Employment Institutions under Liberalization Pressures: Analysing the Effects of Regulatory Change on Collective Bargaining in Spain
| Author | Martí López‐Andreu |
| Date | 01 June 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12418 |
| Published date | 01 June 2019 |
British Journal of Industrial Relations doi: 10.1111/bjir.12418
57:2 June 2019 0007–1080 pp. 328–349
Employment Institutions under
Liberalization Pressures: Analysing
the Effects of Regulatory Change on
Collective Bargaining in Spain
Mart´
ıL
´
opez-Andreu
Abstract
This article discusses the eects of regulatory change in employees’ working
conditions and the dynamics of collective bargaining in Spain, a model aected
by a drastic regulatory change, and draws a comparison with the UK, the more
deregulated and single-employerbargaining model in Europe. The comparison is
carried out using EU-SILC panel data to identify commonalities and dierences
in the patterns of change in salaries and working hours. Second, national data
from Spain are used to analyse the impacts of reforms on the characteristics
and outputs of collective bargaining. The findings show that regulatory changes
provoked a drastic adjustment in wages in Spain, following patterns similar to
the British model. However, the results lead us to highlight the need to enhance
knowledge about the dynamics of bargaining processes as they crucially reveal
that these trends arehappening in mostly unchanged institutional characteristics.
1. Introduction
This article analyses how the reform of collective bargaining system in
Spain aected the characteristics and processes of joint regulation. Collective
bargaining has been at the forefront of the changes in employment regulation
in the aftermath of the economic recession (Deakin and Koukiadaki 2013).
After the period of fiscal stimuli that characterized the management of the
first stage of the 2008 recession, the second phase of the crisis, characterized
by fiscal austerity and the re-regulatory role of supranational economic and
political institutions, aimed to reframe the crisis as a product of intervention
and regulation (Heyes et al. 2012). This ideological reframingof the downturn
Marti L´
opez-Andreu is a Lecturer in HRM and Employment Relations, Workand Employment
Division, School of Business, University of Leicester.
C
2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Liberalization and Collective Bargaining 329
targeted joint regulation institutions and advocated to facilitate adjustments
through salary and working conditions. In this regard, the patterns in
collective bargaining have been one of the main targets of the reforms,
especially in those countries under the conditions of the ‘Troika’ (Koukiadaki
et al. 2016), namely the European Commission, the European Central Bank
and the International Monetary Fund. And, as has been recently argued by
Visser (2016: 1), ‘a more exclusiveversion based on enterprise bargaining have
been favored by the governments and international agencies’. Moreover, the
public sector has suered significant cutbacks, and the working conditions
and salaries of its workers have been frozen or reduced (Vaughan-Whitehead
2013). Finally, and a particular interest of this article, the highlight of these
policies has been increasing pressures on collective wage-setting mechanisms
to become more ‘marketized’ (Marginson and Welz 2015). In those countries
in receipt of some sort of financial aid, an essential feature of the reforms
has been the bypassing of social dialogue and the unilateral role of the
State in reshaping collective bargaining. Following Meardi (2014), the role
of European-level institutions in imposing the austerity narrative allowed
governments to carry out drastic reforms that the balance of power would
not have permitted.
The Spanish labour market was, and still is, strongly suering the eects
of the 2008 recession. The country entered recession after a period of
economic and employment growth that started in 1996, characterized by
the predominant role of the construction sector and the development of a
significant housing bubble (Banyuls et al. 2009; L´
opez and Rodr´
ıguez 2011).
During the period of economic growth, employment increased by more than
7,700,000 jobs.1The recession then led to rapid loss of jobs and increase of
unemployment (Mu˜
noz de Bustillo and Ant´
on 2011). From 2007 to 2010,
the unemployment rate skyrocketed from 8.2 per cent to almost 20 per cent
and more than 1,800,000 jobs were lost, accounting for 42 per cent of all job
losses of the EU-27 in the period. In this context, the narratives that noted
in highly ideological terms the lack of flexibility of the Spanish model gained
momentum (Fern´
andez-Rodr´
ıguez and Martinez Lucio 2013), and reforms
were carried out by dierent parties in oce that drastically modified the
system of collective bargaining.
Taking its cue from MacKenzie and Martinez Lucio (2005, 2014), this
article considers that these reforms have modified the regulatory space of
collective bargaining in Spain by reordering levels of regulation and by
jeopardizing practices and linkages between actors.The purpose of the article
is to discern how the changes in the regulation of collective bargaining
aected the dynamics of industrial relations in Spain and aims to enhance
the knowledge about the eects of regulatory changes in the employment
relationship. To carry out these objectives the article uses, first, the EU-SILC
panel data to investigatethe changes in salary and working hours of employees
in the same job in three periods (beforethe crisis, during the crisis and after the
implementation of austerity policies). Here, a comparison betweenSpain and
the UK is carried out to observe commonalities and dierences in patterns
C
2018 John Wiley& Sons Ltd.
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