The Transnational Activities of German Trade Unions and Works Councils

What is it about?

An imbalance at the heart of the German economy – habitual current account surpluses – has a crosscutting impact on unions in the tradeable goods sectors. Export surpluses boost employment, but they also necessitate capital outflow. Decades of investment abroad by German transnational enterprises has created global supply chains where costs are lower and employee representation weaker. Production abroad has exposed German managers to far more confrontational employment relations regimes than the social partnership practiced at home. These trends portend to increase German firms’ leverage over domestic unions. To meet these challenges, German trade unionists have experimented with exporting power. This contribution evaluates five cases: (1) the German metalworkers union (IG Metall) efforts to coordinate collective bargaining with unions in neighboring countries; (2) IG Metall’s assistance in unionization drives in the US auto industry; (3) IG Metall’s undertakings to strengthen the Hungarian mechanical engineering union; (4) the work by IG Metall and the Siemens enterprise works council to obtain a neutrality agreement for US unions; and (5) cooperation between the German service employees union, ver.di, and the Communications workers of America to organize T-Mobile USA. The research shows that unions still have an extraordinarily difficult time exporting power beyond national borders.

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