Working Paper 9: "Company-level bargaining in times of crisis: The case of Germany"

This paper highlights the role collective bargaining played in easing the impact of the crisis on the company level in Germany. In using the company examples of Daimler AG, Postbank AG, Arccador AG, AB InBev Germany GmbH and Carl Zeiss AG, the paper shows that collective bargaining has been a tool to face a multitude of challenges. An important factor that enabled the social partners to reach innovative agreements was the strong framework to deal with the crisis, set by the German government.