Anniversary dates are often an opportunity to take stock of a situation and lay bare any key differences. Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the signing of the first collective agreement in Germany on 15 November 1918, trade union and employers federations gathered together in Berlin for the occasion on 16 October and they agreed that a positive social partnership had been established, calling it a ‘pillar of the German model’. However that was as far as their shared opinion went. Even though the social partners each declared their desire to bolster the current deteriorating collective agreement system they do diverge in terms of how to succeed in stemming its decline. Employers are focusing on injecting more flexibility into sector agreements while trade unions are calling for, inter alia, the introduction of tax breaks and advantages for unionized employees working in companies that are linked by sector agreements. The debate also addresses what role the State should be playing to stem the decline in the collective agreement system.
A pact between employers and trade unions. “On of the specificities of the German system of industrial relations is that it stems from circumstances connected with both the First and Second World Wars,” explained Wolfgang Schröder, researcher at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. In terms of the November 1918 revolution, industrialists feared their companies would be nationalized and they accepted the idea of making concessions to their workers. On 15 November 1918 Hugo Stinnes (Ruhr region industrialist) and Carl Legien (trade union representative) signed the first collective agreement in the country.
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