European industrial relations under international pressure A six-country comparison

Introduction: the EU and national industrial relations A paradox has emerged in the last two decades in Europe. Interest in comparing employment relations has increased, under international pressure to increase productivity, employment rates and competitiveness and to attract foreign investors and foreign skilled workers. International organisations, governments, trade unions, multinational companies and even employees themselves collect comparative information at an unprecedented scale. But these comparisons are often decontextualized, with an overarching concern to detect ‘best practices’ and compare crude indicators, but less attention paid to the complex linkages employment relations have within each society. One reason of this decontextualisation is that during the last twenty years, industrial relations have become less of a political priority than in the past: social problems were being kept under control, rather than through direct negotiations between employers and employees, by ‘dislocating’ them through increased public debt and subsequently private debt. The current financial crisis, which undermines the sustainability of policies based on public and private debt, is returning to the spotlight the political dimension of industrial relations. In order to bring clarity to the purpose of comparing employment relations, for two years I have interviewed and collected information and data on the industrial relations developments since 1992, in the six largest EU countries in terms of population and of GDP at purchasing power parity (Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain and Poland – accounting for over 70% of the EU population). The analysis has focused on the international pressures affecting the three main actors of employment relations: multinational companies (on the employer side); migration (on the employee side); and international organisations, with particular regard to the EU (on the state side). All three forces converge in undermining the potential of national industrial relations arrangements – but are these forces irresistible?