Pacts for employment and competitiveness – an opportunity to reflect on the role and practice of collective bargaining

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Abstract
Pacts for employment and competitiveness (PECs) raise understandable concerns about the potential for ‘concession bargaining', ‘regime competition’ and the fragmentation of the inclusive collective bargaining structures characteristic of most European national systems. PECs are not themselves the source of the problem, however, and are unlikely to be a temporary phenomenon. Rather PECs are a manifestation of wider changes taking place in the process and structure of collective bargaining, reflecting the more complex role collective bargaining is playing in the light of ‘globalisation’ in general and ‘Europeanisation’ in particular. These developments are also bringing about a measure of convergence across EU countries in the form of substantial changes in the levels, scope, form and output of collective bargaining, all of which are being encouraged by the emerging multi-level system of industrial relations in Europe.