Contested Interpretations: the Role of Social Partners in Shaping Conflicts on Tackling Labour Market Shortages Across the EU.

Labour shortages have been rising steadily in most EU member states since their recovery from the 2008-2010 financial crisis and will intensify in the next decades. Not only do these skills and labour shortages threaten to slow down the twin green and digital transition in the EU; they also have important repercussions for long-term economic growth and the sustainability of welfare systems. Tackling labour shortages has accordingly become an important objective for national governments, as well as the European Commission. Despite the rapidly increasing salience and acknowledgment of this challenge, policy responses to tackle these shortages often prove to be heavily contested. A key reason is the complexity of the issue; triggering disagreement as to which of multiple factors is actually driving these shortages, as well as which policies or instruments are most effective in addressing them (Seghir 2024). This disagreement is not purely analytical in nature, but equally driven by competition between different actors who aim to promote and prioritise their own preferred policies. For example, while employers could use these shortages to justify the need for deregulation and increasing working hours, unions could use the increased need for labour as an opportunity to demand better labour market conditions and wages (Zwysen 2024). In order to better understand the politics of addressing labour market shortages, it is therefore important to better understand how these conflicts are structured. This article focuses on the role of social partners in shaping the politics of addressing labour market shortages. Building on theories on framing contestation (Dodge and Metze 2024, Head 2022), this article evaluates how social partners interpret the complex reality of labour shortages; as well as how different interpretations are tied to competing policy approaches. Empirically, the article introduces a new dataset that compiles major communications regarding labour shortages by social partners in the EU27 plus the UK. These communications are coded to identify the different instances of diagnosing the key drivers of labour shortages, as well as the proposed policy approaches connected to these drivers. This analysis reveals variation as to how the political debates regarding labour shortages are structured; not only across countries, but also across social partners. Doing so is a first important step in better understanding the role of framing contestation in shaping policies to address labour market shortages across the EU. Theoretically, this article contributes not only to debates on the political economy of labour market reforms in the EU, but also to literature on the role of framing in policy reform more generally.