The trade union backed Hans Böckler Foundation argues that if you want to see the future of the world of work then you need just to look into the content of the most recent company agreements signed between the works councils (WCs) and employers. Two researchers with the Foundation have been up to the challenge and leafed through thousands of company agreements. On 23 May they presented their results in a study documenting the topics that these agreements sought to address. The study showed that data protection issues were the most highly ranked subjects negotiated, followed by flexible organization of working time. However another theme is starting to become prominent and that is the analysis of work related psychological risks.
An increasing number and variety of company agreements. Two researchers with the Hans Böckler Foundation, Helge Baumann and Manuela Mascheke produced the report entitled Betriebsvereinbarungen 2015 – Verbreitung und Themen (Company agreements 2015 – Distribution and Themes). For this they relied on two important sources of information. First was the Foundation’s ‘company agreements archive’ that systematically holds records of German company agreements going back fifteen years and which today holds more than 16,000 documents.
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