ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses regional Employers' Organizations (EOs), which have received little attention to date. Quebec's specific institutional context favours a more varied and organized collective action by employers at different levels of the industrial relations system. In this territory where the unionization rate is higher than in other Canadian provinces, where collective bargaining is bipartite and decentralized, where labour regulation is more developed and where there are sectoral or provincial consultative institutions, we observe that EOs are more active and seek to acquire greater influence over the rules related to employment. By revealing the various forms, levels of representation and different roles of these organizations, our findings illustrate to what extent regional EOs can be leading actors when the institutional context encourages participation, indeed experimentation, by social actors on issues related to economic development, to employment or labour.
