The Institute of Economic and Social Research (WSI) at the Hans Böckler trade union foundation, which manages the organisation’s collective agreement database, has recently published its summary of collective bargaining for 2019 (here). In addition to healthy salary increases, agreements in 2019 were marked by the prevalence of an options-based model for working time, which appears to have been all the rage among employees and was included in several agreements. Such models however do not seem to be very appealing to businesses which, in keeping with the trend of recent years, are applying collective agreements with decreasing frequency. Looking ahead to 2020, the WSI is forecasting a more “contradictory” trend in collective bargaining, amid the workforce shortage as well as the structural crisis in the automobile sector.
Employees maintain advantage. The labour shortage that many German companies across a range of sectors have been complaining about, having been supported by several years of very good economic conditions, continues to weigh in favour of employees, according to the 2019 summary of collective agreements penned by the Hans Böckler foundation. This trend can be seen at almost every level. In terms of wages, the sizeable increases seen in 2018 continued in 2019, with an average nominal salary...
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