Week 6 Blog: Still Married After All These Years? Union Organising and the Role of Works Councils in German Industrial Relations

Still Married After All These Years? Union Organising and the Role of Works Councils in German Industrial Relations

With union density being a problem that has hindered labour organisations all around the world over the last few decades it now becomes important to look deeper into the German industrial relations system where union density has fallen from 11.8 million to just 6.4 million between 1991 and 2007 (Behrens 2009). At a certain point declining union density becomes a problem that interferes with the successful representation of employees interests in collective bargaining standards for wages, hours, working conditions and other benefits. With Germany being a Coordinated Market Economy Behrens looks into how the so-called ‘dual system’ works towards representing employees interests in the workplace and how unions work together with works councils in attempt to reverse the declining union density that is becoming ever apparent in the German economy and the whole globe.

In North America particularly there is strong debate that unionism can take only one of two forms, being either ‘organising’ or ‘servicing’, and that the inability to cover both has led to the massive scale of union decline over the last few decades. However in Germany the existence of works councils has provided an extra string in the bow for representing workers interests in the workplace, which is known as the ‘dual system’. This ‘dual system’ sees a division of labour between the two labour movements, with collective bargaining at the workplace-level being assigned to the unions, and larger company-level negotiations being handled by the works councils. Behrens suggests that German works councils have an important impact on union density in that they have pursued active membership on their behalf (Behrens 2009). He outlines four factors, which help to explain why, or why not, works councils will engage in recruitment activities on the union’s behalf.

1.    Servicing and Social Exchange

-       Behrens suggests that works councils commit to active union membership recruitment only if they believe that the services unions provide them with are worth the effort (Behrens 2009). The services that he refers to are reflected in the training and support that unions are able to provide works council members with, in order for them to successfully fulfil their duties.

2.    Works Councillors Union Attachment

-       By this Behrens is suggesting that there is a direct relationship between the union statuses of works council members and their interest in pursuing membership recruitment activities on behalf of the unions.

3.    Union Strategy

-   There appears to be a lack of coordination from Germany’s peak federation body, The Confederation of German Trade Unions (DGB). With recruitment seen to be the individual responsibility of each union body, there is little convergence, which has resulted in different members adopting different recruitment strategies. Some utilise the influence available from works councils, however some attempt to utilise more traditional attractions in the form of lower prices and special incentives (Behrens 2009).

4.    Professionalization and Resources

-     The process of decentralising collective bargaining has burdened works councils with even more of a workload than before. This in itself creates a situation where there is a trade off between the priorities of works council members. Behrens suggests that under this pressure works council members will not give priority to union membership recruitment activities.

This article takes a really in depth look at the industrial relations system of Germany, and in particular it assesses how unions are able to utilise this system in attempt to try and slow down the declining union density that itself is experiencing. It is important to understand that this problem is not only local to Germany but is extremely prevalent in countries all over the globe. The article provides a vital comparison between what is perhaps the polar opposite of industrial relations systems, being that of North America’s. North American union strategies, which are typically very traditional in nature, have over the past few decades been rendered extremely ineffective. We can know see in the coordinated German system, which has the presence of works councils, that union influence is much stronger than that of North America. With works councils acting as another party in collective bargaining and workplace interest issues it highlights that a more cooperative approach, in respect to both employers and their employees, rather than a typically aggressive and hostile approach is beneficial to all involved and also to the German economy as a whole.

REFERENCES

Behrens, M 2009, 'Still Married After All These Years? Union Organising and the Role of Works Councils in German Industrial Relations', Industrial and Labor Relations Review, vol. 62, no. 3, p. 275-293.