Multi‐employer collective bargaining in liberal market economies: Reasons for survival and reinvigoration

This article examines the preconditions for successful implementation of multi‐employer collective bargaining in countries lacking supportive institutions. It presents cases from the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia, three liberal market economies where multi‐employer bargaining has either survived in some sectors or where there have been recent attempts to strengthen it. The findings highlight the importance of both “regulatory” institutions (e.g. laws) and “cognitive” institutions (e.g. social norms) to ensure that, first, employment relations actors have the power and resources to support multi‐employer bargaining in practice and, second, workers and employers accept this form of wage‐setting as legitimate.