Trade Union Decline and What Next. Is Germany a Special Case?**/Gewerkschaftlicher Niedergang Und Was Dann? Ist Deutschland Ein Besonderer Fall?

Zusammenfassung

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This paper commences with a survey of international trends in union membership, union density and collective bargaining, while focusing on the comparative position of trade unions in Germany. The author considers three hypotheses concerning the development of unionism in recent decades. The first one is that globalisation and structural change in the economy and labour market pull all countries towards a neo-liberal convergence of which union decline is one manifestation. The second predicts that resilient national institutions of collective bargaining and union-employer cooperation enable continued divergence in unionization levels across Western economies. The third one, which seems particularly relevant for Germany, states that feedback mechanisms from internal diversity among both employers and workers trigger processes of institutional destabilisation and decline from which both employers associations and unions suffer.

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Auszug

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Trade Union Decline and What Next. Is Germany a Special Case?**/Gewerkschaftlicher Niedergang Und Was Dann? Ist Deutschland Ein Besonderer Fall?

Introduction

Are Germany's trade unions a special case? In recent times, there is more uncertainty about the future of German unions and industrial relations than at any time since the foundation of the Federal Republic. Union membership is declining and bargaining coverage has eroded. Employer pressure and political voices calling for the withdrawal of legal support for the current model of union-management relations have increased. With union density approaching a critical boundary of twenty percent of the employed workforce, Addison/Schnabel/Wagner (2007) pose the question whether that will be enough to sustain corporatist industrial relations. The decline in union representation decreases the industrial power, public legitimacy and political clout that unions need to act as the collective custodians of employee rights in the political and industrial arena. Given the importance of the German economy in Europe and its 'model' character for other 'co-ordinated market economies' (Hall/ Soskice 2001), the future of German labour relations and trade unions has wider implications.

I start this paper with a survey of international trends in union membership, union density and collective bargaining. Taking my inspiration from Thelen/van Wijnbergen (2003), I consider in the next section three hypotheses regarding the explanation of trends in unionization: (1) globalisation and structural change in the economy and labour market pull all countries towards a neo-liberal convergence of which union decline is one manifestation; (2) resilient national institutions of collective bargaining and union-employer cooperation enable continued divergence in unionization levels across Western economies; and (3) feedback mechanisms from internal diversity among employers and workers trigger processes of institutional destabilisation and decline of representation in employers' associations and trade unions, and these mechanism are particularly albeit not exclusively present in the German case. The third section considers the possibilities of reversing decline.

Union decline - Germany compared

Membership trends

Germany's trade unions are losing members and represent a declining share of the labour market (Beck/Fitzenberger 2004; Ebbinghaus 2003; Fichter 1997; Schnabel/Wagner 2007). The decline - nearly four and a half million members1 in the ten years between 1991 and 2001, an average of 4.5 percent per year - is unprecedented in po...

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