The changing contours of German industrial relations

The German system of industrial relations is under considerable stress. What had once been regarded as a model of employment relations and the very core of Rhenish capitalism now appears to be a burden on the economy. The core institutions - i. e. industry-wide collective bargaining and plant-level co-determination - are still stable, but are in a process of change towards a new regime of labour regulation which has emerged within the context of two trajectories, the paradigmatic transformation from Taylorist low-trust organization to post-Fordist high-trust organization and the secular wave of globalization. Germany went through the unique experience of transferring the complete institutional framework of West German industrial relations to the new Bundesländer during the 1990s. The country is now, however, in the process of introducing far-reaching reforms to industrial relations and the labour market. Rather than challenging the German model, European developments have supplemented it and thereby contributed to its stabilization. This volume is dedicated to the participants of the pre-congress of the 13th World Congress of the International Industrial Relations Association (IIRA) at the Free University in Berlin 2003.