The monthly Collective Bargaining Newsletter is compiled by a research team from De Burcht in cooperation with the ETUI. The Newsletter presents up-to-date and easily accessible first-hand information on collective bargaining developments across Europe to practitioners, policy-makers and researchers.
It includes short summaries of bargaining developments with links to records that provide more detailed background information. In order to ensure that the information presented is as comprehensible as possible the research team utilizes a number of different sources. These include the thorough investigation of all relevant (inter)national press agencies on a weekly basis and the use of an extensive network of contacts within the European trade union movement and beyond.
The objective of the Collective Bargaining Newsletter is to facilitate the exchange of information between trade unions and to support the ETUC and its members in the field of collective bargaining. It deals with both the outcome and the process of negotiations. As far as negotiation outcomes are concerned the Newsletter not only focuses on bread and butter issues such as wages and working time but it also covers developments in important policy areas such as minimum wages, youth and apprentices, women, precarious labour, low wages and end of career arrangements. With respect to the monitoring of bargaining processes the main focus is on the following three themes: the development of bargaining structures and their content, regulatory changes of bargaining arrangements and the question of compliance and disputes related to the non-respect of agreements or failed negotiations.
Geographically, the Collective Bargaining Newsletter covers all the 28 EU member states plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Serbia, Switzerland and Turkey. Starting with issue 7/2012, a section “European sources” was introduced that provides links to research and statistical reports produced by the EU, the OECD, Eurofound and other relevant sources. Another feature introduced in summer 2012 is an improved reference to other databases such as statistical offices, relevant ministries, news agencies and data webpages.
This archive functions as a database containing all Collective Bargaining Newsletters published since February 2008. It can be searched using five main functions: search by keywords, by countries, and by date, combined search and selection within search results.