ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the Europeanisation of wage bargaining coordination, that is, on non-market institutions of wage formation in Europe that have emerged across and beyond national borders. It explores Europeanisation processes in wage bargaining coordination including trade union initiatives to create and sustain norms and practices of transnational wage coordination; an endeavour that was intensified in the 1990s to prevent ruinous wage competition in view of the forthcoming Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). The chapter discusses the role of power relations and conflicts within European social and symbolic space. It identifies two lines of conflict over the issue of European wage coordination: class conflicts and centre-periphery conflicts. These two conflict lines differ in terms of the degree of their transnational and supranational institutionalisation. The chapter argues that institutionalisation processes in European wage coordination can only be understood by taking into account societal dynamics, conflicts and power relations in transnational European space.
