Decentralised Pay Setting: A Study of the Outcomes of Collective Bargaining Reform in the Civil Service in Australia, Sweden, and the Uk

In the early 1990s, Australia, Sweden and the UK dismantled the old centralised pay setting systems that set the pay of civil servants and adopted decentralised systems and pay systems. Consequentially, these systems are now being considered by many other European countries as they look to reform their own systems. Elliott and Bender analyse the outcomes of these pioneering reforms in all three countries and in doing so provide a detailed analysis of the pay of civil servants in these three countries. They further assess the effect that decentralisation had on the inequality of pay both within departments, agencies and ministries, and between different departments, agencies and ministries. They identify the differences in the rates of pay growth for the different grades of civil servants that lie behind the changes in pay inequality and assess whether decentralisation changed the way in which civil servants are paid.