The “Skill-oriented” Strategies of German Trade Unions: Their Impact on Efficiency and Equality Objectives
Author(s)
Mahnkopf, Birgit
Abstract
Rapid economic changes in industrialized nations have generated rising wage and income inequality in the U.S. and Great Britain and high unemployment in Western Europe. The exact causes are a matter of much theoretical debate and empirical research. The article summarized here does not attempt to resolve this debate, but rather points to three of the suggested elements – changing skill needs, increased demand for flexible labor and the declining relevance of unions – which can be linked in the German context. The author proposes that German unions could overcome their “dinosaur” image by adopting a positive strategy toward training and retraining their members for emerging skills. By encouraging adaptation rather than resistance to change, unions could hope to stabilize employment for their members by offering a functionally flexible workforce in response to employer attempts to hire for particular skills on an as-needed basis. Some German unions have begun to develop such a skill-based strategy. This project meshes well with Germany’s existing vocational training program for youth, but to be effective will need to extend to underserved groups of workers and to the retraining needs of older workers.
