Most German workers are familiar with the concepts of ‘works councils’ and ‘co-determination,’ but what are they? This week in Bonn, a conference of these uniquely German worker representative systems takes place.
German Works Councils Day — it’s probably not going to set the pulses racing in the way that say, Valentine’s Day, Halloween or a chocolate-egg heavy Easter Sunday might.
This week at the old German parliament building in Bonn, works councils (“Betriebsräte” in German) representing workers from across Germany are meeting for the three-day conference. There they will discuss various issues relating to working life in Germany and provide information for workers across different areas and disciplines.
A phrase that will crop up frequently is “co-determination,” or “Mitbestimmung” in German. Essentially, it refers to the unique way in which workers in Germany have the right to elect their own representatives to their companies’ supervisory boards.
Still awake? If so, bear with us — it might not seem like the most spellbinding topic in the world but it is certainly not an insignificant one. Germany is long established as the economic powerhouse of Europe and several economists have cited the country’s distinct worker representation model as the basis for much of the country’s success.
But what is a German works council anyway? How does it differ from a union? And what on earth is co-determination?
From master craftsmen to shop stewards
Germany has a lot of experience of heavy regulation within its professional spheres. From the famous guild system of Medieval times to initiatives to develop dedicated worker councils at the time of the 1848 Frankfurt Parliament and then again in the Weimar era (1919-1933), the idea that German workers should have proper representation and status has a long history.
Such noble ideals were not compatible with the totalitarian horror of the Nazi era, but in the democratic Germany that emerged after the second world war, the ideal of meaningful worker representation was imbued with even greater meaning. Work councils were restored and Konrad Adenauer’s government introduced several laws aimed at improving worker rights and strengthening their levels of representation.
In 1951, coal and steel workers were given the right to elect representatives to supervisory boards, with various other forms of this so-called co-determination model rolled out across various sectors in the years that followed.
Lufthansa workers on strike in Frankfurt in 2013
The Co-determination Act, enacted in 1976, still allows for workers in large public and private companies — those with more than 2,000 employees — to elect up to half of the members of that company’s supervisory board of directors, giving workers a powerful say in how those companies are run, from overall strategy to everyday minutiae.
Then there are the works councils — the groups that will come together this week in Bonn and whose legal basis is established by the German Works Council Constitution Act.
Works councils are neither unions nor executive boards; they are representative groups drawn from a company’s employee base and designed to further co-determination rights, particularly concerning matters of employee welfare.