Word: riester
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...about relationships. "I love both those guys," chortled German Chancellor Gerhard Schr?der as his Minister of Labor, Walter Riester, exchanged barbs with his Minister of Economics, Werner Müller, over a core component of Germany's industrial culture: the right of workers to help run the companies they work...
...Riester says Germany's laws regarding so-called works councils-peer groups elected by employees to be liaisons with management-have tethered industrial workers to their companies for everyone's benefit; he thinks service and technology workers can benefit too. Müller concedes the laws delivered a certain stability in a world where stability mattered, but he argues that world no longer exists. He warns that expanding the law, as the government is about to do, will make Germany less competitive. As for Schr?der, backed by the unions but committed to growing his economy through tax reform...
...Both Riester and Müller agree the work-scape has changed since the laws were last refined in the 1970s: more temporary workers have joined the rolls, and larger companies have divided into semiautonomous units subject to less regulation. But where Müller hails a positive drift toward flexibility, Riester sees companies evading their social responsibilities. Still, the two ministers agreed in February to bring temps under the protection of works councils and to lower the size of companies required to have full-time councilors from 300 to 200. They also agreed to expand council activities to include...
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