Public Procurement as a new arena of industrial relations

一系列广泛的实证研究调查了将公共任务外包给私人承包商的影响，并在很大程度上发现了对私有化公司就业条件质量的负面影响。这种工作质量的恶化主要被认为是公共部门和私营部门在工资水平和劳资关系方面存在差距的结果。然而，在政治层面上越来越多的人认识到，公共当局也有办法影响合同公司的工作条件，例如，将某些社会标准作为公共采购程序的选择标准。这套政策为雇主和雇员代表之间通常双边的利益平衡增加了第三个参与者：公共行政。因此，从“干预主义”向“监管”状态的转变导致了新的三方利益格局，到目前为止，这种格局还没有得到系统的研究。该项目旨在描述和解释这些日益相关的三边谈判进程的各种表现和结果。因此，研究项目的中心问题是如何平衡这一谈判舞台上的相互冲突的利益(预算合并、对社会负责的采购的规范期望、私营部门雇主的利润利益和雇员的关切)。经验性调查的核心是对选定的一些地方当局的公共采购程序进行深入的定性案例研究。此外，还将分析涵盖更广泛地理区域的采购程序的文件。从概念和分析的角度来看，研究项目的前提是，根据作者以前的工作，具体采购程序与一般体制背景之间的相互作用，特别是劳动力市场条例和劳资关系制度，将值得特别关注。因此，经验性调查比较了在体制背景方面差异最大的两个行业(废物处理和合同餐饮)的公共采购程序。因此，该研究项目有助于研究集体谈判这一新兴领域中的劳资关系，并试图分析谈判在这一领域中的动态、权力关系和(再)分配后果。

A broad range of empirical studies have investigated the implications of outsourcing of public tasks to private contractors and have largely found negative effects on the quality of employment conditions in the privatised companies. This deterioriation of job quality is primarily seen as a consequence of the gap between the public and the private sector in terms of pay levels and the strength of industrial relations. Yet there is an increasing awareness at the political level that public authorities as well have ways and means of influencing working conditions in the contracted companies, for instance by making certain social standards a selection criteria in public procurement procedures. This set of policies adds a third actor to the usually bilateral balancing of interests between employer and employee representatives: public administration. Hence, the transition from the "interventionist" to the "regulatory" state gives rise to new trilateral interest configurations which so far have not been investigated systematically. The project aims to describe and explain the varied manifestations and results of these increasingly relevant trilateral negotiation processes. The central question of the research project is therefore how the conflicting interests in this negotiation arena (budget consolidation, normative expectations regarding socially responsible procurement, the profit interests of the private sector employer and employee concerns) are balanced. The core of the empirical inquiry consists of in-depth qualitative case studies on public procurement processes in a selection of local authorities. Additionally, documents from procurement processes covering a broader geographical area will be analysed. From a conceptual and analytical point of view, the research project presupposes, based on the author's previous work, that the interaction between procurement-specific processes and the general institutional context, particularly labour market regulations and the system of industrial relations, will deserve particular attention. The empirical investigation therefore compares public procurement procedures in two industries (waste disposal and contract catering) that are most dissimilar with regard to the institutional context. The research project thereby contributes to the study of industrial relations in an emerging arena of collective bargaining and seeks to analyse the dynamics, power relations and (re)distributive consequences of bargaining in this arena.