The 13th IIRA World Congress held in Berlin on 8-12 September 2003 attracted participants from all over the world. In the course of five days a wide range of topics relating to the changing profile of industrial relations was covered. Due to the large number of papers, we focus here only on the contributions presented during the plenary sessions. The conference was opened with a speech by Professor Manfred Weiss, president of the IIRA Association, who drew attention to the variety of challenges industrial relations face today, underlining the need for scientific and practical discussion that could be of a great use for the all the parties concerned. During pre-congress the problems of codetermination in Germany were addressed by Jörg Sydow (Chairman of the German Industrial Relations Association), Nikolaus Simon (Director of the Hans-Böckler Foundation), Otto Jacobi (Laboratorium Europa), Walther Müller-Jentsch (Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany), Hansjörg Weitbrecht (University of Heidelberg, Germany), Michael Fichter, (Organizing Committee, GIRA), followed by visits to leading German companies.
International Journal of Comparative Labour Law and Industrial Relations