ABSTRACT
The authors examine Spain and France, where the state intervened to reform collective bargaining systems through legal regulation. French and Spanish policymakers used the same rhetoric to justify the reforms: the alleged rigidity of their labour markets and collective bargaining systems. Nevertheless, several differences are noticed, especially regarding the strategies of social partners. The idea of decentralisation as a unidirectional and comprehensive process is challenged when examining both countries. In France, the concept of articulation over that of determination is preferred when referring to the collective bargaining decentralisation process. In Spain, the effect of the reforms has been the creation of a new pattern of fragmentation in industrial relations rather than a clearly decentralised collective bargaining system.
