Labour Law And Industrial Relations In Germany

Labour Law and Industrial Relations in Germany gives the reader a broad understanding of German labour law covering all important aspects. The book deals with the sources of labour law, individual employment relationships, collective bargaining, remuneration, working conditions, and dispute settlement.

Derived from the renowned multi-volume International Encyclopaedia of Laws, this monograph on Germany not only describes and analyses the legal aspects of labour relations, but also examines labour relations practices and developing trends. It provides a survey of the subject that is both usefully brief and sufficiently detailed to answer most questions likely to arise in any pertinent legal setting. Both individual and collective labour relations are covered in ample detail, with attention to such underlying and pervasive factors as employment contracts, suspension of the contracts, dismissal laws and covenant of non-competition, as well as international private law. The author describes all important details of the law governing hours and wages, benefits, intellectual property implications, trade union activity, employers’ associations, workers’ participation, collective bargaining, industrial disputes, and much more. Building on a clear overview of labour law and labour relations, the book offers practical guidance on which sound preliminary decisions may be based. It will find a ready readership among lawyers representing parties with interests in Germany, and academics and researchers will appreciate its value in the study of comparative trends in laws affecting labour and labour relations.

This publication gives an overview of all key aspects of German labour and employment law as well as adjoining fields. Legal professionals with expert knowledge and many years of experience explain the legal basis of these aspects of German law, point out typical practical problems and suggest solutions to those problems. In addition, examples are given on how to best manage legal pitfalls to minimize risks. This book translates employment and labour law for foreign in-house counsels and human resources managers at international companies and provides a clear understanding of the complex legal regulations in Germany. All three editors of the book, Dr. Jens Kirchner, Pascal R. Kremp and Michael Magotsch, are key legal professionals working at the Frankfurt office of DLA Piper, one of the largest legal services providers in the world (www.dlapiper.com), with national and multinational clients. Their experience includes the management of cross-border restructurings, outsourcing and transfer of undertaking measures, as well as the management of national and multi-jurisdictional merger and acquisitions projects, including post-merger integration processes.

This book presents a review of the last twenty years of research in German industrial relations. Divided into three parts, it begins by exploring the major developments in this field of research. It then describes the academic field of industrial relations in Germany from different perspectives, looking back on twenty years of “Industrielle Beziehungen” – the German Journal of Industrial Relations. This is rounded off by an analysis of the changes in the real world of the German model and its major institutions, namely the DGB trade unions and co-determination on the establishment-level. In addition, the book discusses the contributions of neighbouring disciplines, particularly human resource management, economics, and labour law. As the German model and its developments are interesting not only for researchers in industrial relations, but also for practitioners in business and administration, this volume addresses both groups of readers.

This volume provides a survey of the institutional and legal complexities of systems of industrial relations in German 'industrial culture', with a particular focus on the West German case.

Remarkably, the core element of labour relations?wage determination?has been excluded from the European social dialogue about harmonisation of working conditions and national systems of social security. The present study responds by analysing the prospects of building up structures of wage formation in Europe through a reevaluation of collective bargaining and collective agreements as they exist under the law of the most industrialized Member States. The impetus for the study is the widely debated crisis of the system of concluding regional collective agreements on wages. Social partners seem to have been trapped in fruitless conflicts on how the system must be reformed. It has become obvious that no party concerned employers, trade unions, the state has the capacity to resolve the growing difficulties of collective wage formation. In an introductory essay by the distinguished editors, this important study takes the situation in Germany, the most prominent manifestation of this European crisis, as its starting point. Then, academic experts from France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Sweden describe comparable problems in their own countries, detail approaches to dealing with them, and provide a critical commentary, including judgements and suggestions in relation to the German case. Then follows a reexamination of the situation in Germany in the light of the experience of the other countries. A final chapter outlines some preliminary interpretations of European prospects. Salient issues investigated include the following: the erosion of such ideological and legal categories and concepts as `dependent work, `solidarity', `subsidiarity' and `social self-regulation' as preconditions of traditional collective bargaining structures at national level; the decreasing membership of the bargaining partners on both sides; the shrinking rate of employees covered by collective agreements; attempts to establish a national social pact; increasing competition on global markets; decentralizing management strategies, including the abandonment of collective bargaining; and, individualized employees. The authors examine the various state structures to determine if the legal and institutional developments of the different national systems of collective bargaining constitute starting points for mutual learning in order to meet the new challenges. This leads to a discussion of which practices are successful in their original environment, and how these practices might adapt to other systems in other countries.