Bargained Equality: The Strengths and Weaknesses of Workplace Gender Equality Agreements and Plans in France
| Author | Susan Milner,Sophie Pochic,Hélène Demilly |
| Published date | 01 June 2019 |
| Date | 01 June 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12437 |
British Journal of Industrial Relations doi: 10.1111/bjir.12437
57:2 June 2019 0007–1080 pp. 275–301
Bargained Equality: The Strengths
and Weaknesses of Workplace Gender
Equality Agreements and Plans
in France
Susan Milner ,H
´
el`
ene Demilly and Sophie Pochic
Abstract
‘Bargained equality’ reflects wider characteristics of French employment
relations whereby state-driven collective bargaining is a major mode of regulation
but is based on weak workplace bargaining cultures outside the largest firms.
This article focuses on duties on French employers to bargain on genderequality.
It presents findings of a project evaluating workplace agreements and plans on
gender equality, based on a sample of 186 agreements submitted in 2014–2015,
in 10 sectors, and in-depth interviews in 20 companies. Despite a rise in formal
compliance due to stronger enforcement since 2012, our analysis shows that
most companies submitting plans or agreements do not systematically address
quantitative measurement of pay or other gender gaps. As well as sectoral
dierences,the analysis also identifies ‘generational eects’: processes of change
which occur as collective agreements expire and are replaced are dependent on
local dynamics of bargaining. Based on this analysis, we argue that attention
should be paid to the resources available to local bargaining actors, in order to
promote an equality agenda.
1. Introduction
In many countries, progress on the gender pay gap has been slow, reflecting
macro-institutional and micro-level tensions in the contested employment
relationship (Rubery and Smith 2015). In the British case, for example,
awareness of the limits of a litigation-based approach led in the early 2000s
to new regulatory approaches, although initiatives in the Equality Act 2010
haveonly partly been enacted (Deakin et al. 2015). Most scholars and activists
Susan Milner is at the University of Bath. H´
el`
ene Demilly is at the University of ParisNanterre.
Sophie Pochic is at the Centre Maurice Halbwachs, Ecole Normale Sup´
erieure, Paris.
C
2018 John Wiley& Sons Ltd.
276 British Journal of Industrial Relations
agree that basic information about the gender breakdown of wages and other
aspects of working life is a necessary first step in addressing any inequalities
(see, e.g., Bohnet 2016), but they may disagree about how to interpret that
information and what to do about it. In the United States, where the business
rhetoric of equality and diversity originated, there is evidence that a target-
driven approachis not only ineective but can create backlash from managers
(see Dobbin and Kalev 2016). Experts are, however, divided on whether the
best approach is stronger legal duties (Chicha 2006) or more integrated,
bottom-up discursive interventions in the workplace, coupled with leadership
champions and mentoring (Dobbin and Kalev 2016). Others suggest that
the best approach may be through reflexive legislation aimed at encouraging
change in employer behaviour (Conley and Page 2018). In fact, a wide
variety of practices exist under the broad heading of equality and diversity,
as employers seek to integrate such initiatives into their own organizational
practice and culture (Edelman et al. 2001; Qin et al. 2014).
Collective bargaining constitutes a significant part of the regulatorytoolkit
for tackling gender-based inequalities in pay and working conditions, as
it is responsive to local needs and resources (Dickens 2000; Kirton 2011)
and inhibits the widening of pay dierentials (Grimshaw et al. 2014),
particularly where coordination between dierent levels of bargaining is
strong (Berg and Piszczek 2014; Blau 2012; Williamson and Baird 2014).
However, the institutional actors in collective bargaining havevarying degrees
of commitment to tackling gender inequalities (Dickens 2000). Moreover,
in the context of economic downturn, bargaining has been weakened as a
regulatory mechanism (Milner and Gregory 2014; Bosch 2015; Brochard and
Letablier 2017; Voss et al. 2015).
The tension between transformative potential and regulatory capacity is
starkly illustrated in the French case, which has been described as ‘state-
managed bargaining’ (Mias et al. 2016) or ‘bargained public policy’ (Groux
2005). Here, collectivebargaining has become a significant tool of state policy
including gender equality in the workplace. The role of the state, which
intervenes using a mixture of sanctions (financial penalties) and incentives
(such as tax relief), is ambiguous: it seeks to strengthen and extend the scope of
bargaining as an autonomous sphere of regulation, butalso steers and frames
it (Naboulet 2011; see also Baccaro and Howell 2017). Bargaining is shaped
by the duties imposed on employers by the state which increasingly make the
company ratherthan the sector the locus of negotiation (Mias 2014; Mias et al.
2016; Rehfeldtand Vincent 2018; see also Baccaro and Howell 2017: 92–3). Yet
questions havebeen raised about the real impact of state-managed bargaining
on workplace practices,both quantitatively and qualitatively(Naboulet 2011).
Quantitatively, the number of agreements has increased, particularly at
workplace and company levels, but significant gaps remain in coverage (with
employees in smaller companies and in low-paysectors largely left outside the
scope of bargaining). Qualitatively, state-managed bargaining can encourage
employers to invest in equality bargaining in the absence of other strong
pressures for action, and to create dynamics of negotiation where they did
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2018 John Wiley& SonsLtd.
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