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Mitbestimmung international

This site provides online access in English to a selection of articles that have recently appeared in Mitbestimmung, the monthly magazine of the Hans Boeckler Foundation. The articles cover employee related issues across Europe and industrial relations developments in Germany.

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"These unemployment rates are a recipe for disaster!"

Bernadette Ségol, General Secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), talks to Mitbestimmung about short-sighted financial policy, trade union solidarity and her fight to make the European Union more than just a free trade area. mehr ...

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Industrial policy lacks a strategy

Countries with a strong industrial base have weathered the recession better than those without. Even the European Commission is convinced, and has reversed its policy of not promoting industrial policy. But its tools are inconsistent and uncoordinated. By Bernd Lange mehr ...

Agenda 2010 by the back door

A number of momentous decisions are being lined up for the EU summit in June, aimed at making labour market and welfare reforms based on the German model compulsory throughout the eurozone. The trade unions fear welfare cuts and an attack on the right to free collective bargaining. By Eric Bonse mehr ...

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"We need to act damn quickly"

Raymond Torres, Director of the ILO's International Institute for Labour Studies in Geneva, explains why governments share the blame for the European employment crisis and why young people need a job guarantee and single parents should receive more protection. mehr ...

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"Germany is a land of commodities"

Germany has plentiful supplies of coal, salt, rock, limestone and clay, and its commodity shortage is confined to a few specific materials. Minerals companies are currently prospecting for new mines and reopening old ones. By Stefan Scheytt mehr ...

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"Shining a spotlight on dreadful conditions"

Heiner Reimann, a trade union secretary at the services union ver.di, tells Mitbestimmung about his experiences with Amazon, a recent German TV report on the mail order sector, and using the internet as an organising platform. mehr ...

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Anti-union practices at DHL

DHL is the world's largest logistics company. Wholly owned by Deutsche Post, it respects union rights at its sites in Europe, but the picture is quite different elsewhere in the world, and there is now a wave of complaints from Colombia. By Knut Henkel mehr ...

"The DHL Board's behaviour is completely incomprehensible"

Andrea Kocsis, Deputy Chair of the services union ver.di and head of its Postal Services, Freight and Logistics division, talks about the anti-union practices at DHL in Latin America. mehr ...

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Katja Rietzler on the right strategy for the countries hit by the Euro crisis

"If we are to find a long-term solution to the Eurozone crisis, we must extend the strategy of consolidation over a much longer period." mehr ...

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A vicious cycle of 'social dumping'

Ford, PSA and Opel are closing plants in Europe and forcing concessions from workers in the crisis-hit countries of Southern Europe. The union federation industriALL Europe fears a vicious cycle of 'social dumping' in relation to pay and working conditions. By Mario Müller mehr ...

"A response to economic and social crises"

Historian Anne Sudrow on the roots of the collective economy, the collapse of Germany's social economy, and the future of alternative economic models mehr ...

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Beleaguered by the crisis

Workers at the European Central Bank in Frankfurt are complaining of burn-out and working conditions that are harming their health. They have seen their workload soar as a result of the Eurozone crisis, but they have hardly any codetermination rights. By Renate Hebauf mehr ...

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Authoritarian and unsocial

Workers and unions have little hope of any benefits from the new system of European economic governance, which gives Brussels the power to harmonise the levels of competitiveness of EU Member States. By Florian Rödl mehr ...

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"These are classic Agenda 2010 measures"

First of all they make ordinary people pay for the losses of the financial crisis, then they take away their rights too - Michael Sommer talks about the lack of basic justice in the euro crisis. mehr ...

European wages - the race to the bottom

The harsh conditions imposed by the EU Commission, the ECB and the IMF are reducing wages and causing the disintegration of collective agreement systems.
By Thorsten Schulten mehr ...

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Here comes the swarm

The future has arrived: social media now enable everyone to have a say, and mass communications have changed beyond recognition. IG Metall-Jugend, the youth arm of the German metalworkers' union, now has an audience of millions on Facebook. By Andreas Kraft mehr ...

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When Communists go shopping

Anxiety was running high among employees of Swabian construction equipment manufacturer Putzmeister, when, in a surprise move, the company was sold to the Chinese Sany Group at the beginning of the year. By Gesa von Leesen mehr ...

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industriAll has arrived

The new European trade union federation industriAll brings together a total of 197 trade unions and aims to work towards a robust industrial policy accompanied by a change of course within the EU. By Eric Bonse mehr ...

How companies keep works councils out

German employers are more likely to put obstacles in the way of setting up new works councils than to hamper the work of existing ones. Mitbestimmung reports on the initial findings of a WSI survey of full-time trade union officials. By Martin Behrens and Heiner Dribbusch mehr ...

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Spying on the works council

Private detectives posing as employees eavesdropped on conversations to gather evidence against the Chair of one works council. But he fought back. By Andreas Kraft mehr ...

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"Crazy relationships"

Business ethics expert Ulrich Thielemann talks about worrying trends in income distribution and applying the principle of fairness to pay bargaining. more...

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More Europe, but different

There is an urgent need to rectify the current structural deficits in EU economic policy - including the system of competing national states that has put wages and taxation policy under such massive pressure. An alternative policy on growth and borrowing could potentially overcome the euro crisis. By Klaus Busch more...

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Staying non-unionised by all means possible

US subsidiary T-Mobile is resorting to cruder tactics than many all-American companies in its campaign to resist trade unions. Just 15 employees out of a workforce of 37,000 are members of the telecoms union, CWA. By Stephan Scheytt more...


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