Abstract
Public Sector Management and Employment Relations in Europe, edited by Stephen Bach, Professor of Employment Relations at King’s College London, and Lorenzo Bordogna, Professor of Economic Sociology at the University of Milan, reflects the work of an established network of experts. They provide national studies of public sector employment relations in 12 EU Member States, aiming at producing ‘integrated accounts of public sector workforce reform’ (p. 1). Placed in the context of public management reforms since 1980, each chapter offers an in-depth analysis of the impact of the 2008 economic, financial and sovereign debt crisis on the respective country’s public sector and its industrial relations and how they emerged from the crisis.
In their introductory chapter, the editors give an overview of post-war developments of public sector employment relations against the backdrop of two prevailing models: the ‘sovereign employer’ model, characterised by special rules and institutions, which clearly differ from those of the private sector, and the ‘model employer’ approach for countries without a legal distinction between the public and private sectors, but with a public sector that is nevertheless distinct in terms of being a ‘model’ for good employment relations. After a description of two decades of reforms inspired by the so-called ‘new public management’ (NPM) approach, the editors discuss the impact of the 2008 financial and economic crisis on the public sector. They argue that the degree of financial vulnerability is a crucial variable in explanations of how governments reacted to the crisis: ‘Greece, Italy, Spain and France, followed partly by the UK, feature among the most heavily hit countries, while Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Germany are generally at the opposite end of the spectrum with the exception of 2009, when some of these countries’ positions deteriorated. Ireland and Portugal are also present amongst the most vulnerable group in both 2009 and 2012, while the remaining Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries generally indicate a stronger position, with the exception of Slovenia in 2013’ (p. 10). However, as the editors explain, other factors are also important. The subsequent country studies show such variations in greater detail.
Greece, the country most affected by the crisis, being dependent on financial support and confronted with the requirements of the Troika, is described by Christos A Ioannou not primarily as a victim of the global economic and financial crisis but as a country suffering from state clientelism and civil servants’ privileges. Despite a long history of (failed) public sector reforms, he sees ‘a rather long transition to overhaul the inefficient public sector’ of Greece (p. 54).
Oscar Molina points out that in Spain – besides the international economic and financial slump – there are also country-specific causes of the crisis, such as productivity weaknesses and the housing bubble. As the author argues, the extensive Spanish austerity measures are situated in a short-term horizon and disrupt the more fundamental reforms of public sector employment relations as intended by the 2007 General Public Employment Statute (EBEP).
According to Lorenzo Bordogna, the changes in Italian public sector industrial relations are not a consequence of the crisis and its aftermath, but – similar to some other countries – occur as repeating waves, more or less supporting or restricting employee interests, collective bargaining and trade unions. Nevertheless, the response to the crisis is affecting the public sector and its employment relations in terms of a shift from the idea of sustainable public sector reform to pay freezes and unilateralism.
Catherine Vincent reports from France a steady, albeit cautious process of public sector reforms in the years before the crisis, including for example a redesign of the wage system in 1989. These changes were only partly based on NPM ideas and trade unions were mostly involved as an accepted partner in this process. More recently, however – again similar to other countries – short-term imperatives have interfered with longer-term reforms.
In Britain, the 2008 financial crisis precipitated a deep recession. The Conservative-led coalition government chose deficit reduction as the allegedly appropriate cure, largely to be achieved through unprecedented expenditure cuts. As Stephen Bach argues convincingly, the government, in line with its political ideology, used the crisis to reduce the public sector’s size and scope, to curtail social rights and to forestall ‘concerted opposition by returning to a more Thatcherite agenda’ (p. 160) and curbing trade unions’ capacity to operate effectively. Another objective is to change the role of the state, from a ‘model employer’ to a coordinator of a network of private and voluntary sector providers.
According to Peter Leisink, in the Netherlands, NPM-inspired public sector reforms were ‘oriented at the “normalization” of public sector employment relations by bringing them more in line with private sector employment relations’ (p. 164). Until 2000 the public workforce was reduced, followed by a slight increase, which was disrupted by the economic and fiscal crisis and harsh austerity measures. Nevertheless, Dutch public sector reform was neither stopped nor redirected but has followed a similar path since the 1980s.
While the financial and sovereign debt crisis had a severe impact on the public sectors of many EU Member States, Berndt Keller considers Germany to be an exceptional case. After the crisis, the German economy recovered quickly and tax revenues were growing. However, the German public sector, too, had been exposed to retrenchment, but this occurred before and not because of the crisis, dating back to German unification, years of a sluggish economy and the requirements of the European Stability and Growth Pact. There were major changes in public sector employment relations related to the constitutional reform of federalism, the introduction of fundamentally different types of collective agreements in the public sector, a trend towards ‘limited decentralization’ of collective bargaining (p. 208), and the deterioration of working conditions, although, as in the case of retrenchment, these are not results of the crisis.
Mikkel Mailand and Nana Wesley Hansen present the cases of Denmark and Sweden, countries that have ‘some of the largest public sectors in Europe’ (p. 218). Unlike most other chapters, they provide not only a single case study but a comparison of two countries. Over the years, both countries have introduced NPM measures ‘in a moderate form’ (and also far-reaching decentralisation in wage determination), but also in these cases the ‘most important changes took place in the 1990s, not in the post-crisis period’ (p. 237).
Imre Szabó describes Hungary as being dominated by unilateral determination of public sector employment conditions and since 2006 also as marked by austerity measures. Neither NPM nor the crisis were the main cause of austerity in Hungary, although both helped to legitimise austerity measures as unavoidable. In recent years, the right-wing Orbán government has accelerated unilateral and statutory regulation of the public sector, although accompanied by a kind of quasi-bargaining within tripartite organisations with compulsory membership. That means, as the author suggests, a change towards an authoritarian variant of a ‘directing state’ or, in other words: authoritarian corporatism.
With the Czech Republic and Slovakia Marta Kahancová and Monika Martišková present two very interesting cases. The comparison shows that public sector reforms as well as changes in labour relations were to a high degree politically influenced by the respective government and the EU and depend only partly on the institutional legacy. For example, despite their common history, in the Czech Republic collective bargaining played a marginal role and major employment conditions were decided by government order, whereas in Slovakia collective bargaining has been well established.
As the title promises, the book provides a nuanced insight into the development of public service management and employment relations in Europe. Obviously, there are differences between the long-term developments as well as the countries’ and their actors’ response to the crisis. However, in most countries similarities can be detected, too, such as trends to introduce private sector management practices in the public sector, privatisation and the implementation of austerity measures. In several countries, the latter were strongly pushed within the framework of attempts to respond to the crisis. The editors conclude that in the aftermath of the crisis ‘a markedly altered context has emerged in which the public sector is no longer sheltered from internationalization, enabling shifts in bargaining power and reforms that favor employers’ and that these ‘trends are likely to remain an enduring legacy of the crisis’. On the other hand, ‘there are wide variations across the European Union linked to country-specific institutional and legal traditions and related to the financial vulnerability of each country’ (p. 25). Divergent as well as convergent developments seem to coexist.
The book has some minor weaknesses. Table 11.1, for instance, shows considerable variations between Eurostat data and national data (CSO resp. SSO) without giving a sufficient explanation (p. 278). Nevertheless, we highly recommend this volume to everyone interested in the public sector and its employment relations, in particular to all scholars, practitioners and politicians who like to think beyond ‘national boxes’ and are interested in evidence-based substantiation of their decisions on the public sector.