Indice
In Europe, one of the most important consequences of the great global financial crisis that was triggered in 2007 with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers was the loss of workers’ bargaining power, both in an individual and collective context. The loosening of the net of rights was justified by the need to provide companies with more flexibility and streamlined handling in times of difficulty or outright crisis.
Collective agreements have incorporated this reasoning, often subordinating union power to business objectives, the most important of which are the increase in productivity and the decentralisation of collective bargaining, to the local level, i.e. to the level of the individual firm (or company, in the case of a group firm). This favours the distortive effects of the one-contracting party economy.
The lack of awareness of the distortive effects of the one-contracting party economy amplifies the predisposition of such reforms to address not the increase of productivity, but its redistribution between capital and labour, given the inability to determine the real nature and quantification of the global firm’s productivity.
In fact, the decentralisation of collective bargaining is a real contradiction to the evolution of markets, which are, on the contrary, increasingly globalised, with the growing influence of multinational companies. These companies, being able to present themselves as separate, fragmented entities, are therefore able to harness this separation to their advantage.