‘Social partnership’ and ‘competitive corporatism’: labour relations in Germany

An industrial base and non-industrial strikes

Considering my findings so far, it is only plausible to assume that there is a broader trend towards or against class formation if it also possible to show, with the help of more fine- grained case studies at the national level, that strikes have expansive effects. If this does not turn out to be the case, one can indeed argue that the Castellsian claim holds. I start my case studies with Germany, which is still a country with a comparably strong industrial base: More than a quarter of the workforce is employed in the sector. It is not just that industrial employment is significantly higher than in Britain and Spain, but it exceeds the European and the global averages, which were 22.1 and 21.7 per cent, respectively, in 2020 (see Figure 5.1).

If one presumes that there is a strong link between the prevalence of industrial work and strike activity, Germany should be at the forefront of labour struggles. But this is not borne out by the numbers. Indeed, the country has the lowest figures of the three countries, Britain is in the middle, and Spain comes out on top (see Figure 5.3 and Table 5.3). And in recent years, strike activity has been more pronounced in the service and public sectors than in industry in Germany, at least in terms of the absolute numbers of strikes (Frindert et al, 2022 : 4). It is more plausible to assume that the figures for strike incidence reflect the dominant regimes of labour relations in the three countries, which corresponds to the three varieties of capitalism (see Behrens et al, 2004: 19). After all, coordinated market economies are known for the prevalence of corporatism, a regime type designed to prevent confrontations through consultation and negotiation.

The fact that Germany combines a comparably lower strike incidence and a comparably higher share of industrial employment suggests that the country is an interesting test case for Castells’ claim and Panitch's counterclaim: Contrary to the Castellsian scenario, Germany has been witnessing a slight decline in industrial employment combined with an increase in strike activity in recent years.