Collective Bargaining and Within-Establishment Pay Inequality in Italy

This paper investigates the structure of within-establishment wage inequality in Italy, using linked employer-employee data (European Structure of Earnings Survey). The effect of work organi- sation practices, pay policies, collective bargaining procedures and industrial relations settings are analysed in the context of wage differentials in the firm. The main findings suggest that employees’ characteristics, work organisation practices and firm size are relevant in shaping pay inequality within establishments. Decentralised bargaining is shown to be associated with higher (unconditional) within-establishment wage dispersion; however, when checking both for worker and firm heterogeneity, the association changes sign or is not (statistically) significant. Finally, when the endogenous sorting of establishments is adequately modelled, no causal effect of decentralised bargaining on within-establishment pay inequality is detected.