This article aims to analyze some recent changes in the German industrial relations system mainly characterized by the rise of employment protection and employment promotion as new goals of collective bargaining. During the era of full-employment collective bargaining was essentially an instrument to improve working conditions whereas, with regard to a constant mass-unemployment, it becomes ever more to be understood as an instrument to save threatened jobs and to create new jobs. The most important strategies of employment protection and of employment promotion recently developed by the actors of collective bargaining in Germany, such as various forms of working time 'flexibilization', shall be analyzed in the article.
International Journal of Comparative Labour Law and Industrial Relations