Still accounting for difference? Cross-national comparative joint regulation and pay inequality

Abstract

The comparative industrial relations literature now displays ambivalence about the continued significance of national architectures of joint regulation for employment relations outcomes. This article considers the capacity of such architectures to account for the marked cross-national comparative variation in the extent of overall pay inequality among the nations of the established advanced industrialized world at the turn of the millennium, with a particular focus on differences in pay inequality among continental European and coordinated market economies. The article demonstrates that the architecture of joint regulation can still account for pay inequality, but that it is the sheer strength of unions or weight of joint regulation, rather than the procedural formalities often emphasized in the comparative industrial relations literature, which are of purchase.