Eurofound collective agreements database: summary of national databases and archives

Abstract

At the request of the European Parliament and European Commission, the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound) is developing an EU-wide database on collectively agreed minimum wage rates applicable to a selection of low- (and medium-) paid jobs. This will result in a representative, comparable and EU-wide database that will be capable of tracking pay in collective agreements (‘CAs’) over time. Eurofound has contracted the WageIndicator Foundation and the Central European Labour Studies Institute (CELSI) to support the development of the database, which includes the development of a conceptual and measurement framework, carried out in work package 1 of this contract.

This working paper is an internal deliverable for work package 2 of the Eurofound pilot project ‘Role of the minimum wage in establishing the Universal Labour Guarantee’. The working paper reports on the mapping of national registries maintaining archives of collective bargaining agreement (CBA) data, including full texts and metadata. Throughout the duration of the project, new information is registered in a regularly updated document. A consolidated version of the document will be published at the end of the project to ensure access to the most up-to-date information. The living document contains the most detailed overview of the information maintained by the national registries.

Between April and June 2021, researchers from the WageIndicator Foundation and CELSI collected publicly available information about national registries maintaining archives of CBAs. This inventory included an exploration of existing national legislation surrounding the mandatory registration of CBAs, the existence of CBA archives, whether they collect all or part of the CBAs in the country, and the accessibility of full texts and of metadata.