During the financial crisis, banks faced difficult decisions that concerned intangible assets, their human capital. While labour relations are generally organised through formal and informal industrial relations mechanisms, as well as through legislation put in place by policy makers, these mechanisms across EU member states vary considerably. The aim of the study was to analyse three different responses as to how employment relations systems and related dynamics responded to crisis pressures in the banking sector in the three countries.

The study concludes that the integration of social models has lagged behind despite that the European economies have come out of the recession. This is exacerbated by challenges posed to the banking sector by the digitisation of business processes, and the diversification and product innovation that affect jobs and skills. In this complex and transnational environment, nationally embedded social partners in banking also face the challenge of adapting their strategies, areas of negotiation and expertise.

Understudied in the academic literature, Luxembourg serves as a study focus of particular policy relevance as the banking sector has become a fundamental GDP and employment contributor since the demise of the steel sector and which, in turn, has been seriously affected by the economic and financial crisis.

The study identifies that there is significant and in some cases increasing differences between ‘old’ and ‘new’ Europe concerning collective bargaining and socially acceptable restructuring. By employing the concept of ‘organised’ and ‘disorganised’ decentralisation of employment relations systems, the authors show that employment relations were maintained during the crisis and larger crisis effects cushioned within the organized decentralization of the corporatist or statist models such as in Luxembourg and France. In the two countries, Luxembourg’s model of employment relations still operate, with strong collective bargaining at sectoral level, reinforced by government intervention that occurs within a legal framework that regulates sectoral bargaining. In Luxembourg, in particular, collective bargaining through the negotiation of a collective labour agreement and legal instruments (social plans, job retention plans, etc.) occurs within a legal framework and the appliance of informal negotiation practices leading to internal mobility and training schemes. In disorganized decentralization, in contrast, such as in the case of Romania, solutions to crisis effects are left to the company level and market forces.