Collective bargaining beyond pay: An analysis of collective agreements in selected low-paid sectors
Pubblicato: 19 December 2025
This report analyses and compares the content of 94 collective agreements in three low-paid sectors – manufacture of food, leather, textiles and clothes; residential and social care; and retail – across 11 EU Member States and Norway. The report examines how collective bargaining regulates working conditions beyond wages and how these topics have evolved between 2015 and 2022. The findings show 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, agreements also provide non-monetary benefits and opportunities for career advancement. The report finds that collective agreements focus increasingly on the well-being of employees, work–life balance or special protection for both younger and older workers.
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Collective bargaining remains central to fair labour relations in the EU. Strengthening social partners’ capacity to negotiate collective agreements is a key lever for improving job quality in Europe’s low-paid sectors.
While wages and remuneration appear in all examined agreements, collective agreements cover far more than pay. Allowances, bonuses, working time and labour relations are among the most common clauses, reflecting the broad scope of collective bargaining.
Leave, training and occupational safety and health (OSH) remain widely covered in collective agreements, while newer themes such as work–life balance, well-being of employees and protection of vulnerable groups, as well as flexibility of working time and work organisation, continue to be addressed.
Collective agreements are relatively stable over time with evidence of incremental change. Realising the full potential of collective bargaining will mean continuing to address new risks and priorities in the labour market.
Earnings is the issue addressed most across all seven dimensions of job quality and work intensity the least, highlighting uneven attention. Collective agreements can, however, support improvements across all dimensions of job quality.
Collective agreements are usually associated with the setting of pay rates. However, collective bargaining addresses issues far beyond pay. This report analyses and compares the content of 94 collective agreements across three low-wage sectors (manufacture of food, leather, textiles and clothes; residential and social care; retail) in 11 EU Member States and Norway. The research builds on Eurofound’s database of collective agreements related to low-paid workers. Agreements have been extracted from the database with the aim of identifying which topics ‘beyond pay’ are addressed and to compare how they have developed over time (from 2015 to 2022). The report also investigates the role of collective bargaining as a regulatory mechanism – beyond legislation – that shapes and improves the job quality of workers.
European policy frameworks consistently recognise social dialogue and collective bargaining as key elements of the European social model. The European Pillar of Social Rights highlights the role of the social partners and encourages them to negotiate and conclude collective agreements. In addition, the directive on adequate minimum wages promotes collective bargaining in wage-setting. The 2023 proposal for a Council recommendation on strengthening social dialogue across the EU highlights that collective bargaining is relevant for preventing labour conflicts, improving wages and working conditions, and reducing wage inequality. Collective bargaining can also help employees and businesses to adapt to the changing world of work: in 2025, the European Commission and the European cross-industry social partners signed a new pact for European social dialogue. One of the key measures agreed as part of the pact was the quality jobs roadmap.
Wages, allowances and bonuses, and training are predominantly regulated through collective bargaining, or a combination of legislation and collective bargaining, across all Member States analysed and Norway. Occupational safety and health, social protection and terms of employment are primarily regulated through labour legislation.
With regard to the shares of main topics among the collective agreements examined, clauses on wages are found in all (94) of the agreements; clauses on allowances and bonuses and clauses on leave are found in 97.9 % (92) of the agreements; clauses on working time are found in 95.7 % (90) of the agreements; and clauses on terms of collective agreements and labour relations are found in 94.7 % (89) and 93.6 % (88) of the agreements, respectively.
Despite the topic of wages being found in all agreements, it is not the most frequently mentioned topic in agreements. When the number of references per main topic are counted, across the 94 collective agreements examined, clauses on allowances and bonuses were the most frequent, followed by clauses regulating working time. Labour relations was the third most frequent category.
All types of bonuses were found in collective agreements. In addition, a large category of country-, sector- or agreement-specific allowances indicates that collective bargaining can further improve the remuneration of workers in low-paid sectors.
Training and skills development is dealt with in a more dynamic way than other topics. Clauses related to training are changing more than those related to other topics and are the most inclusive of new themes, with the largest share of new clauses (22 %). However, specific references to upskilling and reskilling are rare.
The smallest number of clauses coded as part of the exercise refer to work organisation and work transitions (e.g. technological, digital or just/green transitions). However, this small number of references is spread across almost 63 % of the agreements. There is almost no evidence of specific green and just transition clauses.
Several new emerging themes are apparent: while collective agreements continue to address flexibility of working time and work organisation, they also compensate for irregularity of work and atypical working hours, referencing the well-being of employees. New clauses address work–life balance across all three low-paid sectors and give special protection to both younger and older workers.
There are large differences between countries. Countries with well-developed industrial relations systems tend to have longer, more content-rich collective agreements than countries with less-developed industrial relations systems.
At sector level, some countries (Croatia, Czechia, Slovakia) have more generalised collective agreements, while others (Austria, Finland, France, Norway, Portugal, Spain) have well-developed and detailed agreements.
Collective agreements are relatively stable over time, with evidence of incremental change. Comparing the collective agreements at two points in time (2015 and 2022), it can be seen that 63 % of all clauses analysed did not change their meaning or form. Another 18 % did change and 12 % were new, compared with the earlier versions of the collective agreements. About 7 % of clauses were not relevant for comparison. However, there are significant country variations in how collective agreements change over time.
When clauses found in collective agreements are matched to the seven dimensions of job quality identified in Eurofound’s conceptual framework of job quality, the dimension ‘work intensity’ is the least prevalent in agreements. The dimension ‘earnings’, which covers wages and allowances and bonuses, is the job quality dimension most addressed.
Collective bargaining plays an important role in sectors with a large share of low-paid workers. Policymakers should focus on strengthening the capacities of the social partners in these sectors.
As a voluntary mechanism, collective bargaining can regulate any topic that the social partners agree to address. Many collective agreements are full of rich country- or sector-specific details. Others closely follow legal regulations and some focus on wages only. The social partners should be encouraged to use the potential of collective bargaining and address new risks and priorities for the labour market, such as the digital transition, climate change adaptation or the psychosocial health of workers.
The social partners can promote collective bargaining by increasing the transparency of negotiated outcomes in their sectors or companies. The texts of collective agreements should be accessible to all workers (including digitally) and provided in a full, consolidated version. The language used in collective agreements could be less legal, more reader-friendly and more inclusive.
Any meaningful comparison of collective agreements across multiple Member States requires the establishment of an EU-wide database of collective agreements. AI can be used to support automated categorisation of collective agreements.
Measures to improve job quality should consider collective bargaining an important mechanism for negotiating quality jobs. The social partners can use job quality frameworks as a guiding tool and include dimensions of job quality in their bargaining agenda, focusing on those dimensions that are currently rarely covered in collective agreements, such as work intensity or the social environment.
Questa sezione fornisce informazioni sui dati contenuti in questa pubblicazione.
List of tables
Table 1: Summary of the research questions
Table 2: Low-paid sectors of interest selected from the pilot project database
Table 3: Industrial democracy clusters in the EU-27 (2008–2021)
Table 4: Number of coded collective agreements per sector, compared with the overall available number of collective agreements in the Minimum Wage Database
Table 5: Examples of descriptive/declarative and substantive/transformative clauses
Table 6: Interplay between collective bargaining and legislation with regard to selected topics
Table 7: Number of coded clauses per country
Table 8: Three most frequent topics (level 1 codes) per country
Table 9: Number of changes in collective agreements by country
Table 10: Number of changes in collective agreements by sector
Table 11: Number and proportion of clauses coded under ‘terms of collective agreements’
Table 12: Number and proportion of clauses coded under ‘terms of employment’
Table 13: Number and proportion of clauses coded under ‘wages and remuneration’
Table 14: Number and proportion of clauses coded under ‘allowances and bonuses’
Table 15: Number and proportion of clauses coded under ‘working time’
Table 16: Number and proportion of clauses coded under ‘leave’
Table 17: Number and proportion of clauses coded under ‘OSH’
Table 18: Number and proportion of clauses coded under ‘social protection and social security’
Table 19: Number and proportion of clauses coded under ‘work organisation and work transitions’
Table 20: Number and proportion of clauses coded under ‘work environment’
Table 21: Number and proportion of clauses coded under ‘training’
Table 22: Number and proportion of clauses coded under ‘labour relations’
Table 23: Number and proportion of clauses coded under ‘other’
Table 24: Summary overview of missing clauses (comparison between 2015 and 2022 or the closest years available)
Table 25: Allowances and bonuses in collective agreements in the three low-paid sectors of interest
Table 26: Most frequent other allowances found in collective agreements
Table 27: New emerging themes in clauses on allowances and bonuses
Table 28: High-earning worker profile in the highest salary group – meat industry (Finland)
Table 29: High-earning worker profile in the lowest salary group – retail sector (Slovakia)
Table 30: Working time in collective agreements in the three low-paid sectors of interest
Table 31: Other working time-related provisions found in collective agreements
Table 32: New emerging themes in clauses on working time
Table 33: Comparison of paid leave provisions found in two collective agreements
Table 34: Clauses on training and skills development in collective agreements in the three low-paid sectors of interest
Table 35: New emerging themes in clauses on training
Table 36: OSH clauses in collective agreements in the three low-paid sectors of interest
Table 37: New emerging themes in OSH
Table A1: Number of coded clauses per agreement, sector and country with bargaining level and estimated coverage
Table A2: Scatter plots on the relationship between the overall number of coded clauses and the number of clauses per each main code
Table A3: List of contributors from the Network of Eurofound Correspondents
List of figures
Figure 1: Collective bargaining coverage rates and trade union density rates in selected Member States and Norway
Figure 2: Main topics analysed in collective agreements (level 1 codes)
Figure 3: Stages of the project
Figure 4: Number of topics by form of regulation and country
Figure 5: Number of coded clauses per country and average number of clauses per agreement
Figure 6: Number of coded clauses per country and sector
Figure 7: Share of coded clauses per country and sector (%)
Figure 8: Number of coded clauses by main topic (level 1)
Figure 9: Ranking of topics by the average of the country averages for references in 94 agreements
Figure 10: Number of coded clauses per main topic and sector
Figure 11: Relationship between the total number of clauses and the number of clauses coded as (a) allowances and bonuses and (b) work environment
Figure 12: Proportions of (a) clauses coded as descriptive or substantive (total) and (b) clauses that are new, changed or not changed (total) (%)
Figure 13: Proportion of descriptive/substantive clauses grouped by their main topic (%)
Figure 14: Number of coded clauses at all category levels (part 1)
Figure 15: Number of coded clauses at all category levels (part 2)
Figure 16: Shares of clause types by country
Figure 17: Share of clauses per main topic in the manufacture of FLTC sector (%)
Figure 18: Share of clauses per main topic in the residential and social care sector (%)
Figure 19: Share of clauses per main topic in the retail sector (%)
Figure 20: Types of clauses by sector
Figure 21: Terms of collective agreements – (a) proportions of clauses coded as descriptive or substantive and (b) proportions of clauses that are new, changed or not changed (%)
Figure 22: Terms of employment – (a) proportions of clauses coded as descriptive or substantive and (b) proportions of clauses that are new, changed or not changed (%)
Figure 23: Wages and remuneration – (a) proportions of clauses coded as descriptive or substantive and (b) proportions of clauses that are new, changed or not changed (%)
Figure 24: Allowances and bonuses – (a) proportions of clauses coded as descriptive or substantive and (b) proportions of clauses that are new, changed or not changed (%)
Figure 25: Working time – (a) proportions of clauses coded as descriptive or substantive and (b) proportions of clauses that are new, changed or not changed (%)
Figure 26: Leave – (a) proportions of clauses coded as descriptive or substantive and (b) proportions of clauses that are new, changed or not changed (%)
Figure 27: OSH – (a) proportions of clauses coded as descriptive or substantive and (b) proportions of clauses that are new, changed or not changed (%)
Figure 28: Social protection and social security – (a) proportions of clauses coded as descriptive or substantive and (b) proportions of clauses that are new, changed or not changed (%)
Figure 29: Work organisation and work transitions – (a) proportions of clauses coded as descriptive or substantive and (b) proportions of clauses that are new, changed or not changed (%)
Figure 30: Work environment – (a) proportions of clauses coded as descriptive or substantive and (b) proportions of clauses that are new, changed or not changed (%)
Figure 31: Training – (a) proportions of clauses coded as descriptive or substantive and (b) proportions of clauses that are new, changed or not changed (%)
Figure 32: Labour relations – (a) proportions of clauses coded as descriptive or substantive and (b) proportions of clauses that are new, changed or not changed (%)
Figure 33: Other – (a) proportions of clauses coded as descriptive or substantive and (b) proportions of clauses that are new, changed or not changed (%)
Figure 34: Eurofound’s seven dimensions of job quality with the indicators composing each dimension and corresponding codes from the CBBP project
Figure A1: Number of clauses by collective agreement
Figure A2: Number of clauses coded under level 1 main topics in Austria
Figure A3: Number of clauses coded under level 1 main topics in Belgium
Figure A4: Number of clauses coded under level 1 main topics in Croatia
Figure A5: Number of clauses coded under level 1 main topics in Czechia
Figure A6: Number of clauses coded under level 1 main topics in Finland
Figure A7: Number of clauses coded under level 1 main topics in France
Figure A8: Number of clauses coded under level 1 main topics in Italy
Figure A9: Number of clauses coded under level 1 main topics in the Netherlands
Figure A10: Number of clauses coded under level 1 main topics in Norway
Figure A11: Number of clauses coded under level 1 main topics in Portugal
Figure A12: Number of clauses coded under level 1 main topics in Slovakia
Figure A13: Number of clauses coded under level 1 main topics in Spain
Eurofound raccomanda di citare questa pubblicazione nel seguente modo.
Eurofound (2025), Collective bargaining beyond pay: An analysis of collective agreements in selected low-paid sectors, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg.
