Did employers abandon collective bargaining? A comparative analysis of the weakening of collective bargaining in the OECD

Abstract

The paper takes up two questions. Do we observe, universally in the advanced capitalist world, the weakening of collective bargaining? Have employers everywhere and always tried to achieve this outcome and abandoned structures and policies that sustain collective bargaining? For answering the first question, the paper proposes three indicators—bargaining coverage, centralisation and control, measuring the incidence of collective agreements across workers and workplaces, the degree to which these agreements are bound by rules set by agents at higher levels, and whether these rules are enforced. For answering the second question the paper proposes a model that considers the relative strength of organised labour versus capital, the coordinating capacities of employers and the inheritance of past investments in collective bargaining. The analysis covers 32 Member States of the OECD with annual data on unions, employers and collective bargaining from 1980 to 2019.