📋 Tender Overview
Flexibility in collective agreements can safeguard employment and promote competitiveness. However, this can only be realised under certain conditions. The dynamic is examined in a new Research Insight published by the Rockwool Foundation Berlin (RFBerlin), drawing on experiences in Germany and Italy. This may be of interest for the collective bargaining negotiations currently underway in the metal and electrical sectors in Germany, says co-author Christian Dustmann, Director of RFBerlin and Professor at University College London. The wage restraint resulting from increased flexibility already contributed to Germanys improved competitiveness after 1995. Oct 29, 2026, 10:00:00 AM Harald Schultz , Rockwool Foundation Berlin For the current negotiations, the union IG Metall has proposed different wage increases for companies: larger increases for those firms that are doing well, and smaller ones for those facing difficulties. From the mid-1990s onwards, there were an increasing number of flexibility clauses in Germany. These enabled companies, in agreement with employee representatives, to deviate from sector-wide agreements on wages, working hours and other conditions when circumstances required it. Even before the Hartz reforms of 2005, this helped to significantly boost Germanys competitiveness, as it was linked to measures to increase productivity, adds co-author Bernd Fitzenberger, Director of the Institute for Employment Research (IAB). In 1995, fewer than 5 per cent of collective agreements in the manufacturing sector contained flexibility clauses; by 2004, this proportion had already risen to around 60 per cent.In Italy, the trend was different: as the collective bargaining system was significantly more rigid, companies increasingly circumvented the existing structures by withdrawing from trade unions or concluding collective agreements with small unions. As a result, wages fell by 2-3 per cent, whilst the probability of remaining in employment rose by 3-4 percentage points, says co-author Lorenzo Incoronato, RFBerlin Research Fellow and Professor at the University of Naples Federico II. There were marked regional differences: in the more productive north, where competition is fiercer, the fall in wages went hand in hand with greater employment stability. In the south, where employers have greater market power, the wage losses were greater - without any gain in job security. The challenge, therefore, is not simply to make wage-setting more flexible, , says Dustmann, but to combine this with effective wage protection for workers. Contact for scientific information: Prof. Christian Dustmann; cd@rfberlin.com; 0044/ 7818 048 380Prof. Bernd Fitzenberger; bernd.fitzenberger@fau.de; 0049/ 911/ 179-3113Prof. Lorenzo Incoronato; lorenzo.incoronato@unina.it Original Publication: RFBerlin Research Insights: Collective Bargaining Between Protection and Flexibility: Lessons from Germany and Italy; by Christian Dustmann, Bernd Fitzenberger and Lorenzo Incoronato; Research Insights - RFBerlin; https://www.rfberlin.com/research-insight/ Source: https://idw-online.de/de/news879873
