Freer Labour Markets, More Rules? How Transnational Labour Mobility Can Strengthen Collective Bargaining

Abstract

This article investigates how internationalisation through labour mobility can strengthen collective bargaining in coordinated market economies. It shows how new political cleavages generated by internationalisation can foster the re-regulation of labour markets and how the alliance between trade unions and employers in sheltered sectors of the economy can increase domestic coordination to limit wage competition. These two mechanisms explain why the opening of the labour market for EU workers and services in Switzerland has been followed by a re-regulation process in which collective bargaining coordination has strengthened despite the weakness of organised labour and the resistance of export industries. Following the opening of the labour market, the coverage of collective bargaining has increased and the number of workers covered by extended collective agreements nearly tripled.

Citation

Afonso, A. (2016), "Freer Labour Markets, More Rules? How Transnational Labour Mobility Can Strengthen Collective Bargaining", Labour Mobility in the Enlarged Single European Market (Comparative Social Research, Vol. 32), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 159-182. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0195-631020160000032007