The relationship between legislation and the collective agreement in labour law. Some European options

• Author: Raluca Dimitriu
• Position: Department of Law, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Romania, raluca.dimitriu@cig.ase.ro.
• Pages: 37-48

The relationship between legislation and the collective agreement

in labour law. Some European options

Professor Raluca DIMITRIU1

Abstract

Is the intervention of the state in regula ting collective labour relations a useful

and beneficial tool, or rather a discouraging one? This is a long time concern of the

doctrine, of the law-makers a nd of the practice of European industr ial r elations. And, on

the background of different trad itions a nd goals, the options a re most diverse. Almost

everywhere, the economic crisis and the digita lisation ha ve a ltered the ratio of what the

legislator has assumed and what is left to the social partner s to r egulate. Sometimes, the

state ha s withdra wn to a certain extent from the process. F reed from constra ints, the social

partner s have become more r esponsible than in the previous decade for the concr ete way of

negotiating a nd regulating collective relations. In other cases, the legisla tor felt the need to

intervene more forcefully to offset the fragility of social dialogue. The paper aims to

present some of the European options in the field and to place the experience of the

Romanian law in context.

Keywords: labour law, collective agr eement, legislation, industr ial relations.

JEL Classification: K31, K33

1. Introduction

A first question that can be addressed concerns the purpose of the

legislative intervention itself: why would the law intervene in the field of collective

relations? There are, in principle, two levels where the impact of legislative

intervention can be felt:

First, there is a procedural level: the intervention of the legislator in the

sphere of collective relations, in order to regulate them, especially by procedural

rules, establishing conditions of representativeness, terms, stages, outcomes etc.

From this point of view, the regulation of collective relations would aim at

promoting trade union activity, limiting industrial conflicts and promoting trade

union democracy.2

The law and collective agreements are often mutually reinforcing, and

from this point of view, European experiences range from ensuring the full

freedom of the social partners, which they will use to set their own rules (self-

regulation) – to deep legislative intervention, determining the limits and content of

the social dialogue. Similarly, the law can support the centralization of collective

1 Raluca Dimitriu – Department of Law, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Romania,

raluca.dimitriu@cig.ase.ro.

2 Dau-Schmidt, Kenneth Glenn, Regulating Unions a nd Collective Barga ining, in K. Dau-Schmidt, S.

Harris and O. Lobel (eds.), “Labor and Employment Law an d Economics”, E dward Elgar

Publishing, 2009, p. 96.