The variable geometry of bargaining: implementing unions' strategies on remote work in Italy

Abstract

The spreading of remote work in Italy following the Coronavirus pandemic has brought numerous challenges that have prompted trade unions to include this form of work as a matter of collective bargaining. The article aims to study unions' everyday bargaining practices, by investigating how the main union guide-lines on remote work have been implemented during the pandemic. Based on empirical data collected in Veneto and starting from the perspective of union officials and representatives, the article sheds light on unions' bargaining practices concerning access to remote work, remote workers' income, working time, and workloads. The analysis permits us to stress that union practitioners adapt the strategies of their union organisations to the specific sectors and workplaces in which they are embedded, according to the specific needs of the workforce they represent and to how they perceive their own bargaining power. We argue that the different variables - geographical level, sector, previous bargaining experience, unionists' ideological position, perception of their own bargaining power - intersect with each other, producing a variable geometry of bargaining practices with regard to remote work.