According to the ILO Resolution concerning statistics of strikes, lockouts and other action due to labour disputes of 1993, a labour dispute is defined as "a state of disagreement over a particular issue or group of issues over which there is conflict between workers and employers, or about which grievance is expressed by workers or employers, or about which

workers or employers support other workers or employers in their demands or grievances".

This concept has also been applied by Eurofound, albeit by grouping events and parameters that are in addition to the content of the resolution.

The report, that sets out to analyse collective labour disputes in the EU, is based on a feasibility study and the pilot database developed in 2017 by Eurofound, the Industrial Action Monitor (IAM), that collects different types of grievances, the reasons, the main issues involved, countries, sectors and outcomes aiming to capture data on collective labour disputes involving industrial action.

The report shows there has been a general decrease in industrial action across the EU Member States in recent years, when, maybe also because of the Covid-19 crisis, the most significant occurred in the human health and social services sector, the education sector as well as the transport and logistics sector.

In terms of content, pay issues are the most common, amounting to over 40 per cent of disputes, followed by employment issues and other aspects of working conditions.

The research classified industrial action in Europe into five categories: national disputes of interest and rights, sometimes involving different forms of employment; extended disputes about collective pay agreements; localised disputes about employment problems, working time and restructuring, with short work stoppages; localised disputes about workers’ rights and grievances over company policies; and disputes concerning public policies.

However, according to the report, the distribution of these types across countries did not follow any of the patterns that might be expected based on five of the existing typologies in the literature, such as typologies based on national differences in varieties of capitalism, union density, intensity of strike activity, types of industrial democracy and collective bargaining.

This result is interpreted by the survey as confirming that the type of information collected by the IAM is adding important new empirical evidence to the previously knowledge about industrial relations in Europe and deserves further developments and investigations.

In this regard, an assessment carried out by Eurofound of existing data sources on labour disputes in the EU, at both national and EU-wide levels, shows that there is a lack of timely and comparable data, and the report concludes that common definitions need to be agreed internationally to enable comparability of data.