1 THE ROLE OF THE STATE AND INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS Jesús Cruz Villalon Labour law professor Seville University Spain Contents 1. The initial and lengthy centrality of State intervention 2. Globalization and its impact on previous schemes 3. Other factors, cause or effect, that impinge on the weakening of State power 4. The impact of the new reality on the role of the State in industrial relations 4.1. Global trade agreements, transnational companies and social clauses 4.2. Impact on labour relation’s national regulations 4.3. New ways of State intervention on industrial relations 1. The initial and lengthy centrality of State intervention The sovereign power of nation-states in the peak period of the industrial society has been the benchmark of the emergence and development of Labour Law as an organizing tool of subordinate work. Especially in the economically most developed countries, but also in market economies as a whole, State power has designed for decades the key institutions regulating subordinate work. Moreover, it has been also the public power that, by means of judges and courts or by means of administrative authorities’ action, has controlled to a great extent the effective fulfilment of labour standards set by the State legislative power itself. Notwithstanding that, in many occasions, all the foregoing has been carried out thanks to the impetus provided by various supranational organism, mainly as the result of the influence of the International Labour Organization, the decisive role has been played by the State in such a way that labour relations models have been set up at the national level, presenting each one their own political, economic, social and cultural peculiarities. Considering that decisive influence, the State has become the protagonist par excellence in the development of the balance of interest function between workers and entrepreneurs in labour relations. Both the contents and the methods of intervention have been notably different in every country, but, in any event, it can be said that both have also shared as a common guiding thread: the decisive influence of the nation-state playing a role as the lawmaker as well as playing a role deploying orientation public policies in the evolution of the labour market. That intervention of the State has been particularly intense when it comes to the setting of minimum standards of labour conditions aim at applying uniformly to the whole working population. In contrast with this, it cannot be said the same concerning the intervention of the State