Research and Policy
@UNI_Europa, guest professor
@ugent, member of
@DenktankMinerva
Industrial relations, trade unions, Turkey, collective bargaining
Countries with more democracy at work, are also countries with stronger political democracies
Data: European Participation Index (ETUI) and democracy index (the economist)
Workplace democracy and the far right
New article by Johannes Kiess and A. Schmidt on workplace democracy and right-wing extremism in Germany uncovers a negative relation
More democracy at work, less extreme right-wing opinions
It's open access!
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0143831X241261241
Priorities for the EU, by social class
🟰 Unemployment and equality priorities for working and lower middle class
🌿Environment more for upper middle and higher class
🪙 Public debt only for higher class
New article published in Transfer Journal about the European Participation Index, developed by Sigurt Vitols, presenting a robust cross-national index for #democracyatwork.
Spoiler alerts: it's under pressure in Europe
‼️ Striking against nazis, and winning ‼️
Today, in 1941, workers in Belgium started the 'strike of the 100.000', a much forgotten and underestimated historic feat of mobilizing during a NAZI occupation
Read our Jacobin piece with Daniel Kopp
https://jacobin.com/2024/05/strike-of-the-100000-belgium-anniversary-antiwar
On this day in 1941, workers in Belgium launched one of the first strikes in Nazi-ruled Europe. Tens of thousands of strikers risked dire repression to stand up against poverty wages — and showed the working class’s determination to resist occupation.
Basically, there are policy ideas on 5 levels:
* strengthen trade unions
* strengthen employers' organisations
* facilitate collective bargaining process
* ensure collective agreement effectiveness
* work on the culture around collective bargaining
A wealth of ideas and proposals, so there are no excuses for governments. It's time for them to *act*, draw up ambitious and effective national action plans and implement them swiftly.
This figure, next, shows that there are basically two ways of getting to 80% coverage. Or trade union density is very high (> 70%), or multi-employer agreements are made generally applicable by law (extended).
Going to the more concrete, asked experts from all over Europe to think about how, in their country, policy could act to strengthen collective bargaining. We've collected and analysed all that.
First of all, the political context is unique. Probably for the first time in history, most EU countries will have to think (and act) on how they can strengthen collective bargaining coverage if less than 80% of the employees are covered by a collective agreement.
This figure is quite clear: multi-employer bargaining is a *necessary condition* for getting that 80%.
Happy to present you this UNI_Europa report titled:
"Time for action, how policy can strengthen (multi-employer) bargaining in Europe".
Here are some pointers 🧵