Digitalisation, unions and participation: the German case of ‘industry 4.0’

• Author: Thomas Haipeter
• Date: 01 May 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/irj.12291
• Published date: 01 May 2020

Digitalisation, unions and participation: the

German case of ‘industry 4.0’

Thomas Haipeter Professor

ABSTRACT

This article tackles the question of how labour representatives cope with the imple-

mentation of ‘Industrie 4.0’in German manufacturing plants. Digitalisation of

manufacturing is going along with challenges for employment, work organisation

and working conditions. The article analyses one of the main strategies German

unions have developed, the project ‘Work 2020’, which was to raise works councils’

awareness of the workplace impact of digitalisation, improve their knowledge of the

changes, raise their capacity to respond and, finally, lead to the negotiation of work-

place agreements on this issue with employers. The results of the analysis show that a

strong interplay between unions and works councils and the activation of works coun-

cils by the unions have become indispensable preconditions for coping with the new

challenges both of digitalisation and of the ongoing erosion of the German system

of labour relations.

1 INTRODUCTION

Digitalisation is seen as a megatrend heralding a fundamental transformation of both

industry and services, and with this is a new world of employment and a radical shift

in the conditions under which work is performed. In the manufacturing areas, it is the

vision of ‘Industrie 4.0’in the sense of ‘cyber-physical systems’, which is at the core of

this idea and which is encompassing networks of machines, products and people,

driven by software and enabled through sensors and the application of artificial intel-

ligence (Pfeiffer, 2015). Major transformations, such as those associated with

digitalisation, are necessarily accompanied by profound challenges for work, employ-

ment and working conditions and also for the way employee interests are represented

—in the case of Germany through the ‘dual system’of trade unions and works coun-

cils. These organisations will be compelled to respond should digitalisation trigger a

dramatic reduction in industrial employment or the undermining of agreed pay and

conditions.

Confronted by these prospects, trade unions in Germany have opted to go on the

offensive and adopt a strategy aimed at securing active participation in shaping

change, as opposed to rejecting it and then fighting over the consequences. Examples

of this include trade union involvement in an issue-based corporatism in German

manufacturing (Schroeder, 2016), as exemplified in accords concluded at industry

❒Thomas Haipeter, Institute for Work, Skills and Training, University of Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg,

Germany. Correspondence should be addressed to Thomas Haipeter, Institute for Work, Skills and

Training, University of Duisburg-Essen, Forsthausweg 2, 47057 Duisburg, Germany; email: thomas.

haipeter@uni-due.de

Industrial Relations Journal 51:3, 242–260

ISSN 0019-8692

© 2020 The Authors. Industrial Relations Journal published by Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribu-

tion and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

level. The most significant site for engaging with digitalisation, however, is the work-

place, given that this is where investment and the introduction of new technologies

take place and where they have an effect on employees, either in making employment

more secure and, maybe, increasing the autonomy of work or in displacing them and

reducing workers’control of the process of production. As Edwards and

Ramirez (2016) have argued, the question is whether unions and employees should

embrace new technologies or whether they should resist them. In order to shed light

on this question, they distinguish several dimensions that characterise technologies

like intended and unintended or direct and indirect effects, the question of

reconstituting technologies, immanence effects of the technology on work organisa-

tion, the degree of success of a technology in meeting its aims and, finally, the degree

of discontinuity.

However, unfortunately, for workers and unions, most of these questions cannot

be answered in advance; some answers will show up only a while after the technol-

ogy has been introduced, and some answers can only be given by scrutinising plant

level developments in detail. Confronted with the implementation of new technolo-

gies, the challenge for unions and workers seems to be twofold: first, if possible, to

decide whether to resist or to shape the implementation of new technology and its

consequences, for example, in terms of immanence effects, in a way that could

strengthen positive effects and reduce negative ones and, second, to get the informa-

tion such decisions can be based on. Moreover, the answer of the unions also has to

take into account their resources and capabilities (Lévesque and Murray, 2010) to

develop effective strategies.

German unions have opted for the embracing solution. However, influencing the

implementation of digital technologies of the ‘Industrie 4.0’requires more than tak-

ing part in corporatist arrangements; it also requires the development of strategies

to get information, to strengthen resources and capabilities on plant level and to

influence the effects of technological change—which in Germany also means to

support the works councils, as they are the legal workplace representations of

workers. German trade unions tried to do this in the form of workplace projects,

among them the trade union project ‘Arbeit 2020’in North-Rhine Westphalia

(‘Work 2020 in NRW’), shortened here to ‘Arbeit 2020’. This project was begun

in 2016 as a joint exercise between three industry trade unions: IG Metall

(metalworking), IG BCE (mining, chemicals and energy) and NGG (food, drink,

tobacco, hospitality). When initiated, ‘Arbeit 2020’—in addition to a further IG

Metall project ‘Work and Innovation’—was the most advanced German union

project to address digitalisation.

Although a study of this trade union project mainly, the article can shed light on

some more general questions: first, the opportunities and limits of trade unions and

workers to exercise any effective influence on digital technologies and, second, the

resources and capabilities they have to do so or they might be able to develop—which

also might give hints on country-specific effects of digital technologies based on the

interactions of the industrial relations actors (Lloyd and Payne 2019). Before turning

to the project ‘Arbeit 2020’, the article will look at some selected research findings on

the incidence of digitalisation, its implications for work and employment and on how

German trade unions have begun to address these issues. This then forms the basis for

evaluating the outcomes of the ‘Arbeit 2020’project. How have trade unions and

works councils responded to the impending digital transformation? What approaches

and strategies have they developed?

243Digitalisation and unions

© 2020 The Authors. Industrial Relations Journal published by Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd