Trade Unions and Workplace Training: Issues and International Perspectives, edited by Richard Cooney and Mark Stuart , Routledge, New York, 2012, 200 pp., ISBN 978 0 415 44334 0, £85.00, hardback.

Date01 December 2013
AuthorLisa Schulte
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12046_6
Published date01 December 2013
BOOK REVIEWS
The Role of Business in the Development of the Welfare State and Labor Markets in
Germany: Containing Social Reforms, by Thomas Paster, Routledge, London,
2012, 234 pp., ISBN 978 0 415 61136 7, £80.00, hardback.
Das Paradox der Arbeitgeberverbände: Von der Schwierigkeit, durchsetzungsstarke
Unternehmensinteressen kollektiv zu vertreten, by Martin Behrens, edition sigma,
Berlin, 2011, 225 pp., ISBN 978 3836087308, £14.93, hardback.
It is a commonplace in industrial relations research that among European welfare
capitalisms, Germany has a distinct institutional configuration in which industry-
wide, multi-employer collective wage bargaining contributes to relative wage equality
and low levels of industrial disputes. One pillar of that wage-setting arrangement is a
species of encompassing, distinct employer associations operating within a larger
population of strong business associations. Apart from German trade unions’ insti-
tutionalized strength, employer associations’ organizational capacity to extend the
coverage of industry-wide collective agreements even to those firms that are not
highly unionized might justifiably be said to represent one of the core foundations
of this collective bargaining system. Among other things such as supervisory board
co-determination, employee representation through works councils or tripartite
arrangements in social security systems and occupational training systems, this pecu-
liar feature has contributed to Germany being regarded as a paradigmatic case of a
‘Coordinated Market Economy’.
However, and also well documented, doubts are rising whether this typification
of the German collective bargaining system still holds today. As the coverage of
industry-wide, multi-employer collective agreements has shrunk and union member-
ship has declined, the academic jury is out for institutional continuity of the German
model. One aspect of this debate is whether German employer associations still have
the capacity and will to support collective bargaining as we know it. As such, studies
that investigate employer associations are not only relevant for an assessment of
today’s German industrial relations in general and collective bargaining in particular,
but also of interest for everyone who wants to understand the future of coordinated
types of advanced capitalism.
Two recent books tackle German employer associations from the two ends of the
micro–macro continuum of political institutionalism. Whereas Behrens’ contribution
focuses on explaining the inner workings of current employer associations and how
their formal organizational characteristics might affect recent changes in German
collective bargaining from a micro-level perspective, Paster’s book elaborates on the
political contribution of employer associations in shaping social welfare policy in
Germany in a long-term macro-perspective ranging from the 1880s up to the recent
past.
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British Journal of Industrial Relations doi: 10.1111/bjir.12046
51:4 December 2013 0007–1080 pp. 826–844
© John Wiley & Sons Ltd/London School of Economics 2013. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
The first part of Behrens’ book is a theoretical tour the force. In his synthesis of the
classics on (German) employer associations, he derives an approach to understanding
the politics of interest aggregation within associations. The innovative aspect of
Behrens’ perspective is his emphasis on associations’ agency, a welcome contrast with
structural explanations of capitalist interest aggregation found in most studies. More-
over, Behrens delivers a consistent and unique empirical analysis of 449 articles of
association texts in order to understand how exactly associations regulate interest
aggregation of private business, and thereby create and retain their organizational
agency. In more detail, he examines how employer associations define their represen-
tational domain by allowing only certain firms access to the association, thereby
drawing demarcations around industries and geographies. Then, he examines the
rules for settling internal conflicts among membership factions, privileging certain
member groups’ interests over others, activating members for the association’s policy
formation process and providing services to members. In all these areas, associations’
management possesses scope for agency from which Behrens concludes that associa-
tions are not only driven by market conditions or external political structures, but can
also shape the economic, political and institutional environment.
The true highlight of Behrens’ book is the second part where he consistently
applies his framework to the current debate about erosion versus stability of the
German model. He selects one of the most pressing issues, the dissemination of
‘bargaining-free’ membership status among German employer associations. As a
rather recent phenomenon, ‘bargaining-free’ membership endangers employer asso-
ciations’ capacity to extend the coverage of collective agreements across their industry
domain. Based on his analysis of interest aggregation within associations, Behrens
distinguishes four different strategy types behind this reprogramming of associations’
membership rules: ensuring associations’ survival, legalizing members’ activities,
building up pressure towards the unions and exiting multi-employer bargaining.
Apart from delivering one of the few empirical studies on the qualities, overall scope
and depth, as well as the key drivers of ‘bargaining-free’ membership, Behrens also
gives vivid accounts of this change in five industries. His major result is that employer
associations that allow more differentiated forms of interest aggregation tend to select
more aggressive forms of ‘bargaining-free’ membership in order to use it as threat in
negotiations or to pave the way for an escape from multi-firm collective bargaining
altogether. The paradox of this strategy is that the association also undermines the
goal of organizational survival by increasing internal conflicts and tensions between
different membership groups. From this, Behrens concludes that studies of institu-
tional stability or erosion need to consider the more fine-grained, micro-level devel-
opments within employer associations because these are the organizational pillars on
which macro-institutional structures such as German collective bargaining rest.
Paster’s book complements to Behrens’ contribution by delivering a political scien-
tist’s view on the overall history of business’ role in German social reform. By that,
Paster illuminates what is at stake if one wants to understand business interest
aggregation in political terms. His central argument is that German business in general
has been ideologically opposed to social reform. If private business occasionally
appears to have consented to a social policy reform, this came about only because it was
pressed for acceptance and compromise through the reformist or revolutionary orga-
nized labour movement. For those familiar with German social and labour history, this
thesis is unsurprising, as it summarizes the conventional view. However, Paster intro-
duces an interesting twist by contrasting a ‘political accommodation’ thesis with a so
called ‘business interest’ thesis. The latter thesis holds that business might have a
Book Reviews 827
© John Wiley & Sons Ltd/London School of Economics 2013.

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