This study analyses how national institutions, sectoral bargaining structures and union strategies affect working conditions and pay by comparing call centres in two liberalized service sectors: financial services and utilities. We find more segmentation and expansion of low wage work in Germany and more cooperation on high-involvement practices at workplace level in Denmark. However, outcomes are not uniform; we find differences between sectors in the use of subcontracting and union power at the workplace-level. Poor economic performance, segmentation-oriented employer strategies, declining bargaining coverage and weakened unions in Germany have undermined formal constraints on employers, whereas better outcomes in Denmark are due to a pronounced stability of the regulative and normative institutional framework. However, the Danish model is also being weakened from the margins.
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