Vogel, Sandra

Around one million asylum seekers arrived in Germany in 2015, sparking off a heated debate among politicians and social partners about their integration.  Several asylum regulations were eased in 2015 to improve a...

​The opportunities and challenges sparked by the digital revolution have been highlighted in a Green Paper by The Federal Ministry for Labour and Social Affairs. The ministry has also invited social partners and the public to participate in a new forum, to identify solutions to the anticipated changes to the labour market.

A high turnout of voters marked the latest works council elections in Germany, underlining their importance to the German industrial relations system. However, a study published in January 2015 shows that they remain male-dominated, with women holding only 25% of the seats. Two-thirds of works council members were re-elected, of whom a disproportionate share were also union members.

The number of fatal work accidents has fallen in Germany, although the number of occupational diseases has risen, according to a report released in December 2014. However, the Annual Report on Health and Safety at the Workplace also shows that production lost as a result of sickness leave was worth €59 billion in 2013, or 2% of German gross national income.

A new alliance for vocational and further training was announced by the German Confederation of Trade Unions (DGB) at the end of 2014. It marks a break from the Pact on Apprenticeship, which the DGB refused to join. The new alliance, which will run from 2015 to 2018, unites all the relevant actors.

German trade unions have been fighting decreasing rates in density for years. Now the latest research by the Cologne Institute for Economic Research shows that net union density rose by 2.6 percentage points between 2006 and 2012 and 20.6% of employees were union members in 2012. Most of the new members are men.

In Germany, 71.4% of apprentices in 2014 were ‘satisfied’ or ‘very satisfied’ with their training, according to the German Confederation of Trade Unions (DGB). However, its report calls for more, and better quality, apprenticeships. In December 2014 an alliance of employers, unions and national government representatives was set up to promote vocational and further training.

New rules reversing reforms of Germany’s statutory pension system took effect on 1 July 2014. Some critics estimate that these more generous pension rules will cost an extra €10 billion over the next decade, and younger workers will have to fund them with little chance of receiving equally generous benefits when they retire.

In early 2014, new data were published on young people's transitions from school to the vocational training market. The Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training recorded 530,715 new contracts between October 2012 and September 2013. However, young people's occupational choices have not changed much over the past few years and remain limited, with young men often taking up apprentices in technical roles and young women entering sales, administrative or service professions. Occupational choices are of major importance when it comes to pay prospects and employment opportunities later in life.

The German Federation of Chemicals Employers’ Associations (BAVC [1]) and the Mining, Chemicals and Energy Industrial Union (IG BCE [2]) announced in a press release (in German, 121 KB PDF) [3] that they had concluded a new collective agreement on 5 February 2014. Only nine local and two sectoral collective bargaining rounds between employers and unions were needed to negotiate the deal, which was the first agreement to be concluded in Germany in 2014. [1] http://www.bavc.de [2] http://www.igbce.de [3] http://www.bavc.de/bavc/mediendb.nsf/gfx/8A2A6C973D1F9EDEC1257C7600508783/%24file/05-02-2014_Chemie-Tarifabschluss.pdf