Bipartite arrangements – do they make a difference? Sam Hägglund, EFBWW CGIL Conference Rome 2 July 2019

Sectoral national bipartite arrangements exist for different welfare areas, pensions, vocational training, health and safety etc. The arrangements are normally country-specific What is the outcome of these arrangements on the ground? Have they made a difference? To look into that one sector was selected – the building sector – and one welfare area – health and safety – to see whether the differences between European countries could be explained by bipartite arrangements

Empirical data taken from Sweden, Norway, Denmark Finland, Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Belgium, UK, France, Italy and Spain Scandinavian countries: no legal obstacles to trade unions from 1860s, trade unions could organize members from that time, recognitions from employers organizations, collective bargaining established just after 1900, historical compromises between main workers and employers organizations in 1930s, bipartite and tripartite structures formed early, consensus-oriented models established as protection against fascism, high organization level today, high degree of social expenditure as part of GDP Continental Europe, trade unions formed in the 1880 and 1890s, but activities often restricted until 1910s. Crisis of 1930s did not lead to consensus-solutions as in Scandinavian countries, but to fascist and military solutions. Formation of trade unions after WWII very much affected by the need to protect against new forms of fascist movements, but also against Soviet-style communism. US involved in the latter. Relationships between labour market parties often conflict-oriented

Can differences between social models in bipartite arrangements explain differences in health and safety outcome? Problems with causality analyses in social sciences. “It is the mark of a trained mind never to expect more precision in the treatment of any subject than the nature of that subject permits.” (Aristotle) 1) How to delimit the cause factor from the effect factor? If the effect factor is conceptually linked to the cause factor it becomes a “circular proof”. 2) How to maintain ceteris paribus? How to distinguish the causal factor from everything else that might have influenced that effect factor? 3) Are the cause and effect factors measurable? Since this involves comparisons between countries, measurability also includes comparability.

Delimitation criterion: extent of bipartite arrangements is not conceptually linked to frequency of occupational accidents All other things equal-criterion: a sufficient long time period (10 years) has been selected, and a sufficient number of countries (12), to eliminate other possible causal factors Measurability-criterion: this posed problems in the study. The extent of bipartite arrangements and the involvement of the labour market parties in health and safety arrangements could be relatively easy measured. Several studies were available. But the comparability of OSH statistics from different countries was difficult. This is why the frequency of “occupational diseases” was excluded, since there was no way to reconcile the different national definitions of what was classified as occupational diseases. Even the area of frequency of “occupational accidents” was difficult to compare. One country – the UK – excluded several types of accidents which were included in the national statistics of the other countries. This is why the UK figure is an anomaly in the diagram.

The empirical data over the 10-year period we studied show that countries with a high level of bipartite cooperation and involvement in the setting up of OSH regulation structures, in the supervision of the observance of the regulations, and in the sanctioning of violations of the regulations, tend to have a substantially lower frequency of occupational accidents in the sector. The five countries clustered to the lower left of the diagram – with low frequencies of occupational accidents and with a high degree of bipartite involvement, are the 4 Scandinavian countries (Iceland not included) and Netherlands. The remaining 7 countries have a 2 to 3 time higher frequency of accidents and a lower degree of bipartite involvement in OSH institutions and controls. The UK figure is lower in accident frequency than what could be expected from the low extent of bipartite involvement. But this could be explained by more restricted definition of the concept of “occupational accident”.