Prospects for social dialogue in the public sector - European confederations, sectoral federations and forms of interest intermediation

Berndt Keller and Fred Henneberger
Additional contact information
Berndt Keller: University of Constance
Fred Henneberger: University of St. Gallen (HSG)

Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, 1997, vol. 3, issue 1, 119-146

Abstract: The article represents - in the form of a case study of the public services - an empirical contribution on the opportunities for and constraints upon interest intermediation at the sectoral level in the European Union. On the one hand, our results show that the transnational organisation of interests has made more progress on the employees' than on the employers' side. On the other hand, none of the corporate protagonists have any serious intention of transferring national authority to transnational associations. Different strategies of interest representation will have different time horizons. In the short run, lobbying will remain the most efficient strategy for exerting influence. In the medium term, highly decentralised social dialogues in those parts of the public sector performing transnational tasks might become more important. Only in the long term, if at all, can collective bargaining - first of all on qualitative issues - be envisaged. Pragmatically oriented steps towards reconciliation between different employees' organisations contribute to a striking reduction in the interest differences which, at the national level, have long been considered impossible to eradicate.

Date: 1997
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/102425899700300109 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:treure:v:3:y:1997:i:1:p:119-146

DOI: 10.1177/102425899700300109

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().