The article analyses local collective bargaining in seven medium-sized manufacturing firms operating in Northern Italy. The goals are to understand, within an international perspective, the degree of development of Italian MEs’ collective bargaining, and its outcomes in the construction of participative industrial relations and innovative forms of work organisation. The analysis highlights a ‘low-decentralised collective bargaining system’, where the concrete regulatory space exerted by company collective contracts is usually limited. Then, industrial relations turn out to be characterised neither by participation nor by conflict, from which come forms of work organisation based on a good quantitative mutual availability, like overtime and related payments, among social actors, but with poor results in terms of more qualitative aspects. Institutions and the prevailing culture of industrial relations turn out to be the main explanatory factors, requiring a more profound reflection on the Italian system of industrial relations.