This edited volume maps different trajectories in national collective bargaining systems in Europe since the Great Recession. Since the start of the crisis in 2008, wage setting and collective bargaining systems in many EU countries have been under tremendous pressure to follow the logic of companies and market imperatives. Fostering decentralization of collective bargaining has been one of the key objectives of the New European Economic Governance.

The book investigates these developments and has several aims: 1) to analyse the ongoing shift from centrally coordinated multi-employer to decentralized collective bargaining in a number of EU Member States where the former has been traditionally stronger (Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Spain); b) tackling the issue of how in a changing environment company level bargaining can play a useful new role in setting working conditions, without paving the way for social dumping and widened inequalities; and c) investigating convergences and divergences in the five countries trajectories.

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Table of contents

Roberto Pedersini and Salvo Leonardi: Chapter 1 - Breaking through the crisis with decentralisation? Collective bargaining in the EU aft er the great recession

Mimmo Carrieri, Maria Concetta Ambra and Andrea Ciarini: Chapter 2 - The ‘resistible’ rise of decentralised bargaining: a cross-country and inter-sectoral comparison

Guy Van Gyes, Dries Van Herreweghe, Ine Smits and Sem Vandekerckhove: Chapter 3 - Opposites attract? Decentralisation tendencies in the most organised collective bargaining system in Europe. Belgium in the period 2012–2016

Thorsten Schulten and Reinhard Bispinck: Chapter 4 - Varieties of decentralisation in German collective bargaining

Udo Rehfeldt and Catherine Vincent: Chapter 5 - The decentralisation of collective bargaining in France: an escalating process

Salvo Leonardi, Maria Concetta Ambra and Andrea Ciarini: Chapter 6 - Italian collective bargaining at a turning point

Fernando Rocha: Chapter 7 - Strengthening the decentralisation of collective bargaining in Spain. Between the legal changes and real developments

Kristian Bongelli: Chapter 8 - The impact of the European Semester on collective bargaining and wages in recent years

Roberto Pedersini: Chapter 9 - Conclusions and outlook: more challenges and some opportunities for industrial relations in the European Union

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