According to Section 4(a) of the International Labour Organization’s resolution on the statistics of strikes, lockouts and other action due to labour disputes:
A labour dispute is a state of disagreement over a particular issue or group of issues over which there is conflict between workers and employers, or about which grievance is expressed by workers or employers, or about which workers or employers support other workers or employers in their demands or grievances.
For the purpose of Eurofound’s data collection, a labour dispute takes place in a particular context (for example, during collective bargaining, restructuring or protests against governmental policies), deals with a certain issue or set of issues (one of which is regarded as ‘the main issue’) and involves a defined set of actors (the conflict parties), such as company management, trade unions, other employee organisations and governmental institutions.
In recent years, apart from some intermittent spikes, there has been a general decrease in industrial action across the EU Member States. According to Eurofound’s 2022 report on collective labour disputes in the EU, this trend continued during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the most significant labour disputes, not surprisingly, occurring in the human health and social services sector, the education sector, and the transport and logistics sector.
Based on data collected in 2018–2019 during the piloting of its Industrial Action Monitor database, Eurofound conducted a cluster analysis to classify industrial action in Europe into five categories:
In terms of specific issues, problems over pay accounted for over 40% of disputes, employment problems accounted for 20%, other aspects of working conditions accounted for 16% and protests accounted for 13%. Noting the lack of complete data on industrial action in Europe, the analysis points to a need for the systematic collection of empirical evidence in the future to provide a sound basis for comparative analysis.
The analysis also found that there is considerable variation between countries. In most of the countries, the labour disputes are related to collective bargaining, for example, in Denmark and Norway (100%), Spain and Sweden (75%), Slovenia (71%) and Luxembourg (67%). In some other countries, grievances over public policies predominate, for example, in Greece (58%), and Estonia and Bulgaria (50%). In two countries, labour disputes related to restructuring represent a significant part of the total proportion of disputes: France (33%) and Italy (31%).
Eurofound’s report draws attention to the extent to which the existing literature on industrial action in Europe is based on incomplete data. It points to the need for the systematic collection of empirical evidence in the future to provide a basis for comparative analysis. The collection of data should be based on clear definitions agreed at international level to ensure national comparability. Data should be collected regularly to enable longitudinal analysis.
The data collected should also be sufficiently detailed to enable comparison across a number of dimensions – agreed through discussions with relevant stakeholders – such as sector, occupation/type of employment, triggering issue, collective bargaining context and gender of the workers involved. Ideally, it should be possible to collate this information with other data to calculate the economic costs of disputes, to both employers and workers.
Collective industrial relations ; EU system of industrial relations ; fundamental rights ; right to strike ; strike action at EU level ; transnational industrial action
Eurofound (2022), Labour disputes, European Industrial Relations Dictionary, Dublin
https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/en/european-industrial-relations-dictionary/labour-disputes