 The durability of coordinated bargaining: Crisis, recovery and pay fixing in IrelandWilliam K Roche and Tom Gormley Economic and Industrial Democracy, 2020, vol. 41, issue 2, 481-505 Abstract: The international literature on the economic and fiscal crisis that heralded the Great Recession emphasizes the negative effects of ‘disorganized decentralization’ on unions’ capacities for pay coordination and ultimately on their effectiveness in representing their members. These effects are seen as particularly pronounced in countries on the ‘European periphery’ such as Ireland. The article challenges this view by showing how the collapse of social partnership and centralized bargaining in Ireland was soon followed in the private sector by a new form of coordinated decentralized pattern bargaining. Coordinated sectoral bargaining emerged and was sustained in the public service. The durability of pay coordination is attributed to the strategic postures of unions, combined with embedded features of industrial relations institutions. The comparative import of the Irish case arises less from ‘disorganized decentralization’ than from the resilience of coordination following one of the most severe economic and fiscal shocks experienced by any advanced economy. Keywords: Collective bargaining; comparative industrial relations; coordinated bargaining; Ireland (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ecoind:v:41:y:2020:i:2:p:481-505 Access Statistics for this article More articles in Economic and Industrial Democracy from Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden |
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