Lisa Dorigatti (Università di Milano)
Guglielmo Meardi (Scuola Normale Superiore)
Roberto Pedersini (Università di Milano)
After decades of low inflation and stagnating wages and productivity, the “wage problem” has suddenly returned to the forefront of industrial relations. High inflation, but also debates, during the Covid-19 pandemic, on the value of key work, organisational changes such as remote working, and a growing political salience of economic inequality have brought wage negotiations and income policies (such as minimum wage regulations) to the top of the agenda of industrial relations actors. If in recent decades ‘integrative’ topics of collective bargaining (work organisation, working time, company welfare, skills etc) appeared to grow in importance, the classic, distributive wage issue combines with a redefinition of adversarial relations and conflict.
Wages and the process of wage setting have been amongst the traditional topics of industrial relations research and theory, also in combination with economic performance, both at the micro-level and the macro-level. The recent period of wage stagnation exacerbates the problem of the link between industrial relations and inequality, eg with reference to debates on labour market dualization. Controversies around these issues have not been limited to academic debates, but have been at the core of political discussions. At the European level, collective bargaining systems have been first attacked by European institutions during the Great Financial Crisis, and more recently revalued through the Directive on adequate minimum wages in the European Union. In Italy, as in other countries, collective bargaining decentralization has been practiced and problematized for decades, and minimum wages have entered the legislative agenda. Consistently with previous research on strikes, there are also early indications that the rise in inflation is also leading to more industrial action.
This session aims at exploring recent developments in industrial relations with particular reference to wages, inequality, and economic insecurity. Contributions are welcome on issues that include:
- The politics of minimum wages in a comparative and multi-level perspective;
- Changing employer remuneration strategies;
- Technological change, environmental transition and their effects on workers’ economic security;
- Mobilisations and conflicts around wages: strikes over wage negotiations, living wage campaigns, other movements for the valuation of work;
- Industrial relations, labour market institutions and wage dynamics, particularly with regards to gender equality;
- Collective bargaining structures and practices
The session is open to different methodologies and to contributions both in Italian and English.