• Work

• Feedback Cycles

• Reconciling stakeholder interests

Alienated through school and work: How education and employment precariousness shape political distrust and voting abstinence across Europe. Towards convergence? Precarisation of employment across Europe

[ The study is underway, the content of this page may therefore change in the future ] Collective bargaining systems are under pressure. While academic and policy literature mostly study structural features of the bargaining process, less attention is paid towards the nature of the bargaining process, overlooking the fact that collective bargaining is fundamentally a human and social endeavour. By bringing together insights from the microfoundational Goal Framing Theory and literature on consensual and adversarial bargaining types, we investigate how the way negotiators work together influences the sustainability of the collective bargaining process. It is often assumed that consensual bargaining processes lead to more sustainable outcomes compared to adversarial bargaining processes. If this is true, they may provide one pathway through which more sustainable collective bargaining systems can be upheld. However, due to limited research and the lack of micro-level theory in existing work, it is unclear which types of bargaining can be observed in practice and whether consensual bargaining types are indeed experienced as more sustainable. Furthermore, the lack of theory prevents us from understanding why certain conditions lead to more consensual or adversarial bargaining attitudes and behaviour, and why those do or do not lead to sustainable outcomes. In this article, we build on Goal Framing Theory, because it can explain the negotiation of collective bargaining agreements as a goal-directed decision-making process in which attitudes and behaviour are influenced by aspects from within the process and its context. We theorise how joint production motivation, a core concept in Goal Framing Theory, may underlie consensual bargaining processes and the sustainability of their outcomes. Through applying this perspective, the purpose of this research is to describe the nature of cooperation in collective bargaining in a range of industries in the Netherlands, to understand which conditions drive a more consensual or adversarial bargaining process, and to understand which type of bargaining is seen by experts and negotiators of collective bargaining agreements as leading to sustainable outcomes. To this end, we conducted 4 interviews with experts on collective bargaining and 23 interviews with negotiators of industry-level collective bargaining agreements, from both the union and the employers’ side, spanning 7 diverse industries: cleaning, greenhouse horticulture, hospitals, metal & electrical, municipalities, pharmacies and supermarkets. Expert interviews covered general questions about labour relations in the Netherlands, types of bargaining in practice in different sectors, changes over time, and the sustainability of different bargaining types. These interviews were used to select the seven industries mentioned. In negotiator interviews the main focus was the most recent collective bargaining process of the industry, which was discussed and reconstructed on paper. Questions then covered the themes: characterisation of the bargaining process based on attitudes and behaviour, reasons behind the type of bargaining, achievement of goals, and perceived and desired changes in the process. A codebook was developed, including deductive codes based on Goal-Framing Theory and inductive codes based on the data, which will be applied in a thematic analysis. Very preliminary results highlight that many negotiators from both the union and employers’ side wish for more consensual bargaining in the future because they see it as more sustainable. They believe that having a common, overarching vision for the sector is necessary for that, which theoretically aligns with joint production motivation. However, in many cases this is deemed very difficult to achieve because of certain contextual conditions or hardened industrial relations.

What is the nature of cooperation in collective bargaining in different industries in the Netherlands? Which conditions drive a more consensual or adversarial bargaining process and why? Which type of bargaining is seen by experts and negotiators of collective bargaining agreements as leading to sustainable outcomes? And are these preferred?

• Collected during project

• Interview

Yes

• .docx

• Unstructured

• Dutch

05/08/2024

02/07/2025

05/08/2024

02/07/2025