2013 April [email protected] 06 - Austerity and the public sector

Earlier this month the European Commission published its biennial report, Industrial Relations in Europe. The impact of the crisis and austerity measures on the public services is a major focus of the report which details the changes in collective bargaining processes and structures that have been imposed in several countries across Europe. The report includes a serious warning of the long-term impact of the "reforms" that are taking place. With the role of the public sector as a good employer being undermined, the report is concerned that worsening pay and conditions combined with

The 2013 edition of the ETUI's Benchmarking Working Europe provides an comprehensive overview of the effects of austerity measures across Europe. Its third chapter focuses on collective bargaining and is a short and clear explanation and analysis of process and impact of the intervention of the European institutions and the IMF in collective bargaining. The report looks at wage developments before and after the crisis highlighting the trend towards declining real wages, restrictive minimum wage policy, falling wage shares and increasing income inequality. [The chapter on collective bargaining

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is one part of the troika - along with the European Commission and European Central Bank - that have been imposing labour market reforms on countries like Greece, Spain and Portugal. IMF claims about the need for decentralisation of collective bargaining come under detailed scrutiny in a new report from the International Trade Union Confederation which concludes very firmly that: "There is absolutely no evidence that countries with highly decentralised collective bargaining systems and weak trade unions gain any economic advantage." [Read more at > EPSU-

Researchers at the University of Manchester coordinated a five-country project looking at the impact of austerity on the public services with a particular focus on pay, procurement and equality. The countries investigated were France, Germany, Hungary, Sweden and the UK. The researchers found mixed evidence of a pay premium for public sector workers but clear indications that the imposition of austerity was having a serious impact on the public sector's former good record on gender equality. The conclusions of the country case studies also raised questions about the trend towards outsourcing

At the beginning of this year, researchers at King's College in London published the results of a six-country study of the impact of austerity on the public services, with a particular focus on local government. The project covered the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Italy, Netherlands and the UK. While the researchers founds evidence of resilience in collective bargaining and social dialogue in Denmark and the Netherlands, elsewhere the picture was less positive. However, it also found examples where social dialogue was working at local level even if the national trend was towards more

In June 2012 the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and DG Employment organised a joint conference on public sector adjustments to discuss the findings of 15 country studies on the impact of austerity in the public sector. The conference report looked in detail at changes to public sector industrial relations before and after the crisis. It argues that many reforms were poorly planned with no assessment of their long-term impact and that in many cases changes were being pushed through with little or no social dialogue. [Read more at > EPSU->http://www.epsu.org/a/8831] [And at > ILO->http

As the trend towards public sector pay cuts began to take hold across Europe, EPSU decided it was important to monitor the impact of those cuts and the way they were being implemented. Two major reports produced by the Labour Research Department set out not just the facts and figures in 10 countries where cuts were imposed but also provide case studies to show what those cuts have meant for individual public sector workers.