[necrobrit]

Interesting. This is a pretty common criticism of unions in the anglosphere as well -- often alongside a note that the problem has been "solved" in Germany via worker codetermination.

Have you found this situation to be universal in Germany or only at some employers? This is one of those things I'd actually expect "the market" to be good at regulating. Bad union or management kills a company, company with better management or union fills the market void etc...

[gyulai]

This was the only company with worker codetermination that I've ever worked at, so I don't have anything to compare it to. Part of the reason is that, as the article says, companies will try at all costs to avoid it when there is legally a way it can be avoided, and I'm guessing that this in and of itself speaks to the fact that there's a problem there. Otherwise you might expect companies to volunteer into it for reasons of improving their employer brand and so forth. But the opposite is the case, with many large companies going as far as incorporating in other European jurisdictions and using European freedom-of-movement rules for legal entities to operate out of Germany. N.b.: This confers no tax advantages. It is done solely for the purposes of escaping Germany's companies' law. (Examples: The German department store "Müller" with over 700 retail locations in Germany and "Air Berlin", a major airline out of Germany, were incorporated in Britain).

[int_19h]

Why would a company's board of directors volunteer to, basically, hand off a significant part of their power to somebody else? Somebody whom they know will definitely not optimize for upper executive compensation.