Sustainability of Social Dialogue in Times of Crisis

Continuous patterns of ‘Social Dialogue’,  promoted by the European Commission as a fruitful mechanism to promote peaceful and productive industrial relations, have been under severe pressure after the outburst of the financial and economic crisis that has hit European countries as from 2008. An investigation of the actual involvement of Social Partners in measures that have been taken to counter the consequences of the crisis, and of the impact of the economic and political consequences of the crisis on the relation between employers’ organisations, unions, governments and the European Commission reveals considerable differences across EU member states. In the paper these differences in impact are analysed in terms of both different initial conditions and different external pressures on the process of adjustment. What are the important conditions for a sustainable Social Dialogue and how can they be restored and guaranteed for the future? How are developments in the structure of productive processes, in the composition of the workforce and in labour markets affecting the Social Dialogue and to what extent and in what way do we have to ‘re-invent’ it to make it sustainable?