[joe_mamba]

>c) I'm currently on garden leave period after 18 years in the company (incl acquisitions) due to a reduction, where works council produced a quite nice exit for me

Isn't this type of generosity the exact reason why German companies are making restructuring and moving jobs abroad where they don't have workers councils and such generous exit packages?

Like I'm sure it worked well for you now, but I'm wondering how sustainable this is for German companies going forward, in a more competitive business-cutthroat globalized world, that has less and less barriers for capital and trade.

[johannes1234321]

It is complicated and has multiple dimensions. For example it also leads to workers not switching Job away from an employer as quickly.

It's also interesting how it plays together with social benefits: As it is hard to fire people, hire&fire isn't an approach, thus companies keep workers longer during a downturn, thus when they let go there is more budget for social security.

Also the effects of having works council representatives on the board might lead to decisions not tied to the quarterly results, but long-term stability.

This all of course makes it harder to do experiments, build up a business unit to see if an idea might work ...

As a worker it is quite good and the model worked quite well for large parts of the 20th century. With global competition (for many jobs exact location doesn't matter) it could be a factor which plays a role in being late with digital stuff.

[joe_mamba]

Unfortunately your comment still doesn't address my concerns on how this model is supposed to be sustainable to work in the future given the new economic realities of Germany's faltering industry, and especially the existing intra-EU disparity between german labor and eastern European labor, let alone international labor.

You're reiterating the pros of why it's been good SO FAR, but you don't drive on the road by looking in the rearview mirror, if you get what I mean.

My take is that the german government will have to do another "agenda 2010" row of cuts to union and labor rights, if it wishes to keep jobs in the country and remain a competitive export economy, hell, even Switzerland has significantly less labor rights than Germany. Not saying that's a good thing, but it seems like that's one of the necessary evils if you want to have a growing economy, and not turn into Italy or France.