Analysis of the legal framework of conditions and collective agreements regulating teleworking in 16 European countries shows a very varied picture. The concept of teleworking has not been incorporated into legislation, nor is there a standard transnational definition of it. Instead, the countries studied manifest major cultural differences.

1. In Germany, Austria and Denmark, and also in France, teleworking is understood as alternating teleworking, from 1-2 days a week upwards.

In UK agreements and contracts, teleworking virtually always means teleworking at home, with over 50% of working time spent at home.

In the Romance countries, for regulatory purposes teleworking is primarily understood as meaning work performed in various organisational forms (tele-centres, call centres and teleworking at home) with the aid of information and communication technologies (ICTs).

In the Nordic countries, but not in Germany, Austria, Italy or France, teleworking also includes, in particular, numerous forms of mobile work, which is in fact even more common than teleworking or alternating teleworking.

2. If teleworking is regulated at all, it is regulated on a variety of levels. In addition to statutory regulation, it is regulated by associations of the social partners at sectoral or branch level, agreements between trade unions and companies, agreements between companies and elected bodies representing employees (or Works Councils or staff councils in the context of statutory rules on participation), departmental agreements and, finally, by individual contracts of employment or supplements to them.
3. While the industrial relations system was 'systemic' until the 1980s (i.e. it was geared to possible disputes, for which regulations were drafted ex ante), the present time is dominated by a highly 'situative' approach that only takes up actual disputes and abstains from systematic ex ante regulation of every conceivable dispute. Throughout Europe, this is associated with a trend towards decentralisation and individualisation of negotiation of working conditions. This is criticised to some extent owing to the dissolution of uniform social standards, and to some extent it also involves opportunities for employees as a result of negotiations of working conditions close to the workplace, and the influence of highly skilled groups with strong representation. The use of ICTs contributes to these trends.

Decentralisation and individualisation are proceeding more rapidly in the field of teleworking than in many other areas of regulation of working conditions. This is linked to the fact that teleworking plays an important part not only in the rapidly growing segment of ICT enterprises in particular, where there is little union organisation, but also in financial services, where the same is true in many European countries. To take one example, in Germany, more than 1000 collective agreements on the introduction of flexible working hours have been recorded, but there are only about 70 on the introduction of teleworking.

4. At the same time, there are counter-trends supporting recentralisation of the regulation of teleworking. On the one hand, negotiations are being centralised as a result of potential union mergers (e.g. Ver.di in Germany) or following strong union penetration into the 'industrialising' service sector (e.g. HK in Denmark and MSF in the UK). On the other hand, in Italy, France and Denmark, for example, the state is actively intervening in the process of introducing and implementing teleworking, and by means of legislation, the civil service's pilot function or the initiation of social dialogue on implementation of an open and socially sustainable information society, it is working towards the centralisation of societal activities aimed at comprehensively safeguarding teleworking as an institution. Even small enterprises with a low level of union organisation must be extremely interested in negotiating with strong, competent partners who genuinely represent employees on regulating teleworking issues. The unions are still the most competent partners for this purpose: special associations of teleworkers have not yet been able to assert themselves as negotiating partners.
5. All in all, however, there is no strong empirical evidence that contractual or statutory forms of regulation of teleworking in Europe are converging. We still encounter traditional historically, politically and culturally based forms of regulation which are to a great extent resisting standardisation in line with the pressure to conform exerted by globalisation and ICTs.

• Germany and Austria are still examples of countries with solid institutionalised multilateral participation ('corporatism'), where in large companies (less so at sectoral level) the subject of teleworking is for the most part successfully dealt with by the relevant industrial representation mechanisms, and at the expense of unregulated 'grey areas' or a 'black economy' in teleworking, mainly in small companies.

• In France and Italy, legislation and national policy are exerting an increasing influence, and are endeavouring in particular to influence the implementation of teleworking via the civil service. There are also collective agreements (some at sectoral level) that frequently include several trade unions. This is at the expense of the extremely general nature of the formulas agreed, which must then be made specific at local level or occasionally even circumvented. Here, the influence of the unions appears to be decreasing in comparison with that of the state.

• In the Nordic countries, we find old systems of collective bargaining which are, however, acquiring new content as a result of widespread centrifugal trends under the influence of unionised, highly skilled, white-collar workers (white collar unionism), which allow ample scope for local negotiation on teleworking by groups with strong representation. Finland is in a special position with its efforts to regulate teleworking in a highly individualised, graduated way, within the framework of traditional legislation on homeworking. So too is Denmark, where the commercial and service workers' union has succeeded in establishing priority for collective agreements over individual employment contracts in framework agreements with public and private employers: this is a unique initiative in Europe, and has happened in a small country where it potentially affects 1m employees.

• We also find relatively 'new' systems of collective bargaining in Spain, Portugal and Greece, either associated with strong tendencies to deregulate the labour market, which also affect teleworking (Spain), or in which teleworking is not yet an important subject. In some of these countries and also in Ireland, intensive social dialogue is already under way in respect of socially sustainable implementation of the information society.

• In the United Kingdom, collective bargaining mechanisms have been weakened to such an extent that, given the widespread nature of teleworking, they play only a minor part, except in some areas of the financial services sector. Here, the individual contract predominates, but this too has its advantages (e.g. a high level of precision as regards regulation of working hours, and reimbursement of costs). In the Netherlands, too, we find strong tendencies for teleworking to be deregulated and individualised. In Belgium, while all laws remain in force and new laws have even been introduced, we can speak of 'crypto-deregulation', occurring via homeworking, for example, with teleworking being primarily regulated by in-house confidential agreements.

6. To summarise, it can be said that countries with a very strong culture of collective bargaining have not made much headway with regard to Guideline 17 of the Luxembourg Process, and have mainly ignored the problem of teleworking, while that of part-time work is frequently widely discussed. In contrast, countries where the tradition of collective bargaining systems is less strong have often progressed further down this path. Unlike traditional industrial relations problems, the problems of social openness of teleworking infrastructures, of gaps in qualifications and equal opportunities in access to teleworking have hardly been addressed by traditional bargaining systems.
7. Thus the content of collective regulations largely converges, although large-scale agreements are often less specific than company agreements (Denmark is again an exception). Therefore the regulations achieved largely meet needs, even if in some cases they affect only a minority of practising teleworkers, as in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands. However, it would appear to be more important to draw attention to the gaps in the regulations: in almost all agreements, little attention is devoted to skills training and familiarisation, the right to complain about non-acceptance of an application for teleworking, equal opportunities, staff and career development, and monitoring of the social consequences of the development of teleworking. Here, legislative initiatives appear more likely to be in place.

http://www.euro-telework.org