The level of protection against social risks that is organised in a welfare state is not only dependent upon the arrangements of the welfare state itself, but also, as we have seen in the previous chapter, on arrangements organised in firms or in collective bargaining. The previous chapter investigated the introduction of the idea of employability as a strategy to enhance job security and concluded that the collective bargaining process facilitated the introduction and relative success of this strategy in collective labour agreements and in the labour policies of firms. This was explained by the institutional complementarity that exists in the Dutch corporatist welfare state between the norm of job security and the normative ideals of the strategy of enhancing employability.

In this chapter, we focus on the corporatist institution of collective bargaining that is so important to Dutch labour policy and investigate the role this institution plays in risk management and the contribution it makes to the protection against old and new social risks. In this chapter, we investigate the interaction between risk protection by the welfare state and provisions in collective labour agreements. If one diminishes, how does the other react? We investigate this interaction in relation to welfare state retrenchment (is this compensated for in collective labour agreements?), in relation to old and new social risks (to what extent do collective labour agreements and the traditional institution of social security protect against new social risks?) and in relation to the decentralisation of collective labour agreements (does decentralisation lead to a decrease in risk-protection?). We learn that, as was the case in the previous chapter, the ‘old’ institutions of the (corporatist) welfare state play a decisive role in the birth of a ‘new welfare settlement’.

Introduction

As we have seen in Chapter one, within the welfare state literature there has been increased attention for the discussion of social risks. This discussion often focuses on the difference between ‘old’ versus ‘new’ social risks (Bonoli 2005; Taylor-Gooby 2004). ‘Old’ social risks are risks associated with industrial society in which a main breadwinner was protected against sickness, old age and disability.