Employers, unions and the state: The resurgence of concertation in Italy?

A Long Goodbye to Bismarck? : The Politics of Welfare Reform in Continental Europe

“…bribe-city) -the partly technocratic cabinet led by the socialist Amato revived the season of tripartite agreements (Regini and Regalia 1997) signing an important social pact on labor cost: the automatic indexation of wages to prices was eliminated, and this represented an important step that would contribute to reduce inflation rates in the following years (from 5 percent to 1.9 percent between 1992 and 1997). This agreement was also decisive as it allowed the government to focus on fiscal recovery and consolidation that, after the inclusion of the convergence criteria in the Maastricht Treaty and the definition of the path towards the monetary union, could no longer be avoided.…”

“…The most prominent example of social concertation is the Italian pension pact negotiated in 1995 by the center-Left government with the major three union confederations, but without employer participation (Regini and Regalia 1997). The Italian pensions were among the most expensive and generous in Europe, having contributed substantially to Italy's huge public debt (Ferrera and Gualmini 2000).…”

The end of national policy concertation? Western Europe since the Single European Act

“…This agreement also further rationalised industrial relations and contained a provision for two consultative meetings per year on economic policy along the lines of the German Concerted Action of the 1970s. In 1994 the conservative Berlusconi government was forced to sign an agreement with the trade unions on pension reform, having failed unilaterally to impose one, and a more far-reaching agreement on pensions was reached with the technocratic Dini government in May 1995 (Compston 1995b, pp.319-322;ILO 1995, pp.408-409;EIRR 1992, No.216, p.15;1993, No.236, pp.15-19;1996 No.264, pp.31-34;Regini and Regalia 1997). In September 1996, following the election of a centre-left government earlier in the same year, a tripartite employment pact was signed which included provisions on vocational training and education, labour market reform, and development in the South (EIRR 1996 No.275, pp.17-19).…”

Collective Bargaining and Social Pacts: Greece in Comparative Perspective

“…Moreover, the mechanisms employed to carry out reform have differed, in turn affecting the outcome. Not only does coordinated collective bargaining persist in many countries (Golden et al, 1999), but there was a widespread revival of concertation and social pacts in the 1990s as the basis for social and economic reforms (Ebbinghaus and Hassel, 2000;Regini and Regalia, 1997;Rhodes, 1997;Royo, 2002).…”