Industrial relations in the agricultural sector

The agricultural sector creates specific problems for industrial relations - the small scale of production units, for example, or the high level of seasonal labour. Here we examine how and to what extent these specific problems make industrial relations in agriculture in Austria differ from the national norm, looking at the bargaining and co-determination system, the actors involved and current issues and problems in 2001.

Understood in the broad sense (ie agriculture, hunting, forestry, and fishing), the agricultural sector had 45,191 employees in 1999, which represented about 1.6% of Austria's total number of employees. The sector's employment structure is characterised by: an above-average share of blue-collar workers (80% compared with 48% for the whole Austrian economy), a below-average share of female employment (34%, compared with 45% for the whole economy); and a notable proportion of seasonal labour (47% of the sector's employees).

As far as the agricultural sector is concerned, it is hard to speak of companies. There are many small-scale farmers whose main occupation is outside the sector. This means that they run their farm only part time as an additional, minor source of income. In 1999, the sector recorded 217,508 farms, of which 36.9% were full-time farms, 59.5% were small-scale farms and 3.6% were farms owned by legal entities (ie "manor houses" and cooperatives).

From an industrial relations perspective, the most important juridical differentiation is between "farmsteads owned by peasants" (bäuerliche Betriebe) and the other types of farms. In contrast to "manor houses" (Gutsbetriebe), farmsteads are defined by law as family undertakings where the owner and his family are directly engaged in the production process. Management and ownership also coincides, in that there are no employed managers. If farmsteads have employees, they usually live together with the owning family in one and the same household. Some 61% of the employees permanently working in agriculture are employed by "manor houses". Conversely, most of the seasonal labour force works for farmsteads.

Collective bargaining and co-determination

Austria's Constitution equips the federal states (Länder) with a particularly strong regulatory position in relation to the central state, as far as agriculture is concerned. This includes labour law. Accordingly, the central state is authorised only to set framework regulations, whereas detailed regulation is the competence of the Länder. As a consequence, agricultural labour law resembles the federal regulations for other sectors. Nevertheless, there are also some variations across the distinct Länder.

Multi-employer agreements prevail in the agricultural sector. No national federal agreement exists and, for most of the Länder, collective agreements are concluded separately. A few agreements are negotiated jointly on behalf of three Länder. There are only two single-employer settlements: one relates to the City of Vienna, which runs agricultural undertakings; and the second to the Austrian federal forestry company (Österreichische Bundesforste AG). This state-owned company was transformed from an authority into a stock company in 1997. In the course of this transformation, the right to conclude collective agreements was attributed to the company. Due to the predominance of multi-employer bargaining, the structure of the bargaining system mainly echoes the domain demarcations of the sector's trade unions and employers' associations (see below). As regards the employers, distinct collective agreements are concluded for the "manor houses" and the other employers. In the case of the employees, separate agreements are fixed for blue-collar workers and white-collar workers. The collective agreements cover both seasonal and permanent employment. The agreements for the "manor houses" tend to be more favourable for the employees than the agreements for the other employers. Overall, more than 15 collective agreements exist in the sector. Due to the high level of employer density, collective bargaining coverage is almost 100%.

By contrast, works council presence is very weak. This is because of the very large number of small production units which do not reach the minimum workforce-size threshold of five employees required for establishing a works council. Therefore, works councils are found only in the few large manor houses and cooperatives.

The actors

On the side of the agricultural employees, the two principal actors are the blue-collar Agriculture and Food-processing Union (Gewerkschaft Agrar-Nahrung-Genuß, ANG), and the Union of Salaried Employees (Gewerkschaft der Privatangestellten, GPA) which conduct multi-employer bargaining for the blue-collar workers and the white-collar workers respectively. There is also a minor role for the Chamber for Agricultural Blue-Collar Workers of Lower Austria (Niederösterreichische Landarbeiterkammer) and the Union of Public Employees (Gewerkschaft Öffentlicher Dienst, GÖD). For historical reasons, the Chamber - of which membership is obligatory and which has close links with ANG in terms of shared personnel - concludes the collective agreement for the blue-collar workers employed by farmsteads in Lower Austria. GÖD is the bargaining partner of Österreichische Bundesforste AG. Before its transformation into a stock company, Österreichische Bundesforste was in the public sector, with the result that its employees had civil servant status. Hence, GÖD is the organisation's traditional trade union counterpart. Thus, the bargaining domains of the various unions represented in the sector are complementary. Cooperation characterises their relationship all the more since they are all members of the Austrian Union Federation (Österreichischer Gewerkschaftsbund, ÖGB). The sector's unionisation rate is around 50%, with blue-collar workers more highly unionised (54%) than white-collar workers (28%).

There are two types of employers' associations in agriculture: the Chambers of Agriculture (Landwirtschaftskammern, LWK), which are based on obligatory membership; and voluntary associations. Their respective national peak associations are the Standing Committee of the Presidents of the Austrian Chambers of Agriculture (Präsidentenkonferenz der Landwirtschaftskammern, PKLWK) and the Standing Committee of the Presidents of the Employers' Associations of Agriculture (Obmännerkonferenz der Arbeitgeberverbände der Land- und Forstwirtschaft in Österreich, OALF). Collective bargaining is conducted by the Länder affiliates of these peak organisations. Due to the personnel links between the Chambers and the voluntary associations, their bargaining domains are defined in a complementary way, although there is no general principle for demarcating these domains. The Chambers negotiate mainly for those Länder (ie Tyrol and Vorarlberg), where there is no voluntary employers' association. For the other Länder, the Chambers negotiate collective agreements in exceptional cases for certain categories of employees. The Chambers' density is 100%, as a result of obligatory membership, and OALF's density is around 95%, in terms of the proportion of the sector's employees employed by its members.

Issues and problems

The agricultural sector's main problem is its significant economic decline, manifested in the decrease of its share in Austria's total employment (paid employment and self-employment) from 6.0% in 1991 to 4.1% in 1999. According to the trade unions, the decline in the number of employees has resulted in a growing workload in the context of a traditional low-wage sector. On average, annual gross pay of the sector's employees was only 61% of the national average in 1999. The large number of seasonal workers who are employed merely for short-term work on a certain harvest makes any improvement of labour standards difficult. Another property of the sector is the predominance of male employment. At 34%, the share of female employment in the sector's total employment is clearly below the corresponding figure for Austria as a whole (45%). Likewise, gender-related pay differentials are more pronounced in the agricultural sector than they are in Austria in general (AT0103209F). In 1999, a female employee in the sector earned 58% of the pay of her male colleagues on average, compared with 61% in the whole economy.

Commentary

The agricultural sector is distinct in many respects - namely the legal framework for industrial relations, labour market structures and economic problems. These properties tend to create special difficulties for collective labour market regulation. Interestingly, these difficulties are evident only in the terms of employment, which are less favourable to the employees than is the standard in Austria. This pattern also holds true for the comparative position of female employment. At the same time, however, these difficulties do not translate into a weakening of the collective institutions: union density, employer density and collective bargaining coverage are not below the level for the country as a whole. (Franz Traxler, University of Vienna)