"Learning to play: The Europeanisation of trade unions"

Compared with other world regions, European industrial relations have a few distinct traits: a relative broad basis of representation of the trade unions, sectoral unions, employers organisations and collective bargaining, extensive bargaining coverage, social dialogue and supranational collective organisation of employers and trade unions. At the same time, industrial relations in Europe are characterised by persistent national diversity in industrial relations and state involvement, offering the possibility of regime competition between states. The Europeanisation of markets has not yet produced, nor has it necessitated, the Europeanisation of collective bargaining. With the completion of the Economic and Monetary Union in 1999, both national and international co-ordination of wage bargaining are at a premium, in response to upward delegation of monetary policy in Europe and increased horizontal interdependence of wage policies across countries. Multinational collective bargaining between unions and employers remains a distant prospect, but the thickening network of cross-border contacts of the European Trade Union Confederation and the European Works Councils offer increased opportunities to union and worker representations "to play alone.