Finnish Wage Bargaining — Actual Behaviour and Preferences

Wage changes at the industry level are examined and it is shown that differences in wage increases at the industry level are linked to the level at which bargaining on wages takes place. Non-participation in the centralised agreement has been associated with, on average, almost one per cent higher wage increases than participation. Wage drift has, to some extent, compensated employees in participating industries for lower bargained wage rises. In industry-level bargaining rounds there seem to have been fewer systematic variations both in bargained wages and in wage drift across industries. Survey responses do not indicate economically significant differences in opinions concerning the bargaining process corresponding to the differences in behaviour. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.