![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
Abstract
Since the financial crisis at the end of the last decade, Germany is regarded again as a successful coordinated market economy. However, a closer look at labour and working conditions reveals disturbing phenomena like an increase of psychical stress, growing shares of low wage employment or the erosion of collective bargaining or works councils’ coverage. Finance capitalism has become the most popular concept among German sociologists to explain why and how industrial relations and working conditions have been put under pressure in the last one or two decades. But how coherent is the finance capitalism story? This question is tackled in the paper, based on literature review and empirical findings. The paper argues that the concept is overexpanded and that, first, financial market capitalism is refractured by agency and actors on different instituitonal levels and that, second, there are other and independent developments influencing industrial relations like globalisation or the deregulation of labour markets that have to be taken into account.
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Thomas Haipeter was born in 1967 and completed Postgraduate Studies in Sociology, History and Economics in 1994 at the University of Bielefeld. His dissertation about ‘Codetermination at VW’ finished in 1999 at the University of Bremen. From 2000 he worked at the Institute Work and Technology in Gelsenkirchen, and from 2007 at the Institute Works, Skills and Training (IAQ) at the University of Duisburg Essen. Habilitation about ‘Derogations from Collective Bargaining’ was finished in 2009 at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Since 2010 he has been head of the research department ‘Working Time and Work Organisation’ at the IAQ and was appointed Professor Apl in 2014.
Notes
1. The Collective Agreements Act, 1949 (Tarifvertragsgesetz) and the Works Constitution Act, 1972 (Betriebsverfassungsgesetz).