The European Sectoral Social Dialogue: Actors, Developments, and Challenges

The European Sectoral Social Dialogue: Actors, Developments, and Challenges

In most of the EU fifteen Member States Sectoral collective bargaining is an import process, if not the principal means of regulating relations between employers and employees. Yet the sectoral level of social dialogue has long been neglected at the community level, coming a poor second behind cross industry social dialogue. The tide now seems to be turning, and a formally recognized social dialogue has been established u more than thirty sectors. The authors of this volume consider recent developments in these sectors, providing a quantitative overview and more detailed analysis of sectors.

This volume is original in that it is based on a systematic collection of documents produced by the European sectoral and cross industry social dialogue, along with a hundred or so interviews with relevant players. Some of the main questions raised by the authors include: What is meant by sectoral dialogue? What type of negotiations take place? What are the aims and strategies of employers’ organizations? Are the agreements implemented and if not? Why not? What difference has EU enlargement made in this area and what else might change? Is it possible to devise a typology of sectors? Without claiming to have definitive answers to all these questions, this volume offers some useful food for thought at a time when sectoral social dialogue is tentatively asserting its position Europewide.

Christophe Degryse, Anne Dufresne, Philippe Pochet, Nadia Hilal and Sofia Murhem

P.I.E Peter Lang

2006

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