Rozwój indywidualnych kont czasu pracy w Niemczech i ich znaczenie dla stabilizacji zatrudnienia

Abstract

During the last economic crisis the level of employment in Germany has not only decreased, but even increased in comparison to many European countries. This unexpected development on the labour market has to be assigned to the companies’ adjustment strategies that have been implemented with the introduction of internal and external flexibility in the arrays of employment and working time. This approach was based on retaining the present personnel on one hand and on reduction of working time on the other. In particular quick and pertinent decisions on the application of the instruments of internal flexibility allowed avoiding mass dismissals. As a consequence a rapid increase of unemployment could be prevented. Especially, the decision on the introduction of short-time work and the use of individual flextime wage records contributed mainly to this positive development. In this case, success has indeed many fathers because it has been the result not only of the intervening politics of the state, but also the cooperation of employers with the workers councils. From today’s point of view it is difficult to judge so far whether the cooperation was intended in this kind of way, but nevertheless this new model of successful cooperation is an important starting point in the development of effective instruments of countercyclical labour market politics. The elaboration presented in this article tends to the confirmation of the thesis, that one of these instruments in Germany are the individual flextime wage records.