Extra‐Institutional Changes under Pressure from Posting
| Date | 01 June 2018 |
| Published date | 01 June 2018 |
| Author | Søren Kaj Andersen,Jens Arnholtz |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12287 |
British Journal of Industrial Relations doi: 10.1111/bjir.12287
56:2 June 2018 0007–1080 pp. 395–417
Extra-Institutional Changes under
Pressure from Posting
Jens Arnholtz and Søren Kaj Andersen
Abstract
The posting of workers has become a key topic in debates about how national
labour relations respond to pressuresfrom EU market making. While most prior
studies have shown that national employment relations are under pressure from
above (via EU regulation)and from below (due to increasing use of posting), the
question is whether these pressures will lead to erosion of employment relations
or adaptation at the national level. Taking the case of posting in the Danish
construction sector,the article shows that, while formalinstitutions stay the same
through minor adaptation, the increasing use of posting has led to changes in
the strategies of the social partners, shifts in predominant policy arenas and the
appearance of new actorson the regulatory scene. As such, we arguethat conflicts
regarding posting are driving a process of extra-institutional change.
1. Introduction
It is not new that European integration is putting pressure on national
employment relations. However, since the European Union (EU) enlargement
in 2004, the potential implications of these pressures have grown significantly
due to large dierences in wage levels between new and old member states
(Hassel et al. 2016). This is clearly illustrated in the case of posting, where
workers employed in one country are sent to work in another country. The
employment conditions of such workersare regulated by the standards of their
home country unless host countries take steps to re-regulatethese employment
conditions. Moreover, this re-regulation is constrained by EU regulations,
which seek to prevent protectionist measures. As such, posting of workers
touches upon a tension between the mandate of EU institutions to create
a trans-European market for service provisions on the one hand and the
sovereignty of member states to regulate their national labour markets on
Jens Arnholtz and Søren Kaj Andersen are at the Employment Relations Research Centre,
University of Copenhagen.
C
2017 John Wiley& Sons Ltd.
396 British Journal of Industrial Relations
the other. These tensions have caused the issue of posting to gain increasing
political and scholarly attention in recent years.
A growing literature has documented how posting is putting pressure
on national employment relations institutions both from above and below.
One strand of this literature focuses on the pressure applied to national
employment relations fromabove by changes in EU regulation (Cremers et al.
2007; Dølvik and Visser 2009). This stand argues that rulings from the EU
Court of Justice (CJEU) are undermining national institutions (H¨
opner 2008;
Joerges and R¨
odl 2009). Another strand of literature emphasizes a pressure
from below caused by increasing use of posting. This literature argues that
posting creates ‘zones of exception’(Lillie 2010) in host labour markets which
lead to an on-going ‘local renegotiation’ of employment relations (Wagner
2015). Drawing on both strands of literature, Bosch and Weinkopf (2013)
argue that posting has forced all host countries to change their wage-setting
systems in various ways. However, this conclusion has been contested by
studies that focus on national response strategies to the pressures of posting.
While these studies acknowledge the existence of pressures, they argue that
some countries have been able to preserve their institutions through minor
adaptations (Blauberger 2011; Menz 2005; Seikel 2015). In particular, they
highlight Denmark as a country where the pressures of posting have been
handled with little institutional change (Hassel et al. 2016).
In response, this article provides a more in-depth analysis of the Danish
responses to the pressures of posting. It argues that national employment
relations are in fact changing under pressure from posting, but that these
changes are harder to identify because they do not take the form of formal
institutional change.Instead, the pressure of posting has caused changes in the
strategies of the traditional actors,incremental shifts in predominant decision-
making forums and the appearance of new actors on the regulatoryscene. To
understand these changes within basically unchanged formal institutions, we
introduce the concept of extra-institutional change.Wearguethatsuchextra-
institutional changes can have significant eects on employment relations. As
Denmark repeatedly has been promoted as the best case for illustrating the
possibility of institutional adaptation to posting, the case study raises issues
of a broader European scope.
The rest of the article is structured as follows: In Section 2, we review
the literature on posting to position our contribution and elaborate our
concept of extra-institutional change. Following this, data and methodology
are presented, emphasizing that a detailed study of Danish construction
can serve as a critical case with implications beyond this study. We then
present some background informationon the traditional setup of employment
relations in Danish construction and outline how this setup has come under
pressure due to the increasing use of posting. We subsequently turn to the
national-level responses to these pressures from below by looking at three
decision-making arenas. Here, we show how strong relations of trust and the
ability to find solutions to institutional dilemmas in collective bargaininghave
deteriorated. These disagreementshave spilled into the political arena, making
C
2017 John Wiley& Sons Ltd.
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