1.1 Goals, sources and methods of the study

This investigation is based on a draft table of contents prepared in April 2001 by the Presidents of the Finnish Paperworkers’ Union, the Chemical Workers’ Union and the Finnish Electrical Workers' Union. The background to the project is the vision of these unions as to how collective bargaining will gradually evolve in an integrating Europe as the sum of many factors.

The common monetary policy and currency require the European Central Bank to manage money market stability and the progress of inflation. This management also has an impact on the labour market, and there has been visible, though relatively subtle intervention in the pay demands submitted in 2002 in the German metal industry. Referring to the money markets, governments and employers also seek to set boundaries to collective bargaining in order to reduce pay increases and rising labour costs. A statutory maximum pay rise has been enacted in Belgium. This depends on the rises in neighbouring countries.

In the meantime, centralisation of industry and services has continued. Almost weekly there is news of international enterprise acquisitions and mergers. It is no secret that senior personnel administrators in multinational enterprises compare the benefits of employees and labour costs in various business units. European Works Councils have created networks that enable elected officials to do likewise. This increased consciousness has already led to discussions within enterprises on gradual harmonisation of at least some benefits. Such discussions will undoubtedly increase.

Thirdly, co-ordination of co-operation in national collective bargaining rounds within the European Union will slowly advance. In the metal and engineering industry German, Belgian and Dutch unions sometimes include representatives of unions in other countries in their negotiation delegations. The European Mine, Chemical and Energy Workers’ Federation (EMCEF) has also accelerated its work in this field. To date this has mainly consisted of reports and analyses of the previous negotiation round. However, at some stage common negotiation goals are sure to be included among the topics of discussion, even though there disagreements of principle remain on this subject between the unions of various countries.

Working conditions and systems of working life vary greatly from country to country, which often gives rise to misunderstandings. To respond to these challenges, the unions must have precise information about the working conditions of their own industries in other European countries and the ability to understand and consider various systems. This is the basic purpose of the present three-union project.

This study covers the legislation of Finland and six European countries selected to enable comparison, and examines the essential regulations of collective agreements in the paper, chemical and energy industries. The six countries are Germany, France and Italy from the euro zone, Britain and Sweden - which have remained outside of the euro zone, and Norway as a non-Member State of the European Union.

A great deal of misleading information is available on legislation and collective agreements. Studies present "average wages and salaries" in various countries, even though reliable and systematic wage and salary statistics are barely available outside of the Nordic countries. One official European Union publication reports that six weeks of annual leave are granted in Finland, because the way in which Saturdays are included in the system has been misunderstood. Often only statute legislation is presented as official regulation, even though collective agreements of generally binding character provide clearly superior rights and benefits to 95 per cent of the industry’s employees.

To avoid mistakes I have endeavoured to verify all essential details with the aid of collective bargaining officials in the comparison counties. My source material was diverse. Plenty of reports and surveys were available on the Internet, and references have included books and European and national periodicals specialising in collective bargaining.

The overwhelmingly best international source was the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, otherwise known as the Dublin foundation. Financed generously by the European Union, this organ is able to produce comparisons and country-specific reports that are freely available on the Internet (www.eiro.eurofound). Lately the foundation has tried to offer more industry-specific detail, as inadequacies in this area were previously considered to be the greatest shortcoming in its information service.

The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) and its research centre, the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), produce collective bargaining reports and a rather useful yearbook. The best magazine is the European Industrial Relations Review (EIRR).

Union websites in the comparison countries have offered a good base both for presenting the unions and studying the collective agreements. I have verified this information in discussions with union officials. I have met in person with representatives of all of the unions included in the comparison and supplemented the information so gathered in subsequent telephone conversations.

The libraries of EMCEF and ICEM (International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers’ Unions) in Brussels were useful resources. I also participated in EMCEF’s seminar on collective bargaining in November 2001 in Portugal. Assisted by ETUI, EMCEF has launched a project to create a data bank on collective agreements in the chemical and energy industries. At the seminar it became clear that the EMCEF-ETUI project is narrow in scope and is based on reports of the previous round of collective bargaining, even though the perception of the need to compare and co-ordinate the work ran parallel to thinking in Finland. The paper industry is due for inclusion in the future data bank at the next stage, sometime in 2004 or 2005.

The results of this study are not absolutely scientific, as not all of the sources and statistics are sufficiently rigorous. Errors, inaccuracies and misunderstandings will certainly remain in the text. The purpose is to organise the results in a form that will be easy to supplement, correct and update after the next rounds of collective bargaining.

In typical European manner, the political spectrum is broad, ranging from conservative and Christian democratic to socialist and communist unions. The unions are significant and representative in their industries. They are all affiliated to the EMCEF, except for the two Italian paperworkers’ unions and the German ver.di (organising public and private sector employees as the largest union in the energy industry). There are also other unions in the industries covered by this study, but their role is minor except for the British UNISON (a public sector union with rank and file members in the energy industry). UNISON has not joined the EMCEF. Collective agreements signed by UNISON are included in this study.

I first contacted the comparison country unions in autumn 2001 and advised their Presidents, bargaining officials or international secretaries of our project. The idea was warmly received, and all of them promised to support it.

In winter 2001 and spring 2002 I sent an e-mail giving details of the kind of information that we intended to gather. I asked the unions to send me their collective agreements in the event that I did not already have them. I also asked them to guide me through the most important paragraphs of statute and collective agreements covered by the study. These visits to the union head offices were made mostly in March-May 2002. Afterwards I checked any aspects that had remained unclear and submitted e-mail and telephone requests for further details. This lasted until the end of 2002.

1.3 Structure of the trade union movement
in the comparison countries and introduction of the unions
(The presentation of the contact unions has been excluded from the English edition.)

The trade union confederation structure varies greatly from country to country, which is reflected in the industry-specific unions and their manner of work. Both in Great Britain and in Germany there is one powerful union confederation that acts mainly as a political lobbying organisation. In France there are five and in Italy three confederations that compete with one another. Their differences are based on ideological, religious and historical traditions. In Finland, Sweden and Norway there are also several trade union confederations, but these organise different employee groups. They compete with one another only occasionally in borderline areas.

The degree of unionisation varies widely. In the Nordic countries one union may represent 95 to 100 per cent of employees in the sector that the union organises. In France there are five competing unions, even when the organising rate in the industry is, for example, only 10 per cent. In the industrial sector and in the industries covered by the study the organising rate is, as a rule, clearly above the general level. There is little information available on employer organisation, but employer federations and their roles are referred to in the presentation of collective agreement systems.

According to a new estimate, the organising rate of wage and salary earners in Sweden has fallen to 79 per cent. About 90 to 95 per cent of blue-collar workers have joined the union, while the corresponding figure for salaried employees is between 60 and 70 per cent. The 18 unions of the trade union confederation LO represent over two million rank and file members. Salaried employees are also organised in the TCO confederation representing 1.3 million rank and file members, and in the academic confederation SACO covering about 0.5 million rank and file.

The organising rate in Norway is reported to be close to 60 per cent, which is clearly less than in Finland and Sweden. The confederation structure is also different. The strongest trade union confederation is LO, with 25 affiliated trade unions representing 800,000 employees. LO’s member unions in industry have formed LO Industri, which is described as a "cartel". This organisation lobbies actively, especially in the field of industrial policy, but does not participate in collective bargaining.

On the salaried employee side union organisation is more decentralised. The YS trade union confederation unites organisations with 200,000 rank and file members ranging from public sector employees to the yellow oil industry union OFS. Akademikerne represents 118,000 employees that split off in 1996 from the AF academic employees confederation, causing it to close down a couple of years ago. The supervisor's union FLT is affiliated to LO, but Lederne and the engineers’ organisation NITO, which partly operate in the same field, have remained outside of any trade union confederation. By contrast with the situation in Finland, the Norwegian trade union confederations do not work in close co-operation, and LO has assumed clear dominance of the lobbying field.

The German organising rate has dropped to around 30 per cent. In industry and the public sector it is clearly higher than in service sector. Small companies often have very few organised employees. For practical purposes there is only one union confederation: the DGB. With almost eight million rank and file members in its affiliated unions, this is the largest national labour confederation in Europe. Economic problems in the 1990s accelerated a series of major union mergers, so that only eight of the previous seventeen unions remain.

Trade unions in France are more influential than might be supposed on the basis of the nine per cent organising rate. There are five trade union confederations divided for political and historical reasons.

The organising rate in Italy is 35 per cent, rising to 50 or 60 per cent in industry. About 30 to 35 per cent of salaried employees are organised. Under the Italian system these mainly belong to the same unions as blue-collar workers.

The British organising rate is about 30 per cent. There is just one union confederation: the TUC. With almost seven million rank and file members in its 70 affiliated unions the TUC is Europe’s second largest organised labour confederation after the German DGB. The British trade union movement suffered badly in two decades of Conservative rule, losing four million rank and file members and a fall of some 20 percentage points in the organising rate.

The British trade union movement has historically been noted for its decentralised character. In the early 20^th century there were 1,300 trade unions, and more than 300 still existed in the early 1980s. A period of union mergers began at this time, and is still continuing. Unions were originally largely based on trade or occupation, but mergers have blurred these boundaries and the logic of demarcation is now less clear. Consequently, the TUC’s largest unions now organise employees in several industries, and even dozens of different industries. As there may be several unions in one and the same industry, the employee side in collective bargaining and dispute negotiations may comprise representatives of as many as five unions, as occurs in the energy sector.

The employer side is also strongly organised. The member enterprises of the Confederation of British industry - CBI and its industry-specific associations cover more than 70 per cent of employees in the field of work of businesses. Despite this, the CBI plays no role in collective bargaining, though it has approved a few common policy statements with the TUC. Industry-specific industrial and employer associations are also seldom parties to collective bargaining, with the paper industry forming one exception. Collective bargaining in other industries has been pushed to enterprise and workplace level.