Flexible collective agreements as employers and Chancellor Schröder wanted. “It is impossible to understand why we adopted the Pforzheim agreement without any context,” Reinhard Bispinck, collective bargaining expert at the Institute of Economic and Social Research in the Hans-Böckler foundation (WSI), told Planet Labor. In 2003/04, the collective agreements system was at the center of violent controversy. According to an idea that had spread in the public opinion, the media, politicians and employers, Germany was in a crisis and one of the main reasons was the so-called rigidity of its collective agreements system. “At the time, Germany was considered as ‘The sick man of Europe’ according to The Economist. And the German collective bargaining system was seen as one of the biggest obstacles to investments in Germany,” tells Gesamtmetall spokesperson Martin Leutz, pointing out that the most vivid criticism came from political parties.
Germany: metal social partners evaluate the 10 years following the ‘landmark’ Pforzheim agreement that led to the competitiveness agreements
Former quarrels forgotten: for the 10th anniversary of the famous “Pforzheim agreement,” the metal employers’ organization, Gesamtmetall, and the IG-Metall union unanimously gave a positive assessment, on February 25, 2014, of this agreement. At the time, it was highly controversial as it introduced a new “exception clause” of a totally new scope allowing businesses to temporary stray from all the provisions of a sectoral collective agreement, with the IG-Metall’s consent, not just in case of a crisis but also to strengthen their competitiveness or make concrete investments to maintain or create jobs. Gesamtmetall says this “pioneer” agreement helped stabilize the collective agreements system by making it more flexibility and, at the same time, markedly improving the social partners’ image. The IG-Metall says it helped save a lot of jobs.
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