Welfare Beyond the Welfare State. The Employment Relationship in Germany and the UK

Abstract

This chapter introduces employee welfare as welfare beyond the welfare state. Following on from Brandes’s and Jacoby’s studies of US company welfare schemes and Dore’s conceptualisations of Japanese employment models, the chapter places employee welfare within the context of welfare states and the employment relationship in Germany and the UK. Employee welfare is understood here as any means of welfare provided by companies to employees on and above wages, which aims at the improvement of an employee’s physical and mental well-being. The chapter argues that this concept of employee welfare is required to account for welfare effects on relatives of employees and to challenge the dominant attention paid to states in welfare research. Such research argues that states have been the main providers of welfare, not least because of their expansion in the post-Second World War period. Companies first complemented the welfare state at the micro level by supporting, with employee welfare, the formation of the modern employment relationship (nineteenth century). Employee welfare was a prominent feature of the Fordist employment model (post-war period) and is currently in tune with the welfare state’s greater emphasis on individual responsibilities. Both British and German companies have provided similar employee welfare benefits in order to fulfil these three roles. Together with the significance of welfare beyond the welfare state, this similarity of benefits is the book’s foundation on which to historically trace employee welfare, arguing for a co-evolutionary relationship with welfare states, and reconceptualising current typologies of capitalist and welfare systems.