Europeanization of Labour Relations

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Susanne Pernicka
• Subject Area: Political Science
• Term: from 2012 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 172394079

Sub-project 6 of the research group "Horizontal Europeanization. Europe as an emerging social entity between the national and global sphere" focuses on macroeconomic imbalances in the Eurozone and the new framework of European Economic Governance causing and resulting from the crisis/crises. Against this background the field of collective bargaining has gained in importance. With currency devaluations as a tool to improve international cost competitiveness not being available any more in the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), national collective bargaining systems became an important parameter to adjust to macroeconomic imbalances. Thus, the need to coordinate wage policies across borders increased while the preconditions for an effective coordination have worsened due to recent interventions into wage setting institutions of countries with large public deficits and high levels of public debt by national governments and the Troika.In this project we aim at analysing the opportunities and limits of a transnational coordination of wage polices. Thereby, our focus is on the relationship between European trade unions and their member organisations as trade unions' diverging national and sectoral interest positions and perceptions of costs and benefits of a transnational coordination are assumed to be further exacerbated at the European level. We aim at investigating those social mechanisms that contribute to or hinder the coordination of labour policies at transnational level. Employers' associations and (trans)national governmental actors shall be considered in the analysis as (potential) actors in the field of wage bargaining coordination as well as addressees of trade unions.

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• Subproject of: FOR 1539: Horizontal Europeanisation - An Emerging Social Entity Between National and Global Scales
• International Connection: Austria
• Partner Organisation: Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung (FWF)