The impact of Covid-19 on industrial relations - Third quarterly report: preliminary results

Abstract

In this report, we present preliminary results of data mining and text analysis of the newsletter outputs published by the selected stakeholders at the EU level. The goal of these quarterly reports is to address the first research question of the BARCOVID project: “How have the Covid-19 crisis, the state-imposed measures and their consequences affected the industrial relations landscape in EU27 and 5 candidate countries?” To respond to this question, text data (text extractions) were collected from social partners’ press releases and
newsletters at the EU level and then further analysed. In total, 1,428 texts were extracted from the newsletters of organizations such as WageIndicator, ETUI, Business Europe, EPSU, ETUCE and IndustriALL between March 2020 and February 2022 based on the selected list of keywords (see Annex). As already explained in the First Quarterly Report, the methodology mainly consists of the text mining techniques (using Python), supported by qualitative and quantitative text analysis of the newsletter outputs. In this report, we focus mainly on: (1) the most frequent themes and policies discussed in the newsletters (including a comparison between the first and the second wave of the pandemic); (2) the keyword associations. While looking at the most frequent topics and policies allows us to identify which have been the most relevant measures discussed in the public and political debate, the analysis of the keyword associations can inform about broader policy agenda during the pandemic.