Globalization and working time: Working hours and flexibility in Germany

Politics and Society

Volumn 37, Issue 4, 2009, Pages 554-575

  Burgoon, Brian ^a   Raess, Damian ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM   (Netherlands)

^b HARVARD LAW SCHOOL   (United States)

Author keywords

Collective bargaining; Flexibility; Foreign direct investment; Globalization; Standard hours; Trade; Union; Working time; Works councils

Indexed keywords

EID: 70449810214     PISSN: 00323292     EISSN: 15527514     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0032329209349224     Document Type: Article

References (55)

1. Ivar Ekman, "Globalization Closes in on Swedes' Treasured Vacation," International Herald Tribune, August 20, 2007.
2. Isabelle de Pommereau, "E. Europe's Low Costs Erode Germans' 35-hour Workweek," Christian Science Monitor, August 24, 2004.
3. Thomas Friedman, "A Race to the Top," New York Times, June 3, 2005.
4. Mary Blair-Loy and Jerry A. Jacobs, "Globalization, Work Hours, and the Care Deficit among Stockbrokers," Gender & Society 17, no. 2 (2003): 230-49.
5. Robert J. Flanagan, Globalization and Labor Conditions: Working Conditions and Worker Rights in a Global Economy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
6. See Gerhard Bosch and Steffen Lehndorff, "Working-time Reduction and Employment: Experiences in Europe and Economic Policy Recommendations," Cambridge Journal of Economics 25, no. 2 (2001): 209-43;
7. and Brian Burgoon and Phineas Baxandall, "Three Worlds of Working Time: The Partisan and Welfare Politics of Work Hours in Industrialized Countries," Politics & Society 32, no. 4 (2004): 439-73.
8. See, e.g., Kathleen Thelen and Ikuo Kume, "The Effects of Globalization on Labour Revisited: Lessons from Germany and Japan," Politics & Society 27, no. 4 (1999): 477-505.
9. Flanagan, Globalization and Labor Conditions;
10. Blair-Loy and Jacobs, "Globalization, Work Hours."
11. Damian Raess and Brian Burgoon, "The Dogs That Sometimes Bark: Globalization and Works Council Bargaining in Germany," European Journal of Industrial Relations 12, no. 3 (2006): 287-309.
12. See Karl Hinrichs, William Roche, and Carmen Sirianni, "From Standardization to Flexibility: Changes in the Political Economy of Working Time," in Working Time in Transition: The Political Economy of Working Hours in Industrial Nations, ed. Karl Hinrichs, William Roche, and Carmen Sirianni (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991);
13. Gerhard Bosch, "From 40 to 35 Hours: Reduction and Flexibilisation of the Working Week in the Federal Republic of Germany," International Labour Review 129, no. 5 (1990): 611-27;
14. and Kea Tijdens, "Employees' and Employers' Preferences for Working Time Reduction and Working Time Differentiation. A Study of the 36-hour Working Week in the Dutch Banking Sector," Acta Sociologica 46, no. 1 (2003): 69-82.
15. Hinrichs, Roche, and Sirianni, "From Standardization to Flexibility "
16. and Bosch and Lehndorff, "Working-time Reduction and Employment."
17. Tiziano Treu, "Introduction," in Current Issues in Labour Relations: An International Perspective, ed. Alan Gladstone, Russell Lansbury, Jack Stieber, Tiziano Treu, and Manfred Weiss (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1989), 149-60.
18. and Bosch, "From 40 to 35 Hours."
19. See Tijdens, "Employees' and Employers' Preferences";
20. and Mia Väisänen and Jouko Nätti, "Working Time Preferences in Dual-earning Households," European Societies 4, no. 3 (2002): 307-29.
21. See Harald Bielenski, Gerhard Bosch, and Alexandra Wagner, Working Time Preferences in Sixteen European Countries (Dublin: European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, 2002);
22. Bosch, "From 40 to 35 Hours"
23. and Väisänen and Nätti, "Working Time Preferences."
24. See Arne L. Kalleberg, "Nonstandard Employment Relations: Part-time, Temporary and Contract Work," Annual Review of Sociology 26 (2000): 341-65;
25. and Moshe Krausz, "Effects of Short- and Long-term Preference for Temporary Work upon Psychological Outcomes," International Journal of Manpower 21, no. 8 (2000): 635-47.
26. See Christa Herrmann, Markus Promberger, Susanne Singer, and Rainer Trinczek, Forcierte Arbeitszeit-flexibilisierung. Die 35-Stunden-Woche in der betrieblichen und gewerkschaftlichen Praxis (Berlin: Sigma, 1999).
27. See, e.g., K. M. Beard and J. R. Edwards, "Employees at Risk: Contingent Work and the Psychological Experience of Contingent Workers," in Trends in Organizational Behavior, ed. C. L. Cooper and D. M. Rousseau (Chichester, UK: Wiley, 1995), 109-26;
28. and Alice De Wolff, Breaking the Myth of Flexible Work: Contingent Work in Toronto (Toronto: Toronto Organizing for Fair Employment, 2000).
29. See Richard Layard, Happiness: Lessons from a New Science (London: Penguin, 2005).
30. Flanagan, Globalization and Labor Conditions.
31. See Gordon H. Hanson, Raymond J. Mataloni, and Matthew J. Slaughter, "Expansion Strategies of U.S. Multinational Firms," in Brookings Trade Forum 2001, ed. Dani Rodrik and Susan Collins (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2001), 245-94.
32. Robert C. Feenstra and Gordon H. Hanson, "Globalization, Outsourcing and Wage Inequality," American Economic Review 86, no. 2 (1996): 240-45.
33. Dani Rodrik, Has Globalization Gone Too Far? (Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 1997).
34. See, e.g., Cathie Jo Martin and Duane Swank, "Does the Organization of Capital Matter? Employers and Active Labor Market Policy at the National and Firm Levels," American Political Science Review 98, no. 4 (2004): 593-611;
35. and Lyle Scruggs and Peter Lange, "Where Have All the Members Gone? Globalization, Institutions, and Union Density," Journal of Politics 64, no. 1 (2002): 126-53.
36. Franz Traxler, "Collective Bargaining in the OECD: Developments, Preconditions and Effects," European Journal of Industrial Relations 4, no. 2 (1998): 207-26.
37. See Susanne Kohaut and Claus Schnabel, "Zur Erosion des Flächentarifvertrags: Ausmaß, Einflussfaktoren und Gegenmaßnahmen," Industrielle Beziehungen 10, no. 2 (2003): 193-219. In addition, 2.7 percent of West German and 4.3 percent of East German enterprises are covered by company-level agreements.
38. See Thorsten Schank, Claus Schnabel, and Joachim Wagner, "Works Councils: Sand or Grease in the Operation of German Firms?" Applied Economics Letters 11, no. 3 (2004): 159-61.
39. John T. Addison, Lutz Bellmann, Claus Schnabel, and Joachim Wagner, "German Works Councils Old and New: Incidence, Coverage and Determinants," Schmollers Jahrbuch 123, no. 3 (2003): 339-58.
40. See, e.g., John W. Budd and In-Gang Na, "The Union Membership Wage Premium for Employees Covered by Collective Bargaining Agreements," Journal of Labor Economics 18, no. 4 (2000): 783-807.
41. and John T. Addison, Paulino Teixeira, and Thomas Zwick, "Works Councils and the Anatomy of Wages" (IZA Discussion Paper 2474, Institute for the Study of Labor, Bonn, Germany, 2006).
42. For instance, Norwegian unions accepted temporary contracts as a way to heighten job protections for permanent workers. See Karen M. Olsen, "Unions' Dilemma when Firms Use Employment Intermediaries," European Sociological Review 21, no. 3 (2005): 289-300.
43. Interview with Karl-Heinz Riederer, deputy chairman of works council, Cham, May 2003.
44. Daniela Städele and Dana Müller, Codebuch zum IAB-Betriebspanel (Nuremberg: FDZ Datenreport, 2006). Remote data access via the Research Data Centre (FDZ) of the German Federal Employment Agency at the Institute for Employment Research.
45. We exclude outlier enterprises reporting fewer than twenty and more than sixty hours, likely reflecting misreported hours. This drops roughly 100 of the more than 15,000 establishments surveyed and does not affect the results.
46. Peter Cappelli, "Plant-level Concession Bargaining," Industrial and Labor Relations Review 39, no. 1 (1985): 90-104.
47. Thelen and Kume, "Effects of Globalization."
48. Wolfgang Schroeder, Das Modell Deutschland auf dem Prüfstand: zur Entwicklungen der Industriellen Beziehungen in Ostdeutschland (1990-2000) (Wiesbaden, Germany: Westdeutscher Verlag, 2000)
49. and Wolfgang Schroeder, "Leipzig und BMW: Standortwettbewerb durch Clusterbildung," in Das neue Deutschland. Die Zukunft als Chance, ed. Tanja Busse and Tobias Dürr (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 2003).
50. Unemployment figures are from the Federal Employment Agency.
51. Bosch, "From 40 to 35 Hours."
52. The ten broad industry dummies are (1) agriculture, hunting, forestry, fishing; (2) mining, electricity, gas, and water; (3) manufacturing; (4) construction; (5) trade and repair; (6) transportation and communication; (7) financial intermediation; (8) industrial services; (9) other social services; and (10) public administration.
53. Support for hypothesis 1 is also captured by estimations without the reported interactions. For instance, foreign sales has a coefficient of -0.012 (SE = 0.003) in estimating standard hours, net of all controls reported in Table 1, but an ordered probit coefficient of 0.012 (SE = 0.001) in estimating flexibility score with the same controls. Tables are available from the authors.
54. Tables with the robustness and sensitivity tests are available from the authors.
55. Specifically, incidence of works councils increases (decreases) how much collective-agreement incidence increases (decreases) the degree to which globalization tends to increase flexibility (decrease standard hours).