The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development OECD/AIAS database on Institutional Characteristics of Trade Unions, Wage Setting, State Intervention and Social Pacts (ICTWSS) allows access to comprehensive and comparable information on the nature, scope and coverage of collective bargaining for wage-setting, on wage-coordination practices and trade union and employers’ organisations membership in OECD and EU countries. It also contains information on the statutory minimum wages and the role and scope of action of works’ councils.

The database provides information related to a large period of time (from the 60s until 2020 for certain countries) and from 56 countries, including for non-OECD members, such as Brazil, China, India, Russia, and South Africa.

After analyzing the trade unions and employers’ organisations density and the bargaining coverage, the core variables for wage-setting used in the database are the following:

• The level at which wage bargaining takes place;
• The combination of levels at which collective bargaining takes place;
• Whether there is additional enterprise bargaining;
• Whether there are favourability clauses pro employees;
• Whether there are opening clauses in sectoral collective agreements;
• Existence of crisis-related, temporary opening clauses in collective agreement;
• Mandatory extension of collective agreements to non-organised employers

A special section is devoted to minimum wage, with comparisons on the minimum statutory wage per category of worker (long-term trainees, for instance), sector of employment, skills, working age, etc. It also contains information on the Committee tasked with the minimum wage adjustments fixing and the role of trade unions and employers’ organisations within it.  

Highly interesting are also the country profiles or “snapshots” of collective bargaining for wage-setting, social partners’ memberships and role of works’ councils.