In this chapter, I look at trends of union and business organizations and their implications for the future of democratic capitalism. As in earlier assessments, the results concentrated on a steady union decline within much more stable wage bargaining institutions. Given the rapid economic...

Die demokratische Revolution in der DDR und die anschließende politische, wirtschaftliche und gesellschaftliche Transformation stellten die Menschen in Ostdeutschland vor zahlreiche Herausforderungen, die bis heute nachwirken. Die Beiträger*innen nehmen die Bereiche Landwirtschaft, Bahn und...

Trade unions have been successful in compressing the wage distributionbut not in influencing the share of national income going to labour. This paperclaims that a compressed wage distribution provides insurance in the same way thatthe tax and benefit system does and thus may be...

This paper deals with institutional challenges German works councils face currently. These challenges consist of structural economic change from industrial to service sectors accompanied by an extension of ‘co-determination-free-zones’, an enhanced labour force diversity beyond the image of...

This paper offers an explanation for variations in the effectiveness of trade unions to obtain legislative and policy concessions in peak-level tripartite negotiations in post-communist East Central Europe. I examine the usefulness of some standard interpretations for such variations, namely...

Collective bargaining in Germany takes place either at the industry level or at the firm level; collective bargaining coverage is much higher than union density; and not all employees in a covered firm are necessarily covered. This institutional setup suggests to explicitly distinguish union...