Left Outside Alone? Works Councils' Responses Towards Non-Standard Work in the German Metal and Chemical Sectors

The standard employment contract used to be the paradigm in many industrialised countries after World War II; however, in the last two decades, this post-war compromise has been put under pressure. This is because the globalisation of markets has increased instability and insecurity, and many firms have reacted by using non-standard forms of work. Simultaneously, formerly protective regulation has eroded, and new types of mostly temporary contractual relationships evolved. This development does not only challenge non-standard workers, but also workplace-level employee representatives since firms may increasingly use non-standard contracts, but employee representatives’ interventions on the conditions of using such contracts could be constrained by a regulatory regime focusing on standard employment. Therefore, the questions arise what local employee representatives do regarding non-standard work, how their regulatory interventions are shaped, and how they affect the working conditions of different groups of workers.

To study these questions, we examine the workplace and corresponding bargaining processes as embedded in the regulatory context arguing that the employment contract as regulatory institution is not sufficient to explain the potentially different working conditions across groups. Instead, these conditions are created in the workplace, which is embedded in the regulatory context (Osterman, 1987; Beynon et al., 2002). However, workplace actors have discretion to negotiate working conditions in local bargaining in Germany, which is taken as country case. The liberalisation of flexible work in Germany since the 1990s has created scope for firms to use non-standard work and differentiate the working conditions of contractual groups.

The article is based on cross-sectoral comparative case studies in four similar high-tech workplaces in the German metal and chemical sectors to study the processes shaping the working conditions of standard and non-standard workers. Works councils in the chemical sector were challenged by growing fragmentation, especially via the outsourcing of non-chemical functions and divisions. This would mostly come along with deteriorating working conditions for the affected workers, because of the coverage by other sectoral collective agreements setting lower standards. Works councils in both workplaces used sectoral flexible provisions and opening clauses in a way to make outsourcing less attractive, which enabled keeping service divisions in-house and within the representation domain of the chemical collective agreement, safeguarding workers from worse working conditions. In the metal sector, the main concern was the use of agency work. In one workplace, the works council successfully engaged in limiting its use and negotiating better regulation, also to avoid conflicts between different groups of staff working closely together. Conversely, the works council in the other workplace did not act upon agency work, because of the rather low use and the separation between agency and permanent workers.

The article thus illustrates the way works councils used the available (sectoral) resources in their regulatory interventions to protect workers on different employment contract types. Sectoral resources were of help in local bargaining, but they did not determine local actors’ actions and strategies. Works councillors’ diverse regulatory interventions across workplaces led to the observed variation in working conditions across contractual groups.