L'articulation des négociations de branche et d'entreprise dans la détermination des salaires

The joint increase in firm-level and branch-level collective bargaining over the past decades in France has brought back the debate over the potential complementarity or the substitution effect between the two bargaining levels. In this article we study how the two bargaining levels are associated at the establishment level in France in the wage determination process. Our study is based on the 2004-2005 Reponse survey (that provides information on the role given to branch level bargaining and the actual process of negotiations inside the establishment) and on two case studies: one in the automotive sector, the other in call centres. Three establishment profiles are defined: the first two emphasise one bargaining level rather than the other and the third one is characterised by the weakness of negotiations, whatever the level. Whatever the profile, our analysis shows that the content of negotiations remains different at each bargaining level - the firm level being more focused on wage determination and the branch level on wage regulation. Besides these key levels of collective bargaining, we stress the growing influence in wage determination of individual performance interviews, inside the firm, and of third parties such as the prime contractor or the parent company, outside the firm.