industrial relations in Europe in a context where consolidated post-war institutions are under attack on many fronts. The author discusses a number of key similarities and differences across the countries of Europe, and end by considering whether progressive alternatives still exist.,This paper draws upon academic literature and compares the contributions to this special issue in the light of common problems and challenges.,The trend towards the erosion of nationally based employment protection and collective bargaining institutions is widely confirmed. In most of Central and Eastern Europe, where systems of organised industrial relations were at best only partially established after the collapse of the Soviet regime, the scope for unilateral dominance by (in particular foreign-owned) employers has been further enlarged. It is also clear that the European Union, far from acting as a force for harmonisation of regulatory standards and a strengthening of the “social dimension” of employment regulation, is encouraging the erosion of nationally based employment protections and provoking a growing divergence of outcomes. However, the trends are contradictory and uneven.,This paper contributes to an updated cross-country comparative analysis of the ongoing transformations in European industrial relations and discusses still existing progressive alternatives.
31 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a conceptual analytical framework is proposed to explain employment regulation as a dynamic process shaped by institutions and actors, and debates about the complexity of employment regulation by adopting a multi-level perspective.
Abstract: Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to advance a conceptual analytical framework to help explain employment regulation as a dynamic process shaped by institutions and actors. The paper builds on and advances regulatory space theory.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper analyses the literature on regulatory theory and engages with its theoretical development.
Findings
The paper advances the case for a broader and more inclusive regulatory approach to better capture the complex reality of employment regulation. Further, the paper engages in debates about the complexity of employment regulation by adopting a multi-level perspective.
Research limitations/implications
The research proposes an analytical framework and invites future empirical investigation.
Originality/value
The paper contends that existing literature affords too much attention to a (false) regulation vs deregulation dichotomy, with insufficient analysis of other “spaces” in which labour policy and regulation are formed and re-formed. In particular, the proposed framework analyses four different regulatory dimensions, combining the legal aspects of regulation with self-regulatory dimensions of employment regulation.
21 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a restatement of the pillar/provision perspective in order to apply it to a broader range of cases, such as occupational health insurance in France.
Abstract: There is a growing body of studies emphasising the multi-pillar reconfiguration of protection against social risk in Europe, particularly in pension reform. In this chapter, we try to expand on this literature to find applicability beyond the sole case of pensions by looking at occupational health insurance in France. To that end, we present a restatement of the pillar/provision perspective in order to apply it to a broader range of cases. We argue that it constitutes a powerful analytical tool when complemented with a (non-exhaustive) list of perspectives widely used in studies on social policy and does not blunder into the pitfall of functionalism. This chapter focuses on crossing the pillar perspective with a finance and a regime perspective. Following the seminal intuition of R. Titmuss, an important result yielded is that the overall structure of resources distribution of the whole welfare system can become highly anti-redistributive once occupational schemes and fiscal incentives are included in the analysis.
18 citations
References
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01 Jan 2001
7,155 citations
01 Mar 1997
TL;DR: The authors argue that socially institutionalized constraints on the rational voluntarism of interest-maximizing behavior may be economically beneficial, and that systematic recognition of this must have far-reaching implications for both economic theory and the conduct of economic policy.
Abstract: Economists have succeeded in persuading most people that the performance of an economy improves as social constraints on self-interested rational action are removed. In this essay I wish to argue that, to the contrary, socially institutionalized constraints on the rational voluntarism of interest-maximizing behavior may be economically beneficial, and that systematic recognition of this must have far-reaching implications for both economic theory and the conduct of economic policy. Note that I am referring not to social but to economic benefits of social constraints, and to constraint rather than choice. In other words, I am not discussing whether or not societies may or should impose constraints on economic behavior for moral reasons ; even most economists agree that people should not be allowed to sell and buy babies, regardless of whether this was the free will and perceived rational interest of all parties involved. And I am arguing for the economic benevolence not of individual freedom, but of limitations on individual volition and the pursuit of self-interest . To support high economic performance, I am claiming, a society requires a capacity to prevent advantage-maximizing rational individuals from doing things that they would prefer to do, or to force them to do things that they would prefer not to do. The suggestion that social institutions constraining the rational voluntarist pursuit of economic advantage, and thereby interfering with the spread and operation of markets , may be economically beneficial directly contests the leading premises of mainstream economics with its laissez-faire conceptual heritage, and strikes right into the heart of darkness of liberal individualism.
372 citations
01 Jan 2007
277 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that the endogenous dynamics of booms and busts that are endemic in capitalism continued to work at the national level in the Eurozone and that the monetary union in no way disciplined these into a union-wide dynamics.
Abstract: I analyse the nature of the design failures of the Eurozone. I argue first that the endogenous dynamics of booms and busts that are endemic in capitalism continued to work at the national level in the Eurozone and that the monetary union in no way disciplined these into a union-wide dynamics. On the contrary the monetary union probably exacerbated these national booms and busts. Second, the existing stabilizers that existed at the national level prior to the start of the union were stripped away from the member-states without being transposed at the monetary union level. This left the member states “naked” and fragile, unable to deal with the coming national disturbances. I study the way these failures can be overcome. This leads me to stress the role of the ECB as a lender of last resort and the need to make macroeconomic policies more symmetric so as to avoid a deflationary bias in the Eurozone. I conclude with some thoughts on political unification.
249 citations
TL;DR: In the 1990s, the challenges raised against the traditional forms of regulation of the European economies have dramatically increased and have seemingly grown ever more threatening as discussed by the authors. But are the responses to these pressures equally uniform (or at least are they bound to become so to be effective)?
Abstract: In the 1990s, the “challenges” raised against the traditional forms of regulation of the European economies have dramatically increased and have seemingly grown ever more threatening. In the opinion of some scholars, and even more so in the platitudes of the mass media, the greatest threat seems to be raised by the globalization of markets and the intensification of international competition. These phenomena compel national economies to adjust prices, products, technologies, and human resources more rapidly and more extensively than their regulatory systems allow. Also, the process of European monetary unification— which precludes recourse to many traditional economic policy instruments such as currency devaluation and covert protectionism—has imposed similar exigencies of increased competitiveness on national economies and has compelled them to reform their regulatory systems. Demographic trends are no less disruptive for welfare systems, and so is the persistence of structurally high levels of unemployment for labor market institutions. These processes exert largely similar pressures for change on all the economies of the European Union. But are the responses to these pressures equally uniform (or at least are they bound to become so to be effective)? Or are the European countries responding (and will presumably continue to do so) to the common
247 citations