ETUI Research

This year's Benchmarking Working Europe report embarks upon a social stocktaking of the reaction to and impact of the financial, economic and social crisis as a means of feeding into the post-crisis and EU2020 debate.
The report provides evidence to question the underlying foundation of the current growth model and its emphasis on deregulation and labour cost cutting. It supports the claim that workers' rights should be rediscovered as a force for productivity and as a way of building a new model of economic progress in which fair wages and good working conditions constitute the basis for growth and employment dynamics.

ETUI researchers have participated in the latest edition of the International Journal of Labour Research (IJLR) on "Global capital strategies and trade union responses: Collective bargaining and transnational trade union cooperation". The 14 articles in this edition focus on different strategic approaches of trade unions to respond to the challenge of global companies and to internationalize collective bargaining. The IJLR which is published by the Bureau for Workers' Activities of the ILO takes a multi-disciplinary approach and debates the challenges that rapid changes in societies and at workplaces pose for labour at local, national and global level. Trade union researchers and academics are invited as regular contributors.

We invite you to view the electronic version of this issue here

This Policy Brief, written by Vera Glassner and Maarten Keune, provides an overview of collective bargaining responses to the crisis in Europe. It shows clearly that collective bargaining has proven to be an effective instrument to maintain employment and to allow companies to find flexible solutions to deal with the steep economic downturn. They note, though, that the increased pressure for the flexibilisation of working time, wage-setting and employment conditions may give rise to a trend towards ‘disorganised’ decentralisation of collective bargaining. Thus, it is vital that trade unions ensure that deviations from collective agreements are applied only temporarily in companies encountering economic difficulties and also that they increase their efforts to coordinate their bargaining policies across borders.

The second ETUI Policy Brief on social policy in Europe looks into the social dimension of the recently ratified Lisbon Treaty. Although it was widely expected that the Treaty will strengthen social Europe, the author demonstrates that it only partly lives up to these expectations and is very much lacking in ambition in this respect. Nevertheless, the minor contribution made by the Constitutional Treaty in the social sphere might serve to halt the current tendency to allow the economy to take precedence over social considerations provided that there is a state of permanent mobilisation and deep commitment on the part of the institutional players and social partners.

Reliance on private retirement pensions is on the increase both at Member State level, via the spread of quasi-mandatory occupational plans, and at EU level, as a result of initiatives including the IORP Directive. This Working Paper analyses the legislative and market trends that underpin this development, assessing the impact of the global financial crisis, presenting the regulatory improvements required, and delineating the future prospects of the market for supplementary pensions.

This Working Paper sheds light on the multi-dimensional and changing interplay between state, market institutions and social partners in relation to supplementary pension schemes, the importance of which is growing across Europe. The paper offers a lucid analysis of the responsibility shared among these three sets of actors to protect against the risk of old age by developing the provision of privately managed fully-funded schemes.

Trade unions are often portrayed as representing the interests of already privileged insiders while freezing out ‘marginal’ groups from employment, or at least from better-paid positions. But a new analysis, published by ETUI researchers Rory O’Farrell and Andrew Watt in the journal Intereconomics, compares EU countries and finds that both income inequalities and unemployment rates tend to be lower in countries with strong trade unions.

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