Employer Resistance Against Works Councils: Evidence from Surveys Amongst Trade Unions

Employer resistance to works councils is not a phenomenon that has been closely associated with German labor relations. Leading accounts characterize the “German model” in terms of social partnership. However, we find that incidents of employers’ hostility towards the establishment of works councils are widespread. Based on data provided by the WSI-Survey of paid union representatives (2012, 2015), we find that employers disrupt every sixth attempt to establish a works council, and that such disruptions are most common at small and medium-sized companies and in owner-managed firms. Among the measures taken by employers, the most common strategy is to intimidate works council candidates. While union involvement can help resist employers’ efforts, courts have proven ineffective. Furthermore, we show that employers’ hostility to works councils is evenly distributed between manufacturing and private services, which suggests that the transformation of the “German model” over the past decade follows a path more nuanced than suggested by accounts of dualization. With workers in both core and peripheral sectors prevented from exercising a critical legal right in the workplace, the transformation of Germany’s political economy over the past decade paints a grim future for labor and proposes a complex path for further developments of capitalist democracy across Europe.