About this project

Research indicates that trust between employer and employee representatives may have beneficial effects for and employees. One important effect isthe strengthening of collective bargaining, which is an important aim at European and national levels. There is a lack of comparative research in the EU on the mechanisms and outcomes of trust in industrial relations.

The purpose of TRUE EUROPE is to connect determinants of trust with the functioning and outcomes of trust in social partner relations. We explore and explain the bases, forms, and effects of trust at both local and sector level. The project is a comparison of three sectors (Metal, Transport and Banking and Finance) in countries with different industrial relations systems. A mixed-methods approach will be used, with qualitative studies in 8 countries (CZ, AT, IE, LT, SE, SK, RO, RS), and quantitative analyses of large datasets to produce generalizable empirical results.

The project will focus on trust in employment and industrial relations relating to the areas of A) Digitalization; B) Skills and training; C) OHS. While wages belong to core areas of bargaining, this broader focus makes it possible to study trust also in countries with underdeveloped wage bargaining, where topics beyond wages can serve as drivers of trust development and strengthen bargaining in the long run.

The project is led by Linnaeus University in Sweden and consists of senior and junior researchers across the EU, with experience of previous cooperation in researching European industrial relations. The results will be of importance to both national and EU-level social partners and policymakers. The consortium will engage social partners in cooperation and dissemination activities, enabling information exchange and mutual learning concerning how to increase and stabilize trust in industrial relations. Thereby the project promotes an understanding of potential trajectories to strengthen collective bargaining.

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Understanding what the bases and dimension of trust in relations between trade union/employee and employer representatives are. That is, to what extent are personal relations, experiences of recurrent processes of interaction, and the embeddedness of these in institutionalized arrangement, important for building and maintaining trustful interaction?

Analyzing if there are differences in the levels, bases, and dimensions of trust in different areas of the employment relation, i.e., concerning what the social partners trust each other with. We will here focus on a few important areas: A) Digitalization and new technologies concerning distance work and robotization; B) Skills and training; C) Occupational health and safety.

Explaining what the effects and functions of trust are. That is, to what extent does trust in employment relations increase performance, organizational flexibility and change, or produce other benevolent effects for employees and the organizations concerned: e.g. higher degree of loyalty and employee well-being (expressed in indicators such as lower turnover rates, sickness leave, OHS measures) and lower degrees of “precarity of work” (e.g. access to training and promotion, interest representation, employee OHS protection (Kalleberg 2018; Trif et al. 2021).

Promoting the improvement (and maintenance) of trustful relations at sectoral and local levels in Europe. For this purpose, the social partners will be engaged in searching the pathways and policy recommendations to increase the social dialogue depth in terms of content and, where relevant, increase the collective bargaining coverage.