Negotiating Our Way Up provides a comprehensive assessment of the functioning of collective bargaining and workers’ voice in OECD countries as well as new insights on their effect on labour market performance and their role in a changing world of work. Combining a large variety of sources and data, the report analyses the challenges that collective bargaining systems are facing in OECD countries, as well as their role to promote more inclusive labour markets. Collective bargaining is a key institution to promote rights at work. At the same time, collective bargaining and workers’ voice are unique instruments to reach balanced and tailored solutions to the challenges facing OECD labour markets. However, fruitful exchanges between social partners are not a given and collective bargaining systems need to be designed in ways that allow balancing inclusiveness and flexibility. Negotiating Our Way Up provides a useful resource for policy makers, trade unions and employers’ organisations interested in understanding how to make the most of these instruments.

In all OECD countries, workers and employers associate to express their interests and concerns, as well as to bargain over the terms and conditions of employment. However, over the last decades, the share of workers who are trade union members and the reach of collective agreements even beyond union membership have significantly declined. Despite these trends, collective bargaining, together with workers’ voice, continues to play a key role in the labour market in many OECD countries. Collective bargaining systems are generally based on a complex set of rules and practices, partly written in national laws and partly based on longstanding traditions. In order to understand their functioning and role, it is necessary to look at their different building blocks, and their interactions. These include: The actual level of bargaining (i.e. the level at which bargaining takes place, firm vs. sectoral level, and the margins firms have to derogate or to opt out from higher-level agreements); the degree of co-ordination across sectors and bargaining units; the effective enforcement of collective agreements, and the overall quality of labour relations.

Collective bargaining and workers’ voice are key labour rights and important labour markets institutions that matter for job quality. Collective bargaining, providing that it has a wide coverage and is well co-ordinated, fosters good labour market performance. Collective bargaining and workers’ voice have however been under increasing pressure over the past decades, as trade union density and collective bargaining coverage declined, non-standard forms of work developed, and employment relationships became more individualised. Despite these challenges, collective bargaining and workers’ voice still have a role to play in preventing inequalities in a changing world of work. To this end, collective bargaining systems need to be adapted to better balance flexibility and inclusiveness.

This chapter provides a comprehensive and up-to-date review of collective bargaining systems and workers’ voice arrangements across OECD countries. Despite the fall in trade union density and collective bargaining coverage in the last 40 years, collective bargaining remains a key labour market institution. Yet, the understanding of this key institution is limited by the fact that collective bargaining systems are often described with crude indicators and oversimplified in the literature. This chapter describes in more details the features of collective bargaining systems that are particularly important for labour market outcomes.

This chapter assesses the role of collective bargaining for labour market performance in OECD countries. It builds on the detailed characterisation of collective bargaining systems and practices presented in the previous chapter. Using a rich mix of country-, sector-, firm- and worker‑level data, this chapter investigates the link of different collective bargaining settings with employment, wages, wage inequality and productivity. It then discusses how broad‑based employee and employer organisations, administrative extensions, organised forms of decentralisation and wage co‑ordination may contribute to better balance inclusiveness and flexibility in the labour market.

This chapter analyses the role that collective bargaining and workers’ voice play in promoting job quality, with a particular focus on its non-monetary dimension, i.e. the quality of the working environment. The chapter first builds a simplified framework to analyse the theoretical links between different forms of bargaining systems and workers’ voice and the quality of the working environment. In the second part, it provides an overview of the quality of the working environment across different bargaining regimes and types of workers’ voice using a mix of country-level and worker-level data. Finally, the chapter reviews what unions, workers’ voice and employers can do to improve the quality of the working environment in five key dimensions: occupational safety and health, working time, training and re-skilling policies, management practices, and the prevention of workplace intimidation and discrimination.

The purpose of this final chapter is to identify the role of labour relations in shaping the future of work. The chapter discusses how collective bargaining and workers’ voice can be flexible tools complementing labour market regulation in fostering a more rewarding and inclusive future of work. The chapter then reviews what type of government intervention may be required to keep bargaining systems fit for purpose and to make the most of collective bargaining in a changing world of work. Finally, the chapter documents how existing institutions and social partners are adjusting to new challenges in the labour market, as well as the role of emerging actors and practices.