The Social Regulation on Labor in Germany : The 'Job-Miracle' and Dual Codetermination System(<Special Issue>Labour Regulation as Social Policy in Europe and Japan)

TANAKA Yoko

doi:10.24533/spls.7.1_28

Under the increasing influence of global competition and neo-liberalism, the deregulation process on labor together with retreating collective control power have been in progress in Germany as well as Japan. Recently, however, new kinds of phenomena are happening in Germany, which are different from Japan. There was so-called 'job-miracle' through policies of coordinating working hours after the Lehman shock in 2008, which resulted in almost no unemployment. The increase of irregular workers has stopped, and the decrease of normal, regular employees has turned out to be on the rise again. The long-term decline of trade unions is changing and becoming revitalized, as is the workplace coordination of labor conditions through works councils; meanwhile, Germany maintains its global competitiveness. In this paper, this changing process from de-regulation to re-regulation in Germany over the last 20 years is examined, with emphasis on two points: first, the process was based on the historical codetermination system of collective agreement and works councils of corporations and workplaces. Second, the policy for working time flexibility, which was also combined with the security of employment and income, developed on both the collective agreement level and the workplace level. However, this method has not been sufficiently extended to the service industry in the local market as a limitation of autonomy on the collective agreement, which required new legal regulations such as a minimum wage system.

The Social Regulation on Labor in Germany : The 'Job-Miracle' and Dual Codetermination System(<Special Issue>Labour Regulation as Social Policy in Europe and Japan)

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