Wage bargaining and industrial relations under the single European currency. The problem of the relationships between EMU and non-EMU countries

It is often pointed out that the creation of the single European market represents in itself a challenge for national European trade unions and industrial relations systems. A challenge for what, from Commons on, is considered the main task of trade union action: that is, to "take wages out of competition" and to offer workers a shelter against "the increased competitive menace" .

To these challenges, the process towards the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and the creation of a single European currency, as it has been envisaged by the Maastricht Treaty, will add new, specific effects. Indeed, this is already occurring, as 1999 gets closer and closer, with the certainty that, despite the severe and politically divisive budget policies that all European governments are forced to adopt, only a small group of countries will qualify from the beginning for the third stage, opening up the problem of the relationships between EMU and non-EMU countries.

In the following pages I will consider the specific problems implied by EMU for trade union action. They can be divided into two groups: one is related to the process, now underway, conducive to the creation of the single currency itself, and derives from the costs of meeting the Maastricht requirements (section 2); the second is connected with the consequences of EMU once the process has been accomplished and the single currency established, and with the new scenario that will then be open to economic and social actors (section 3 and 4).