Aliki Mouriki
in consenting to its use as workers prefer to work overtime during peak seasons and get premium
payments, rather than be compensated by time-off in lieu in slack periods.
The change of administration in 2004 marked a shift towards more business-driven legislative
initiatives. Owing to strong reactions from employers, the previous overtime regime 63 which made
recourse to overtime work easier and less costly for companies was restored, whilst the annualisation
of working time was made less dependent on unions’ consent.
6.3.3. The Industrial Relations system
Unlike the fully developed Industrial Relations system in Denmark and the Netherlands, that
has allowed the social partners to engage in the design and implementation of labour market and
welfare reforms (albeit unevenly over time and across actors), in Spain and Greece, adversarial and
confrontational industrial relations remained a key feature until the late 1980s. Following the fall of
the dictatorships, the social actors in both countries had to struggle hard to shape their organisational
identities and develop a stable industrial relations system, within a context not only of a fragile insti-
tutional environment, but also of scarcity of large firms in traditional industry sectors. 64
It was not until external pressures resulting from increased international competition and the
process of European integration (European Single Market, European Monetary Union) that a social
consultation approach developed in Spain, thus making labour market and welfare reforms possible
(Royo, 2007). A major breakthrough in Spanish industrial relations was when the social partners
agreed in 2001 on the need to reconcile flexibility and security (Valdes Dal-Re, 2004). Unions con-
ceded wage moderation and increased flexibility in exchange for employment stability, the creation of
new jobs, the reduction of the working week and their participation in the elaboration of the welfare
reform (Royo, 2007). In 2006, in an attempt to rationalise the fragmented collective bargaining system
that weakened unions’ leverage, the Interconfederal Agreement on Collective Bargaining (AINC) was signed.
This agreement stipulated that some issues should be reserved for national sectoral bargaining rather
than regional or company-level bargaining. These issues include: wage structure, occupational classi-
63 In 2000, legislation was introduced aiming at curtailing the excessive recourse to overtime work and boosting job crea-
tion, by making overtime more expensive for companies. By contrast, the previous —and current- regulations stipulate
that the first 5-8 hours of overtime work are paid at a normal hourly rate and do not require authorisation from the
Labour Inspectorate.
64 For instance, in Greece, 98% of firms employ less than 20 persons and thus —according to the legislation- are union-
free (Kouzis, 2008).
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