Holding the Job Together: German Industrial Relations in the Post-War Era

Abstract

While German unions, employers’ associations and the state have cooperated successfully since 2008 to sustain employment during the global economic crisis, recent scholarly verdicts on the health of the country’s industrial relations system have generally been negative. According to one influential assessment, globalization and other external shocks have ‘eroded’ the system, while according to another, diffuse factors including simply the passage of time have led to its ‘erosion’. In Holding the Shop Together: German Industrial Relations in the Postwar Era , Stephen J. Silvia rejects these bleak blanket assessments, not by presenting a pollyannaish picture of German industrial relations, but by teasing apart the different trajectories of the system’s components. His well-organized survey succeeds in many ways, while coming up short in a few. Silvia distinguishes between the framework of industrial relations, provided by the state and the law, and the actors, consisting of the unions and employers’ associations. The book’s first two chapters trace the historical origins and current function of the legal framework. Contrary to the common claim that German industrial relations occur in a realm independent of the state, Silvia demonstrates the state’s decisive role in the postwar system. Laws and important legal decisions in the Federal Republic have ‘sculpted industrial conflict into a highly controlled exercise of economic muscle’ (p. 38). Above all, laws from the early years of the Federal Republic guarantee workers rights of ‘codetermination’, both of workplace conditions (through works councils, Betriebsräte ) and of broader aspects of company policy (through seats on corporate boards).