Commentary: ETUI paper on getting to 80...

Introduction:

The European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), the research arm of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), has recently published a Policy Brief (The road to 80% collective bargaining coverage) focused on the Action Plans that the governments of EU Member States need to put in place under the Adequate Minimum Wage Directive (AMWD). 

The Policy Brief works off the premise that the only way to achieve 80% collective bargaining coverage is through sectoral bargaining. It notes that only 8 of the EU 27 have bargaining coverage in excess of 80% and all of these countries have sectoral bargaining systems. 

It further notes that these systems are often supported by “erga omnes” legal provisions whereby governments make sectoral bargaining systems legal binding. 

It proposes that the governments of the other 19 countries put together a collective bargaining package made up of the best bits from the 8 and with that the promise of the AMWD Directive will be delivered. 

There’s a problem… 

There is just one problem. It is not going to happen.  Nowhere in the Brief is there any mention of the fact that trade union density continues to decline across Europe and that the reason collective bargaining coverage is low in many countries is that the unions simply do not have members. 

There is no discussion about how unions might craft an offer that would appeal to today’s workers. It is all about what I have previously called “lawdust”, get the law to do the job for the unions that they can’t do themselves. 

For example, make public sector contracts conditional on undertakings engaging with unions or having collective bargaining agreements in place. Which would exclude the great majority of European-based undertakings that do have unions nor collective bargaining agreements.

Governments have been slow to transpose the AMWD into national law. As of today, the majority of Member States have not done so, and those who have transposed it, have done so in a minimalist fashion. Ireland, for example, has said no changes in the law are needed to comply with the Directive. 

Where‘s the evidence?

Where is the evidence that governments will now adopt ambitious action plans, as demanded in the Brief? The unions, because of their weakened state, have little or no leverage to force them to do so. 

Where is the evidence that workers are not joining unions because a union “missionary” has been denied physical or digital access to the workplace to bring them the “good word”? There is no such evidence. In fact, the German federal labour court (BAG) has recently ruled that there is no right of digital access under German law. 

More importantly, where is the evidence that employers will engage in sectoral collective bargaining because that is what the unions want? There is none. Where sectoral bargaining does not already exist, there is no appetite on the part of employers across Europe to get involved in such bargaining structures. There is no evidence that governments will force them to do so. 

Even if in the unlikely event that laws are changed to oblige employers to engage with unions, either as individual enterprises or collectively through sectoral bargaining, the law can never oblige an employer to come to an agreement with a union. Horses to water, and all that. 

Wouldn’t it be nice? 

Want proof? Just look to the US and those companies who are forced to recognise a union through the procedures of the National Labor Relations Acts. How long after recognition is granted does it take for a first bargaining contracted to be agreed? In many cases, never.

Maybe instead of calling the Brief “The road to 80% collective bargaining coverage” it would have been better to call it after the Beach Boys’ song: Wouldn’t it be nice? Wouldn’t it be nice to have all these things and then we could be happy. 

Best learn to live with disappointment.