ABSTRACT
Until recently there has been little dispute that the reshaping of industrial relations after the Second World War played a key role in the so-called ‘economic miracle’ in the Federal Republic of Germany. After the war, a low strike propensity and shopfloor peace, as well as the largely pacific relations between trade unions and employers’ associations within the framework of a legally ordered system of collective bargaining constituted an apparently smooth-running model of industrial relations. In comparison with other West European economies the Federal Republic appeared to be an island of industrial peace. Moreover, Germany also seemed to have made a clean break with its own past of intense conflict between employers’ associations and trade unions. Today it is a matter for debate whether this model will continue to work under the less favourable economic conditions of the 1980s and 1990s. But its success in the 1950s and 1960s is nevertheless impressive.
