Job quality in the contracted-out public services is still influenced by the public authorities. As customers buying goods and services from private providers, they become with employer and employee representatives a more or less visible ‘third party’ in the determination of employment conditions. This article explores collective actors’ strategies and negotiations in this triangular configuration. It develops an analytical framework, based on a discussion of recent legislative trends, then presents empirical findings from two recent comparative projects. These suggest that the extent to which public procurement can help to ensure decent work depends very much on the interaction with sectoral and national employment regimes; it requires complementary institutions to turn public procurement into a ‘market-embedding’ tool.