Norway
Latest figures on collective bargaining and union membership indicate that all public sector workers are covered by collective agreements. This compares to about 60% in the private sector. Overall union density is about 53% of the workforce, a figure that has been stable since 2000 but is much higher in the public sector at 81%.
Read more at > EIRO (EN)
The EIRO industrial relations observatory has published a study on the representativeness of the social partners in the electricity industry. This is part of the formal process required by the European Commission and confirms that the two European Trade Union Federations - EPSU and industrAll - are the two most representative trade unions at European level. The study found that: "Collective bargaining coverage is relatively high in the electricity sector. Some 18 of the 22 countries with available data record high rates of collective bargaining coverage, exceeding 70%. The remaining countries
The Economic Policy Institute in the US has just published research that reveals the impact of declining union density and collective bargaining on wages. It finds, for example, that falling union membership translates to a loss of $1.56 (€1.47) per hour worked for the average worker, the equivalent of $3,250 (€3,070) for a full-time, full-year worker. Meanwhile, the erosion of collective bargaining lowered the median hourly wage also by $1.56 (€1.47), a 7.9% decline (0.2% annually), from 1979 to 2017. An analysis of wage distribution found that declining unionisation had widened inequality
New research from the European Trade Union Institute traces the evolution of collective bargaining coverage in European countries between 2002 and 2018 and links it to changes in developments in the pay premia received by workers covered by collective bargaining. Data on collective bargaining in publicly and privately owned companies is assessed separately and the researchers investigate the extent to which pay premia can be explained by trade union density and by the share of workers covered by an agreement. While the coverage rates of collective agreements have generally declined over time
