Collective bargaining beyond pay: An analysis of collective agreements in selected low-paid sectors

Sedláková, Mária

Overview

Research report

Forthcoming

Collective bargaining beyond pay: An analysis of collective agreements in selected low-paid sectors

Expected publication: December 2025

Mária Sedláková

Agreements

Collective bargaining

This report analyses and compares the content of 98 collective agreements across three low-wage sectors in 12 EU Member States. The project builds on Eurofound’s database of collective agreements related to low-paid workers, collected for the Agency’s pilot project on minimum wages. Following a qualitative analysis of the content in the collective agreements, over 14,000 clauses were coded, analysed and grouped into key topics. The report examines how these topics have developed over time. Preliminary findings indicate that collective agreements improve the job quality of workers in low-paid sectors beyond their pay. In addition to securing higher earnings, through additional bonuses and allowances for example, these agreements also provide non-monetary benefits and opportunities for career advancement, including upskilling and reskilling initiatives.

Research report

26 January 2024

Minimum wages for low-paid workers in collective agreements

In this pilot project, Eurofound successfully established the feasibility of, and piloted, an EU-wide database of minimum pay rates contained in collective agreements related to low-paid workers. A conceptual and measurement framework was devised, a total of 692 collective agreements – related to 24 low-paid sectors of interest – were selected to be ‘fully coded’ and representative data on negotiated minimum pay were compiled for 24 EU Member States. Based on more than 3,202 renewal texts, time series of collectively agreed minimum rates were created from 2015 to 2022 for 19 countries. This is the first time that an EU-wide data collection has provided comparative time series on negotiated pay. Key findings are is that in some countries outdated agreements contain rates below the applicable statutory minima, and that the potential of collective agreements to regulate pay generally or for employees earning higher wages than the minimum pay is not always fully capitalised on.

See also the national country reports (Eurofound papers), providing meta-data for the data collection, at the end of this web page.