Liberalization Only at the Margins? Analysing the Growth of Temporary Work in German Core Manufacturing Sectors
| Published date | 01 September 2016 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12189 |
| Date | 01 September 2016 |
| Author | Chiara Benassi |
British Journal of Industrial Relations doi: 10.1111/bjir.12189
54:3 September 2016 0007–1080 pp. 597–622
Liberalization Only at the Margins?
Analysing the Growth of Temporary
Work in German Core Manufacturing
Sectors
Chiara Benassi
Abstract
Drawing on workers’ surveys and workplace interviews, this article investigates
the growth of temporarywork in German manufacturing sectors since the 1980s.
Findings partly confirm a ‘dualization’ scenario as workers without industry-
specific vocational training are more likely to be on a temporary contract than
skilled workers, and the gap has widened over time.However,also skilled workers
have become increasingly vulnerable to casualization due to job routine and the
erosion of industrial relations. Evidence confirms the crucial role of institutions
in supporting the linkage between specific skills and employment stability, and
suggests that the liberalization of the employment relationship has the potential
to advance also in the core of the German economy.
1. Introduction
This article investigates the relationship between skills, industrial relations
institutions and the use of temporary work in German core manufacturing
sectors in the last 30 years. This issue is central to academic debates about the
changes undergone by the German ‘coordinated’ model of production,which
used to rely on strong industrial relations institutions and on a permanent
skilled workforce (Hall and Soskice 2001; Streeck 1991).
According to Streeck (1991, 1992), institutional ‘beneficial constraints’
were at the origin of the German model: Collective bargaining agreements,
strict employment protection legislation and strong labour representation at
workplace limited the ability of management to dismiss their workers or hire
on precarious contracts, forcing them to invest in training broad workforce
segments in order to increase productivity and to compress labour costs.
Chiara Benassi is in the School of Management, Royal Holloway, University of London
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2016 John Wiley& Sons Ltd/London School of Economics. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd,
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598 British Journal of Industrial Relations
Skilled workers — called Facharbeiter1—and their works councils pushed
for the implementation of a work organization characterized by teamwork,
task rotation and autonomy, which required workers’ ‘redundant’ capacities
and employment stability (Kern and Schumann 1984; Streeck 1991).
However, institutional constraints have eroded during the last 20 years
(Artus 2001; Hassel 1999), and the German model has moved away
from the traditional coordinated model. Some political economy scholars
claim that the German political economy is now divided between a
service periphery, characterized by low-skill and volatile jobs, and core
manufacturing sectors, where coordinating institutions are still in place.
The resilient coordination is mainly attributed to employers, supported by
works councils, who want to retain their ‘specific’-skilled workers required
by high-quality export production (Hassel 2014; Palier and Thelen 2010;
Thelen 2014).
Other scholars in the field of sociology and industrial relations, however,
claim that not even in core manufacturing sectors, job security can be
ensured without strong industrial relationsinstitutions (Benassi and Dorigatti
2015; Doellgast and Greer 2007). This claim is supported by mounting
evidence that employers in core manufacturing sectors have increasingly used
subcontractors and contingent work since the 1990s (Eichhorst 2015; J¨
urgens
2004).
These contradicting accounts about the liberalization of the employment
relationship in German core manufacturing sectors feed into, first, a broader
debate about the role of employers’ interests (Estevez-Abe et al. 2001; Hall
and Soskice 2001) versus industrial relations institutions for determining
workers’ outcomes (Gallie 2007; Lloyd et al. 2013). Second, they reflect
the opposing stances within the debate about the changing trajectory of
coordinated economies, which expect, respectively, dualization between core
manufacturing and services (Hassel 2014; Thelen 2014) and progressive
liberalization (Baccaro and Howell 2011; Streeck 2009) until the fringe will
eat the core (Streeck 2010: 512).
This paper aims to contribute to both debates. The originality of the analysis
consists in combining the quantitative analysis of the workers’ surveys of
the Federal Institute of Vocational Training and Education (1986–2012) with
interview findings in German automotive and machine tool building plants.
The use of mixed methods allows to better illustrate the liberalization of
the employment relationship and the mechanisms underlying the diusion
patterns of temporary work in German core manufacturing sectors. The
dualization literature focuses only on the national level either through
qualitative studies (Hassel 2014; Thelen 2014) or cross-national quantitative
studies on the incidence of non-standard work acrosssectors, occupations and
skill levels (Gebel and Giesecke 2011; H¨
ausermann and Schwander 2012).
In contrast, research in industrial relations mainly relies on qualitative case
studies at workplace, which do not give a clear overall picture of changes over
time in German core manufacturing sectors (Doellgast and Greer 2007; Holst
et al. 2010).
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2016 John Wiley& Sons Ltd/London School of Economics.
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