Freer Labour Markets, More Rules? How Transnational Labour Mobility Can Strengthen Collective bargaining

This article investigates the political mechanisms whereby internationalisation through labour mobility can strengthen collective bargaining in coordinated market economies. By focusing on Switzerland as a pathway case, it shows how new political cleavages generated by internationalisation can foster the re-regulation of labour markets on the one hand, and how the alliance between trade unions and employers in sheltered sectors of the economy can increase domestic coordination to limit wage competition on the other. These two mechanisms are used to explain why the opening of the labour market for EU workers and services in Switzerland has been accompanied by a re-regulation process where collective bargaining coordination has been strengthened despite the weakness of organised labour and the resistance of export industries