High equality, low activity: the contribution of the social welfare system to the stability of the German collective bargaining regime

Abstract

"The main trend on which employment systems are converging worldwide is, according Katz and Darbshire, an increase in internal diversity accompanied by rising inequality. Like many of us, the authors feel more than a little uncomfortable with what they observe. The national industrial relations systems of the postwar period were cherished precisely for their capacity to guarantee all workers a common shielded from the pressures and vagaries of the market. In this way, they not only protected social peace but also helped generate a distribution of life chances less dispersed and more egalitarian than unmedicated market forces would have produced. The big question for the future, the book makes clear, is whether we can invent institutions and policies for the emerging new employment systems that will be capable of performing the equalizing functions that were once so successfully performed by classical industrial relations." (excerpt)