Industrial relations and adjustments to the crisis: A comparative micro‐statistical analysis of France and Great Britain

• Author: Philippe ASKENAZY,Christine ERHEL,Martin CHEVALIER,Thomas AMOSSÉ,Antoine REBÉRIOUX,Héloïse PETIT
• Date: 01 September 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ilr.12151
• Published date: 01 September 2019

International Labour Review, Vol. 158 (2019), No. 3

Copyright © The authors 2019

Journal compilation and translation © International Labour Organization 2019

* Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (Cnam), Laboratoire interdisciplinaire pour

la sociologie économique (Lise), Centre d’études de l’emploi et du travail (CEET), email:

thomas.amosse@lecnam.net. ** Centre Maurice Halbwachs (CMH), École normale supérieure

(ENS), Centre national de la recherche scientique (CNRS), email: philippe.askenazy@ens.fr;

*** Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques (INSEE), email: martin.

chevalier@insee.fr; **** Cnam, Laboratoire interdisciplinaire de recherches en sciences de

l’action (Lirsa), CEET, email: christine.erhel@lecnam.net (corresponding author); ***** Uni-

versity of Lille, Centre lillois d’études et de recherches sociologiques et économiques (Clersé),

CEET, email: heloise.petit@univ-lille.fr; ****** University of Paris-Diderot – Paris 7, Labora-

toire dynamiques sociales et recomposition des espaces (LADYSS), email: antoine.reberioux@

gmail.com. This research received funding from the Direction de l’animation de la recherche,

des études et des statistiques (Dares) of the French Ministry of Labour for the purposes of

the analysis of the data from the REPONSE survey. The authors would furthermore like to

thank Dares for providing access to the REPONSE survey data and the UK Data Archive,

a British body for the management of data from research in the social sciences, for provid-

ing access to the WERS survey data. They would also like to thank John Forth for his help

in using the WERS survey.

Responsibility for opinions expressed in signed articles rests solely with their authors,

and publication does not constitute an endorsement by the ILO.

Industrial relations and adjustments

to the crisis: A comparative

micro-statistical analysis

of France and Great Britain

Thomas AMOSSÉ,* Philippe ASKENAZY,** Martin CHEVALIER,***

Christine ERHEL,**** Héloïse PETIT*****

and Antoine REBÉRIOUX******

Abstract. In this comparative study, the authors analyse the relationships be-

tween industrial relations and workforce or wage adjustments in response to

the 200 7–08 crisis, using two highly comparable establishment-level surveys

conducted in Great Britain (WERS) and France (REPONSE) in 2010–12 .

Notwithstanding contextual differences in the countries’ productive systems and

the timing and impact of the crisis, the relationships between industrial relations

and adjustment strategies appear to have been similar (trade union presence

not preventing adjustments). Differences in industrial relations are therefore not

found to provide an explanation for the different modes of adjustment observed

at the macroeconomic level.

International Labour Review464

The nancial crisis of 2007 took a heavy toll on both France and the

United Kingdom, with Eurostat recording losses in gross domestic prod-

uct (GDP) of 2.9 per cent in France in 2009,1 and of 0.3 and 4.2 per cent in

the United Kingdom in 2008 and 2009, respectively. Alongside this economic

downturn, the unemployment rate (as dened by the ILO) rose sharply in both

countries: in France from 7.7 per cent in 2007 to 8.7 per cent in 2009, and in

the United Kingdom from 5.3 per cent in 2007 to 7.6 per cent in 2009 (also

according to Eurostat data). Many of the enterprises that managed to survive

did so at the cost of considerable adjustments not only to their production

but also to their structure and workforce. In making adjustment choices, en-

terprises had to consider a variety of factors, including their capital structure,

size, the degree of their market’s exposure to the crisis and their industrial re-

lations. In its simultaneity and scale, the Great Recession offers a remarkable

opportunity to gain a closer insight into the role of industrial relations in de-

termining what methods of adjustment were adopted by enterprises in differ-

ent countries. That is our objective in this article.

If we adopt the “varieties of capitalism” analytical framework (Hall and

Soskice, 2001; Amable, 2003), we might expect different reactions to the Great

Recession from the French and British economies. Indeed, according to this

approach, the British “liberal” model contrasts with French “coordinated”

capitalism. In the labour market, this contrast is seen in stronger regulation

in France, involving the State and well-established social partners, and a pre-

dominance of individual strategies in Great Britain,

2

with weaker coordination

among actors. Furthermore, if we take the hypothesis that strong industrial re-

lations hinder adjustments, in particular wage adjustments – which hurt the

core of stable wage employees – we might expect to nd this type of adjust-

ment to be less common in France than in Great Britain.

Although comparison is not aided by differences in the timing and in-

tensity of the crisis in each country, a number of differences do nonetheless

emerge. On a macroeconomic level, Great Britain appears to have experienced

relatively high internal and external exibility in terms of wages and employ-

ment, respectively (Van Wanrooy et al., 2013; Bryson and Forth, 2016). Accord-

ingly, real wages decreased during a period of high ination3 and working time

decreased alongside tottering employment.4 In France, although workforce

adjustments were prevalent, these mainly concerned temporary employment.

1 This refers to real GDP growth. In 2008, this indicator recorded a feeble growth of

0.3 per cent in France.

2 It should be noted that our study focuses on Great Britain because the WERS data

that we use are not collected across the whole of the United Kingdom. They cover England,

Scotland and Wales, but not Northern Ireland.

3 According to Eurostat, the Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices in France went from

3.2 per cent in 2008 to 0 .1 per cent in 2009, and 1.7 per cent in 2010, compared to 3.6 per cent,

2.2 per cent, and 3.3 per cent in the United Kingdom. The differential increased again in 2011

to 2.3 per cent and 4.6 per cent, respectively.

4 According to data from the OECD, average annual hours worked decreased from

1,677 hours in 200 7 to 1,625 hours in 2011.