The role of social partners in bargaining over non-wage issues across Austria, Greece and Italy

Flexible specialisation, internationalisation, an ageing workforce, and the move into a service economy has placed growing pressure on trade unions and employers to strike new deals. Bargaining over ‘non-wage’ issues may potentially accommodate the needs of an ageing and increasingly feminised workforce and enable unions to increase or at least maintain given levels of membership. Little empirical work has been done, however, in examining different types of ‘non-wage’ issues that have arisen across countries and explaining why they arise. In this paper, we create a typology of four distinct types of ‘non-wage’ issues and seek to identify the conditions under which each is expected to be observed. We propose that two conditions (one political and one economic) determine different agendas which lead to the emergence of a particular type of ‘non-wage’ issue: the level of cohesion amongst unions; and the sector in which bargaining predominates (private or public). We then focus on how the bargaining over ‘non-wage’ issues has developed within three European economies: Austria, Greece and Italy. Each is representative of a different variant of corporatism, and therefore we look at the ability of social partners with variable institutional capacity to negotiate and agree on ‘non-wage’ issues through collective bargaining. Our initial findings suggest that union cohesion and the presence, or the lack, of a market constraint on employers helps explain the variation in the types of non-wage issues which arise in these three countries

A changing cityscape in Central Italy: The Gabii Project Excavations, 2012–2018

Excavations carried out at the Latin city of Gabii between 2012 and 2018 have contributed new data to a number of debates around the emergence, lived experience, maintenance, decline, and resilience of cities. Gabii’s urban trajectories demonstrate both seemingly familiar forms of urbanism and, on closer study, many locally circumscribed elements. Specifically, the Gabii Project excavations have uncovered an early Iron Age (8th–5th centuries b.c.) hut complex that has provided evidence for architecture, funerary rites, and quotidian activities during the initial polynuclear settlement at urbanizing Gabii. A unique monumental complex constructed in the 3rd century b.c. has been identified and is interpreted as a public structure potentially used for ritual activities; the study of this complex raises questions about the creation and reception of markers of civic identity. Excavation data has further characterized the reorganizations that took place during the first centuries a.d., when Gabii’s settled area contracted. Rather than unidirectional decline, evidence for industrial activities increases, and elite investments in the city persist, especially in the mixed-use elite domestic and agricultural complex. These results provide detailed evidence for how ancient cities developed and transformed in the face of shifting local and regional conditions, especially smaller urban centers (Gabii) at the periphery of mega-urban centers (Rome)