During the last decades, German industrial relations have undergone significant changes leading to a partial erosion and fragmentation of collective bargaining as well - and more fundamentally - to a significant change in power relations and the weakening of trade unions. As a result, wage...

Over the last ten years, Germany has been the country that has displayed the greatest degree of restraint in collective bargaining. Few other OECD countries have had such a modest increase in unit labour costs and few have lived below their means to the same extent in terms of wage policy. While...

Deutschland hat sich in den vergangenen zehn Jahren als das Land mit der stärksten Lohnmoderation profiliert. Kaum anderes Land der OECD weist einen so geringen Anstieg der Lohnstückkosten auf und hat lohnpolitisch so sehr unter seinen Verhältnissen gelebt. Hintergrund dieser Entwicklung ist...

Since the mid-1990s the German system of collective bargaining with its traditional dominance of sector-level agreements has been faced by a process of creeping erosion. While the bargaining coverage has shown a steady decline, a far-reaching decentralisation has increasingly undermined the...

Since the mid-1980s Germany saw a continuing increase of precarious employment which now amounts to about one third of the total labour force. Considering the negative social side-effects of this development, the voices which call for a re-regulation of the labour market have become more...

Collective bargaining in the German metal and electrical engineering (M+E) industries has undergone a phase of considerable development since the 1990s. The profound changes which underwent collective bargaining in M+E over the last two decades have to be regarded against the background of a new...