The “Fall Wage Round”: Collective Bargaining as Temporary Organization

Abstract

By investigating into collective bargaining in Austria, we show that bargaining - two opposing parties negotiating a deal - may take the form of a temporal organization and further, that outcomes of bargaining may significantly be affected by this. We specifically analyze the hierarchy, structure, membership, common goal and common identity of the bargaining organization, as well as its temporal and rhythmic nature. Together this establishes a temporal organization in contrast to bargaining between clearly separated parties. We discuss this as a possible explanation for the widely acknowledged success of the Austrian “Sozialpartnerschaft”.