Collective Bargaining in Europe: Contradictions Between EU Economic Governance and Workers' Transnational Strategies

Austerity policies in Europe have provoked the emergence of new actors such as political parties (Podemos in Spain, Syriza in Greece), social movements (Occupy movement) or civil society initiatives (“Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca”, the Spanish movement of mortgage victims). However, it has also prompted creative responses from older actors, such as trade unions.

In opposition to the EU new economic governance arguing for decentralising collective bargaining systems towards the enterprise level, union organizations develop transnational coordination strategies at both cross-sectoral (ETUC) and sectoral collective bargaining level (industry federations and national unions by means of inter-regional trade union councils). Furthermore, representatives of workers negotiate with multinational companies transnational Framework Agreements which emerge as innovative regulatory instruments. Despite of the regulatory capacity of these agreements to rule industrial relations at transnational level, the EU legal framework does not make these agreements enforceable.

The divergences between EU economic governance and the inter-union transnational action evoke contradictions about the level where collective bargaining is taking place, and also between the expanding realm of the economic union and the underdeveloped legal framework for transnational collective bargaining.

This paper assesses the contradictions between EU economic governance and these different union strategies, which strengthen European solidarity, as well as the contribution of those strategies to the construction of European Industrial Relations in the future.