Collective bargaining and employment quality in the European Union

Abstract

Since the European Employment Strategy, the discussion on labour issues, both in academia and in labour policy arena, is focusing on the ability of European economies to create jobs and qualified jobs. This paper develops a panel data analysis to characterize the structure of collective bargaining (centralization, coordination and union power) and employment quality (quality indicators of the EES) for the core countries of the EU in the last decade. The analysis seeks to contrast a hypothesis about the likely influence of different collective bargaining systems characteristics on macroeconomic employment development, not only in quantity terms but in quality ones, identifying last one as the working conditions prevailing in each labour market.