Against the European trend, employment and working conditions in the German public sector have improved after the financial crisis. Trade union strategies played an important role.

With a nominal increase of 2.9 per cent for 2019, agreed pay rose nearly as much as in the preceding year. Set in the context of the past two decades, this represents one of the highest rates of increase and was exceeded only, and then only marginally, in 2014 and 2018. Given the modest and falling rate of consumer price inflation of 1.4 per cent, real pay grew by 1.5 per cent in 2019.

The system of German industrial relations aroused lively interest following the corporatist crisis management of 2009/2010, which was credited with ‘Germany’s jobs miracle’. In 2019, it is apparent that although works councils and multi-employer collective bargaining are still alive, labour relations as a whole are undergoing substantial changes.

Minimum wages are often set only at a rather low level, which does not allow for a decent standard of living. More recently, however, many European countries have seen political initiatives for a more substantial increase of minimum wages. As analysed by Thorsten Schulten (WSI) and Torsten Müller (ETUI), these initiatives fit quite well to the concept of a European minimum wage policy.

The study investigates workers' reasons for not working from home in German workplaces. Yvonne Lott (WSI) and Anja Abendroth (University Bielefeld) ask to what degree cultural barriers, besides technical barriers, are reasons for not working from home. Regression analyses using LPP data show that women - independent of their status positions - are more likely not to work from home due to perceived cultural barriers.

The extension of social security protection to all paid workers – including to self-employed workers and atypical-, flexible- and hybrid-job holders – is a fundamental prerequisite for strengthening Europe’s social dimension. Karin Schulze Buschoff (WSI) shows that the Dutch basic old-age pension system and the Austrian approach could serve as suitable models for other countries.

New European economic governance regime and the autonomy of collective bargaining: a fundamental conflict. The book chapter by Daniel Seikel (WSI) shows how reform measures imposed on programme countries have led to a substantial deterioration of the bargaining power of trade unions, undermining one of the cornerstones of post-war democratic governance.