In Germany dual-training at third level education standard is in full-swing, and the Continental group together with the metals unions IG Metall and the chemicals union IG BCE announced they had signed an innovative agreement that for the first time establishes identical working conditions and remuneration for all students undertaking dual-training, combining work with higher level study at the German auto equipment group. The group is currently training 520 dual-training students and is the country’s second major company, after Volkswagen, to have adopted this type of agreement. The unions have until now been battling to regulate apprenticeship conditions for these students from within collective agreements although to no avail to. They now hope that other German companies will copy the Continental example.
A model increasingly in vogue. According to IG Metall until 2000 students who combined occupational training with higher level study were more or less ‘rare birds’ in German companies. However since the start of the millennium their numbers haven’t stopped rising and today almost 15% of all apprentices in the metals sector are students in dual-training. At Volkswagen that percentage rises to even as high as 20%. This model which maps the dual-training apprenticeship system to higher level...
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