Decentralised Wage Setting - A Study of the Outcomes of Collective Bargaining Reform in the...

Decentralised Wage Setting - A Study of the Outcomes of Collective Bargaining Reform in the Civil Services in Australia, Sweden and the UK, by K.A. Bender and R.F. Elliot (Ashgate Publishing, Aldershot, 2003) pp. 157

During the last decade several countries moved their public service towards

decentralised structures and decentralised pay systems. The motivation and the impact of decentralisation of pay for civil servants is an issue of obvious interest. By combining a detailed description of changes in the organisational structure with personnel records of civil servants, Bender and Elliot seek to assess the impact of these changes. The result provides an analysis of the initial impacts of decentralisation on the pay of civil servants in Australia, Sweden and UK.

The setting is the early 1990s pay reforms in the civil services in these countries, which all aimed to decentralise pay bargaining, tie pay to performance and individualise pay. The question addressed is the outcome that decentralisation had on pay for civil servants, in terms of the inequality of pay both within and between different departments, agencies and ministries. Individual civil service pay records from each country are analysed in order to distinguish the empirical effects of pay reforms, where information on the earnings and characteristics of employees in the Civil Services was obtained for 2 years, 1990 (1993 for Sweden) and 1996.