Book review: Welfare beyond the Welfare State: The Employment Relationship in Germany and the UK
| Date | 01 March 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1388262720909201 |
| Published date | 01 March 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
Book reviews
Book reviews
Felix Behling (2018), Welfare beyond the Welfare State: The Employment Relationship
in Germany and the UK, Palgrave Macmillan, 295 pages, ISBN: 978-3-319-65223-8 (e-book).
Reviewed by: Abhishek, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India.
DOI: 10.1177/1388262720909201
With the introduction of the term ‘Industry 4.0’ a name for the changing nature of production due
resulting from technological innovation s was found. The changing conditions of emp loyment
relationships are some of the most debated topics. There is a broad consensus among academics,
trade unionists, business leaders, and policy makers that traditional forms of employment relation-
ships will no longer exist in the future. This change will not only affect the economy but will also
have a huge impact all other spheres of our society at the political and social level.
In anticipation of the large scale changes – especially in employer-employee relationships – that
will emerge in the near future as well as the modifications required to face these changes, the
World Bank published, in its World Development Report 2019, a pressing demand for a new social
contract (World Bank, 2019). It is obvious that we will not be doing in the future what we are doing
at present. The key question in the debate is how to ensure employee welfare when companies
demonstrate an inability to bear the costs of welfare provision. Two pertinent questions deriving
from this possible impending situation are first, do states have an obligation to step in the welfare
gap left by the employers and, second, should companies be encouraged to find new ways to
continue providing the same benefits as in the past.
In his book Welfare beyond the Welfare State: The Employment Relationship in Germany and
the UK, Felix Behling reflects on how welfare provision emerged during the industrial revolution,
and how current researchers are required to draw up a new roadmap for the future world of work,
especially regarding Industry 4.0. The book traces developments in the UK, from where the
industrial revolution started and spread more than 200 years ago. As the leading colonial power
for centuries, many of today’s labour welfare practices in different parts of the world have their
roots in the British system. The British experience is contrasted with the situation in Germany,
where, as Klaus Schwab (2016) notes, the word ‘Industry 4.0’ was coined at the Hannover Fair
in 2011.
Felix Behling does not view employee and governmental welfare as two separate concepts, but
rather as sharing a bi-directional relationship. He argues at the very beginning of his book that
‘employee and governmental welfare have, for the most part, co-evolved since the nineteenth
century. Employee welfare supported the formation of the modern employment relationship before
the emergence of national welfare states; both welfare forms positively reinforced each other in the
European Journal of Social Security
2020, Vol. 22(1) 83–85
ªThe Author(s) 2020
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