1. ANDREA SIGNORETTI ilerA, 09/09/2016, MILANO
ANALYSIS OF ITALIAN MEDIUM-SIZED ENTERPRISES’ COLLECTIVE BARGAINING FROM AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE: EVIDENDE FROM THE MANUFACTURING SECTOR Economic and Industrial Democracy, 2014, DOI: / X
ANDREA SIGNORETTI
ilerA, 09/09/2016, MILANO

2. COLLECTIVE BARGAINING: A EUROPEAN OVERVIEW
Growing importance of company’s collective bargaining but in different forms (Traxler, 1995, Colvin and Darbishire, 2013)
With reference to EU-15 and medium-sized firms (Voskeritsian and Kornelakis, 2011, Fulton, ):
Organized and well-developed. Germany with open exit clauses (but threatened by employers’ associations decline); Sweden-Denmark with binding but lean national contracts
Disorganized (after 2011) and low-developed. Greece and Spain
Still organized but subject to attempts of disorganization: Italy

3. WHY ANALYSING COMPANY’S COLLECTIVE BARGAINING
The type and development of company’s collective bargaining is important both for firms’ competitiveness and employee working conditions. Development in regard to: mutual recognition (pre- condition), working time, employee participation, continuous training, contingent pay (Roche and Geary, 2000, Treu, 2011, Leoni, 2012)
Lack of studies within medium-sized enterprises, particularly in Italy, while it would be relevant to verify such developments of the country within an international perspective, since decentralization was first institutionalized in 1993
Participative industrial relations are important but difficult to build in countries, like Italy, where there are no institutional incentives or constraints about (Streeck, 1997)

4. RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND METHODOLOGY
Degree of historical development (as to specific subjects) and type (derogations from national contracts and laws) of company’s collective bargaining in medium-sized firms
Development and institutionalization of participative systems of industrial relations
Research method: analysis of company’s collective agreements since 1993 plus interviews with shop stewards, employers and union representatives
Analysis of 7 medium-sized manufacturing firms (purposive sampling, Bryman, 2008) located in Verona, Northern Italy

5. RESULTS Good mutual recognition and no conflict;
Good development of working time agreements, while employee participation and continuous training are rarely bargained and implemented;
Contingent pay is always present but it represents a fake in 4 cases out of 7 just to receive fiscal relief
Participative industrial relations realized in one case due to peculiar firm’s features

6. RESULTS
Overall, few subjects negotiated with small increase over time.
No derogation on the grounds of art.8 and on the grounds of interconfederal agreements either
Collaboration on working time favoured by local culture
Italian medium-sized enterprises turn out to have an organized but low- developed system of local collective bargaining

7. CONCLUSIONS
Possible interventions to favour the development of organized forms of company’s collective bargaining:
Minor regulations of wide-sector national contracts relying on local collective bargaining. But social parties are contrary
Institutionalization of initial forms of participative industrial relations
Too ambitious ideas in a period of economic crisis? Then how can labour productivity be improved?
But Jobs Act (2015): company’s collective bargaining has the same value of national contracts, and employers seem to favour deregulation now.

8. Thanks for your kind attention