Social Partnership in Germany: Lessons for U.S. Labor and Management

German industrial relations in the postwar period have made a major contribution to German industrial success. The German system is rooted in the explicit recognition of well organized interests: strong, assertive employers and employers\u27 associations not afraid to demand what they think is right, including wage restraint as well as reorganization of production toward lean production ; and strong, assertive unions not afraid to demand what they think is right, including broad skills training, high wages, a shorter workweek, and a human-centered work organization. Amazingly, these strong forces end up with negotiated outcomes in a system that is accurately called social partnership

Conclusion: Uncertain Outcomes of Conflict and Negotiation

[Excerpt] To elaborate on each of these points, the findings presented in this book can be summarized as follows. First of all, the German model, that is, a social partnership approach to the negotiation of terms and conditions for the organization of an advanced market economy has worked in the past. We believe, on the basis of extensive collective research on different aspects of the political economy of the Federal Republic, both before and after unification, that the preservation of a reformed social partnership in Germany is highly desirable as an alternative to less regulated forms of capitalism in the contemporary world economy. Thus we disagree rather sharply with both conservative and liberal analysts who see the social market economy as an expensive and outdated relic of a welfare-state past. The evidence presented in this book also shows not only that social partnership is desirable but that it remains relatively intact. We have identified problems that must be solved for this to continue to be the case, but whatever the future holds, the basic institutions and practices of social partnership have been transferred into eastern Germany and continue to characterize political-economic relations in unified Germany. This remains true even in the face of major challenges presented by European integration, intensified global competition, a rapidly appreciating deutschmark, market imperatives for production reorganization (driven by Japanese-style lean production), and escalating collective bargaining conflict. Both employer associations and unions continue to play pattern-setting roles in wage negotiations, to set the framework for firm-level codetermination, and to engage in national, regional, and local negotiations over important aspects of economic and labor-market policy

Revitalizing Labor In Today\u27s World Markets

[Excerpt] Competitiveness for firms is possible via the high road or low road, or some combination of the two. For a nation, however, if competitiveness means the ability of a country\u27s firms to sell on world markets while contributing to rising average incomes and living standards at home, then only the high road will do, especially for advanced industrial societies such as Germany and the United States. The tragedy of today\u27s touted American model is that it is based too much on the low road, and as a result includes growing income polarization and a deep representation gap. American workers, in spite of the long 1990s miniboom, don\u27t earn enough and don\u27t have enough voice in the workplace. The decline of the labor movement has gone hand in hand with growing economic and social polarization. Perhaps the best remedy, and certainly the one that allows workers themselves to solve these problems, is a revitalization of American unions. In today\u27s world economy, union revitalization requires both the capacity to organize and mobilize and a proactive willingness to use new strength and representation to contribute to firm and national competitiveness. German unions are strong to the extent they can do both of these, within an institutional environment that is far more supportive than that in which American unions must operate. German unions today, however, among many other problems, are being badgered by employers about the virtues of the American model, which in part means roll back the unions, to drive down labor costs and raise productivity. On their own turf, German unions have done a good job fending off the attacks. However, in the long run, their continuing influence may well depend on the strength of unions in other countries, throughout Europe and elsewhere. Especially in the United States, where a revival of the labor movement could do much to revise the American model and remove downward pressure on the German high road. The revitalization of the unions in the United States, therefore, is important not only for American workers and society, but for German unions and society as well. Economic growth and improved productivity and firm competitiveness may not require strong unions in the U.S. or Germany, but as past performance in many countries has shown, neither are strong unions incompatible with growth, productivity and competitiveness. Strong unions, we do know, raise wages, improve benefits and employment security, and offer protected representation in the workplace, all of which are all too often missing in the American workplace

From Transformation to Revitalization: A New Research Agenda for a Contested Global Economy

[Excerpt] The revitalization perspective is hardly new. With deep roots in both labor movement history and industrial relations research, such work was marginalized for much of the postwar period both in union strategy and in the field of industrial relations. What is new is the rather sudden arrival of revitalization research in the mainstream of industrial relations along with a broader literature on contentious politics in a global economy (e.g., Klein, 2002; Delia Porta & Tarrow, 2004). This introductory article offers an overview of the revitalization perspective, deepened in relevance by contemporary struggles for democratic representation in the modern workplace and beyond

Three Plants, Three Futures

To spread teamwork and cooperation, managers need to reform themselves—especially their attitudes about workers. At NUMMI, management has provided a system of work and rewards that has earned the loyalty of most employees and local union leaders

The East in Open Conflict: The Great Strike of 1993

[Excerpt] Because it is impossible in one book to examine all German institutions of negotiation, this book focuses on one important set of relations at the heart of social market regulation: the social partnership between labor and management. Social partnership, a term widely used throughout the European Union but little known in the United States, refers to the nexus—and central political and economic importance—of bargaining relationships between strongly organized employers (in employer associations) and employees (in unions and works councils) that range from comprehensive collective bargaining and plant-level codetermination to vocational training and federal, state, and local economic policy discussions. To some extent, I use social partnership in this book to represent other, parallel processes of regularized negotiation throughout the German political economy. From the perspective of economic citizenship and democratic participation, however, social partnership itself is the most critical of social market mechanisms of negotiation and inclusion. And what is most remarkable, social partnership has not only coexisted with but proactively facilitated the strong export-oriented economic performance of the Federal Republic of Germany ever since its founding in 1949

Social Partnership: An Organizing Concept for Industrial Relations Reform

[Excerpt] In this era of globalization and intensified world market competition, once stable relationships involving firms, unions and government have come under pressure everywhere. Here in the United States, a crisis of economic competitiveness, industrial relations instability, and union decline has generated a new openness to reform efforts, including a widespread willingness to learn from the successful practices of both domestic innovators and foreign competitors. Employers, for example, have increasingly moved to adopt lean and high-quality-oriented forms of organization as well as new participatory programs for employees. Unions have shown increasing interest in getting involved and providing input into the establishment and operation of such innovations. A new government wants to reform labor law to facilitate workplace change and labor-management cooperation. We still lack, however, broad concepts to inform a package of meaningful industrial relations and labor law reform. In this paper, I argue that social partnership, borrowed from the European Community, Germany, and numerous other societies, if adapted to particular American circumstances, is an ideal concept around which to organize and synthesize industrial relations reform in the United States

Rank-and-File Participation in Organizing at Home and Abroad

[Excerpt] We know that we need labor law reform. But it is also clear that this is not all we need; nor can we expect to achieve legal reform simply by electing Democrats. That strategy did not work in 1978-79 or in 1993-94, and it will not work in the future. In the face of inevitably powerful and well-organized business opposition, even the most well-financed and articulate lobbying campaign for labor law reform can fail. What was missing in 1978-79 and in 1993-94 and is urgently needed now is the pressure of a massive social movement, mobilized to transform and democratize the American workplace. The potential is there for such a movement, fueled by falling real wages, growing income polarization, and a widespread desire for expanded voice in the workplace (Appelbaum and Batt 1994; Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations 1994b; Kochan 1995; Levine 1995). But the potential will not be realized unless people are allowed and encouraged to participate fully in the building of their own union organizing drives, union mobilization efforts, including labor-community coalitions, and grassroots political campaigns. This chapter presents case studies of success and failure in union organizing campaigns in the United States and Germany to support the cross-national — and thus to some extent universal—validity of this argument. Comparative analysis is especially useful in developing and testing causal relationships. If, for example, rank-and-file participation can be shown to have similar effects in organizing efforts in contrasting institutional and cultural contexts, the explanatory power of the hypothesis suggested here may well be significant (thus meriting further and more extensive testing). Germany affords the context of a comparable advanced industrial society but one with very different traditions and institutions of industrial relations (such as codetermination and comprehensive collective bargaining) and historically strong unions facing a parallel need for contemporary revitalization

Awakening the Giant: The Revitalization of the American Labor Movement

[Excerpt] The key to the contemporary revival of the American labor movement is precisely a renewed mobilization of the rank and file. Based on our combined research and work in labor education and representation, we believe that large numbers of American workers, blue and white-collar, skilled and unskilled, professional, service and manufacturing, union members and non-members, are open and in many cases ready for expanded workplace and union participation. To be sure, mobilization by itself is not enough: also necessary are national union support, innovative and flexible strategies, and coalition building, and we highlight these as well. But expanded rank-and-file participation draws on the central union comparative asset - the membership - and is essential to the success of most other strategies as well. In this article, we present an overview of union revitalization strategies and three case studies of successful rank-and-file mobilization. Although not typical, these cases illustrate a variety of advanced union strategies in today\u27s context, along with some of the barriers and resistance to be overcome

Political Insiders and Social Activists: Coalition Building in New York and Los Angeles

[Excerpt] Why have labor movements in New York City and Los Angeles changed so dramatically? And more specifically, why have the activist social coalitions that revitalized the labor movement in Los Angeles not played the same kind of role in New York? Our research persuades us that the relationship between .contrasting coalition types—political and social—is central to explaining the differences. Political coalitions refer to cooperation between unions and parties, politicians, and other social actors, focused largely on elections and policy-making processes. Social coalitions, by contrast, include labor and other social actors such as community, religious, environmental, and immigrant rights groups, focused on a range of political, economic, and social campaigns. A comparison of the two metropolitan areas over the past two decades reveals distinct patterns of coalition building in New York and Los Angeles. In New York, the labor movement is dominated by several powerful local unions, often at odds with one another in contending political coalitions. New social coalitions have developed but are not central to organized labor\u27s political action. The focus of most unions on narrow interest representation contributes to a disconnect between social and political coalitions in which the latter dominate. In Los Angeles, by contrast, the significance of social coalition building stands out as the labor movement has coalesced over the past fifteen years. To be sure, labor in Los Angeles participates actively in political coalitions. In contrast to New York, however, political coalitions move beyond narrow union interests, building on social coalitions that broaden the influence of labor as a whole