Abstract

On the basis of the data collected by a cross-national research project, the paper explores recent trend towards the decentralisation of employment protection and labour market governance through local level concertation in the five largest European countries. A plurality of experiments are thus identified: from employment territorial pacts or other forms of cencerted tri-multilateral initiatives to bilateral agreements between local institutions and agencies or firms; from coalitions among employers to territorial and company-level collective bargaining. These experiments differ from one another not only in organisational terms, but also in their taking the distance fron the standard model of employment in defining new rules for regulating the conditions of non-standard or "atypical" workers. The long-term success of the initiatives appears to depend both on the ability of local actors to co-operate in devising agreed-upon solutions to emerging problems, and on the resources provided for the purpose by local - and higher - level governance institutions.