Can Mediation Institutions Save Coordination of Collective Bargaining in Scandinavia?

  • Starts: 2:00 pm on Wednesday, October 9, 2013
  • Ends: 3:30 pm on Wednesday, October 9, 2013
A presentation by Christian Lyhne Ibsen The comparative literature on Scandinavian industrial relations literature has documented the demise of centralized collective bargaining between peak-level employer and labor confederations. Instead, sector bargaining has emerged in both Sweden and Denmark. Nevertheless, even without vertical compulsion, inequalities in working conditions across sectors have been contained, and most sectors tend to follow the pattern set in bargaining between manufacturing employers and their unions. The conventional industrial relations literature has had little to say about how the new institutional arrangement has been able to sustain this high-road, economy-wide coordination of bargaining outside of manufacturing. Analyzing an innovative form of government intervention, the speaker discusses the crucial importance of publicly-sponsored mediation institutions in helping the two societies solve this cross-sectoral collective action problem and sustain a more egalitarian form of capitalism than in other wealthy democracies. Comments are more than welcome! Co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Europe and the Department of Political Science.
Location:
Department of International Relations, 154 Bay State Road, 2nd floor

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