Anti-Unionism in a Coordinated Market Economy: The Case of Germany

Abstract

Germany has an industrial system where militant anti-unionism is not regarded as being widespread or systemic as it is in the US (see Logan, Moody, this volume). The anti-union strategies of employers have different targets and perhaps reach less frequently the public sphere, but they share with Anglo-Saxon anti-unionism two main strategic goals: to prevent or weaken union power at the workplace and to avoid collective bargaining. Here we focus primarily upon employer–union relations. Legislative attacks on union power, although not fully absent in postwar history,¹ were less frequent and prominent than, for example, in the US or in Britain. In most periods, the state has considered industrial relations to be regulated by unions and employers’ associations, a fact which caused Katzenstein (1987) to call Germany a semi-sovereign state.