IG Metall’s comeback: Trade union renewal in times of crisis

Introduction

For a long time it was a truism in the public discussion that German trade unions were in decline. The transition to a knowledge-based service society changed the social structure, making German unions look like relics of the industrial age. The trend towards individualisation was said to be dissolving the traditional milieu of workers, preventing effective class solidarity and contributing to a weakening of trade unions (Beck, 1992: 139ff.). Globalisation, associated with the relocation of production and the deregulation of markets, was leading to a race to the bottom in labour standards in which low-wage countries were competing with developed countries for the lowest prices.

This largely pessimistic assessment of the situation of trade unions was empirically substantiated by various indicators, such as declining union density, the erosion of collective agreements and a decline in political influence. The narrative of decline cited the fact that German trade unions had been losing members since the mid-1980s. According to Visser (2013), union density plummeted from 34.7% to 19.9% between 1985 and 2007. This meant that the DGB (Confederation of German Trade Unions) had lost more than two million members in the decade prior to the financial and economic crisis of 2008 alone.

Today it is a different picture: some individual trade unions in the DGB are celebrating a comeback. This is especially true for the biggest German trade union, IG Metall (IGM), which has registered a continuous rise in membership since 2011. The negative image of IGM as hostile to reform has given way to a new reputation as a skilled crisis manager and a capable advocate for employees’ interests, based on IGM’s successful negotiations for constant real wage increases for their members. German trade unions have also been quite successful at setting political agendas. For instance, a minimum wage was introduced in 2015 by the coalition government of CDU/CSU (Conservatives) and SPD (Social Democrats) under chancellor Merkel. As a whole, some DGB unions are undergoing a consolidation or even experiencing an upswing at different levels, including collective bargaining, daily politics and plant-level organising.

In this article we examine the reasons for this renewal. We focus on IGM, the biggest industrial trade union in the Western hemisphere, as a particularly successful example of revival. Empirically, our analysis of IGM’s comeback and its ability to rebuild power resources is grounded in in-depth field research; our theorising builds on and contributes to the international literature on union revitalisation. ¹ We start off with a short introduction to union revitalisation literature. Then in the next section, we describe the decline of IGM that began in the early 1990s due to its reliance on the German industrial relations system and its problem coping with structural change; this is followed by an exploration of current processes of revitalisation since the 2008–2009 financial and economic crisis. Our hypothesis is that organisational renewal has taken place at various levels of IGM, with incentives from a new national leadership structuring this process. Following this restructuring, IGM has successfully developed strategic capabilities and reorganised its structure and improved its public image. We caution against an over-optimistic conclusion because the process of renewal continues to be fragile, as IGM is currently facing challenges, such as the rise of the political extreme right in Germany.

Union revitalisation, organisational change and power resources

In political sociology literature, trade unions are often depicted as large, established bureaucratic organisations with an oligarchic leadership that follows institutional routines in goal setting and everyday action (Darlington and Upchurch, 2012). In a genre-defining article, Kim Voss and Rachel Sherman (2000) challenged this view and argued that unions can break the ‘iron law of oligarchy’, that is, the tendency to be run by a bureaucracy committed to maintaining its leadership and acting in its own particular interests. Voss and Sherman identified three main drivers of union revitalisation:

a localized political crisis resulting in new leadership, the presence of leaders with activist experience outside the labour movement who interpret the decline of labour’s power as a mandate for change, and the influence of the international union in favour of innovation. (Voss and Sherman, 2000: 341).

The discussion on union revitalisation in the 2000s identified a broad repertoire of renewal strategies, such as coalition building with civil society actors or political campaigning, and raised new issues like organising traditional non-unionised groups including precarious workers and migrants (e.g. Milkman et al., 2010; Turner, 2006). Referring to earlier debates on ‘social movement unionism’ (Waterman, 1993), significant research was done on union organising, membership representation in trade unions, and wider political struggles for democracy and social justice (Brinkmann et al., 2008; Frege and Kelly, 2004; Milkman et al., 2010; Simms and Holgate, 2010; Turner, 2006). These studies were primarily concerned with the practicability of organising methods, political campaigning and coalition building in different countries and sectors.

Three of these debates are of great importance for our case study: varieties of union revitalisation; role of leadership and the rank and file; and opportunity structures for trade union action. First, most scholars agree that national institutions have a strong influence on trade union renewal. In a comparative study, Frege and Kelly (2004) found that union strategy effectiveness is influenced by industrial relations in divergent varieties of capitalism. For a long time there were more incentives to organise in liberal market economies, such as the US and Great Britain, than in coordinated market economies, such as Germany, because collective bargaining in liberal market economies is more decentralised and state or employer support for trade unions is much lower (Frege and Kelly, 2004: 184f.). Until the mid-2000s, most scholars were sceptical of transferring organising strategies to Germany, as this would require a deep reorientation of the organisational routines of German unions (e.g. Rehder, 2008). This assessment is rather unsurprising as the main premise of union revitalisation studies critiqued both established theories of trade unions – like the concept of ‘intermediary organisations’ (Müller-Jentsch, 2008: 51–86) – as well as dominant union strategies, such as path-dependent learning strategies of ‘negotiated adjustment’ (Thelen, 1991: 4), which focus on selective decentralisation, social dialogue and competition pacts in order to cope with the pressures of globalisation. Accordingly, German unions had strategically relied on their position in the dual system of industrial relations (works councils and collective agreements). However, as we will see, developments such as shrinking membership numbers, a growing representation gap and the precarisation of the labour market had led to an erosion of and stark changes in the dual system’s mode of operation.

Second, several scholars had a diverging assessment of the role of leadership and the rank and file in the process of union renewal and, more specifically, in organising strategies. While some scholars (and union leaders) focused on a ‘toolbox’ of top-down organising practices and membership recruitment, others highlighted the role of membership participation, inner democracy and bottom-up initiatives for trade union revitalisation (e.g. Simms and Holgate, 2010). On a more general level, this debate was about the overall orientation of unions and highlighted the issue of whether unions should become more movement-oriented in their mode of operation and more politically engaged to encourage renewal. As we will see later, in the case of IGM this new form of ‘rank and file vs. bureaucracy debate’ did not prove to be productive (see Darlington and Upchurch, 2012). Unlike most American unions, IGM is a centralised organisation with local structures that are both able (and obliged) to implement national policies and to set their own priorities for their work. Consequently, IGM’s renewal depended on the strategic capacity of the national leadership to integrate experiences from IGM’s local entities (see also Hurd et al., 2003) and, even more important, to set top-down initiatives to shape the work at the administrative offices.

Third, and more closely related to social movement studies (Meyer, 2004), some scholars have highlighted the role of opportunity structures for successful trade union renewal (Nachtwey and Wolf, 2013; Valenzuela, 1989). Accordingly, specific conjunctures and events can open up new spaces of action for trade unions. Opportunity structures for trade union action, so-called ‘syndical opportunity structures’ (Valenzuela, 1989), can result from developments such as labour law reforms or economic restructuring and usually lead to new waves of mobilisation, influence on politics or policies, or organisational change. In other words, successful union renewal also depends heavily on external factors. In the case of IGM, the 2008–2009 economic crisis was exactly this kind of conjunctural factor, creating an opportunity structure to improve IGM’s political influence and its overall standing in public debates.

Taking these three debates together, we can adapt Voss and Sherman’s argument for the case of IGM (and perhaps other large centralised unions). Political crisis and outside activists are still important factors for renewal, but instead of mere pressure from the centre, we observe a multilevel process of renewal with national leadership being the key agent of change. Also, opportunity structures for trade union action play a major role as a fourth factor pushing forward organisational change. These four factors unfold in a specific ‘German’ institutional context.

In order to conceptually grasp these factors and to better understand IGM’s ‘strategic choice’, we will refer to the debate on power resources of wage earners and trade unions. This approach has not only drawn attention from scholars (see Gumbrell-McCormick and Hyman, 2013: 30ff.; Schulze-Cleven and Liu, in press; Silver, 2003: 13ff; Wright, 2000), but has also been used by trade unions for their daily work, including some important IGM officials. In addition to Silver’s approach (2003: 13) original approach that works with two power resources – structural power, which consists of two subcategories, workplace bargaining power (power to disrupt production) and marketplace bargaining (power resulting from a tight labour market), and associational power (power from collective worker’s associations) – we will draw on two further sources that have been extensively discussed in the German debate (e.g. Brinkmann et al., 2008: 27ff.; Schmalz and Dörre, 2014; Urban, 2012). The first source is institutional power, which is ‘rooted in the fact that institutions stipulate social compromises beyond economic cycles and short-term changes of social power constellations’ (Brinkmann et al., 2008: 25). Workers can rely on this even when associational power or structural power has been weakened. The second source, societal power, stems from coalitional power (mobilisation of networks with other actors, such as social movements) and discursive power (ability to intervene in public discussion).

From this perspective, the decline of IGM can be described as a result of decreasing ‘associational power’ (shrinking membership numbers and a growing representation gap) and ‘structural power’ (rising unemployment and plant relocations), which together had weakened the underpinning of institutional power through developments such as the shrinking coverage rate of collective agreements and, consequently, forced institutional change. Even traditional union strongholds, the automobile industry unions for instance, were facing a growing segment of precarious non-core agency workers who were not legally represented by works’ councils. The changing power base, however, brought unions under increasing pressure as established organisational routines ceased to work successfully, and, in line with our argument, led to a process of organisational renewal in some individual DGB trade unions, such as IGM (see Schmalz and Dörre, 2013; Turner, 2009). This process was mainly about organisational restructuring, combining the traditional repertoire of action used by German unions with new strategies – including organising and strategic campaigning – thereby focusing on revitalising ‘associational power’ and attempts to boost ‘discursive power’. In what follows, we will show how IGM coped with its decline and how the union implemented organisational change on different levels in order to focus on the role of national leadership in pushing ‘German Organising’ and take advantage of the opportunity structure for trade union action provided by the 2008–2009 financial crisis.

A story of decline: Gradual erosion of IG Metall’s power resources since the 1980s

For a better understanding of the current renewal of IGM, it is helpful to highlight the historical developments that led to the current situation. We can distinguish three periods of IGM’s decline: (a) ‘peak labour power’ (1966–1974); (b) ‘institutionalised power under stress’ (1975–1990); and (c) ‘speed-up of decline’ (1991–2007). In the first period IGM’s power was at its height. Full employment strengthened the marketplace bargaining power of employees, offering them a favourable position in collective bargaining and continuous real wage increases. Taylorist assembly-line work also boosted workplace bargaining power in big industrial plants (Silver, 2003: 78f.), particularly in the metalworking sector. The associational power of employees was high. In 1970 trade unions organised about 32% of the working population and IGM had 2.2 million members (Müller-Jentsch and Ittermann, 2000: 91). The institutional power of wage earners was reflected in a number of laws that provided co-determination opportunities for workers at the company level. Also, under the guise of ‘concerted action’ (Konzertierte Aktion), a tripartite Keynesian policy was established during the Grand Coalition 1966–1969 and further developed by the government led by Social Democrat Chancellor Brandt (1969–1974). IGM had considerable societal power. Its concerns enjoyed widespread acceptance in society, and it was successful in integrating new demands like the ‘humanisation of the working world’ (i.e. Taylorist factory regime) into its work.

A major change took place in the period following the 1974–1975 economic crisis. In this period, marketplace bargaining power and, to a lesser extent, associational and societal power started to decline, while the overall institutional setting remained stable. The crisis weakened marketplace bargaining power and unemployment surpassed two million by 1982. In reaction to the crisis, the Schmidt government (Social Democrats and Liberal Party) moved away from Keynesian economic policy (Scharpf, 1991: Ch. 7) and instead supported an innovation-driven rationalisation of production. Cooperation with trade unions played a crucial role here, as the unions were involved in a sort of ‘selective corporatism’ to safeguard the jobs of their core workforces (Esser, 1986). This orientation was pushed further by the conservative-liberal government of Helmut Kohl (1982–1998). Mass unemployment became endemic and privatisation an important strategy, putting the trade union’s collective bargaining policy under pressure (Streeck, 2011: 13ff.). Low growth rates and supply-side economic policy further exacerbated this trend.

However, at the same time, unions stabilised their associational and institutional power. As a concession for its moderate wage policy, the DGB was integrated into decision making in labour and social policy. The number of union members even rose in the late 1970s, and then remained stable until slowly decline began in the late 80s. IGM demonstrated its clout as late as the exceptional 7-week-long strike over the introduction of the 35-hour working week in 1984, in which it achieved partial success. However, its reputation as a competent advocate started to shrink as a growing part of the population (unemployed, etc.) felt excluded by its actions.

Trade union research during the 1980s and early 1990s referred to this specific constellation of institutionalised labour power underpinned by relatively stable workplace bargaining and associational power while conceptualising union strategies. For example, Kathleen Thelen (1991) stated that the German dual system was highly flexible and a ‘key source of institutional resiliency through the economic turmoil and political changes of the past decades’ (p. 2). Accordingly, IGM focused on negotiating pilot collective bargaining agreements and staging symbolic wage conflicts in its strong districts (Bezirke), and the results later were adopted in other districts and at the national level, using ‘its de facto shop-floor influence and the de jure rights and powers of works councils to attain political goals’ (p. 238).

In the third phase of decline, the erosion of IGM’s power accelerated. Beginning in the 1990s, changing institutional framework conditions and labour market developments were accompanied by rapid transnationalisation of companies, thus effectively weakening IGM’s power. The threat of relocation of production forced employees to make concessions and contributed to an erosion of workplace bargaining power in key sectors of the metalworking industry. Furthermore, the deregulation of financial markets went hand-in-hand with a ‘shareholder value’ orientation, implying short-term budget targets and constant pressure to rationalise. Taken together, this economic transformation undermined the institutional power at the plant level, forcing works councils in many cases to negotiate over cutbacks and the downsizing of workforces (Dörre, 2010: 894ff.).

Many employers also began withdrawing from collective bargaining in the 1990s. German reunification accelerated this process because the dual system of interest representation could only be adopted to a limited extent in eastern Germany. The coverage of collective agreements never attained the level of western Germany due to underlying socioeconomic conditions, such as high unemployment (Dörre et al., 2016: 50–54). Likewise, the erosion of marketplace bargaining power picked up pace during the coalition government of the SPD and the Greens under Chancellor Schröder (1998–2005). The so-called Red-Green-Government pushed ahead with an expansion of the precarious sector with Agenda 2010, flexibilising labour regulations, facilitating temporary agency work and restricting unemployment compensation. As a result of structural change, IGM began to be regarded as rejectionist, unable to offer new strategies in the age of globalisation and the IT boom. Trade unions in general also had a tough time finding new partners to cooperate with. Not only was their own social milieu showing signs of cracks (Silvia, 2013: 83ff.), but new social movements, like environmental or women’s rights movements, did not cooperate closely with trade unions.

All these trends ultimately culminated in a decline in associational power. This development could most clearly be witnessed as a factor of union density, which had been in continuous decline since German reunification. But the membership also reflected this process. IGM still had a member base that reflected the occupational structure of the 1960s (Müller-Jentsch, 2008: 38). It exhibited clear underrepresentation of women, white-collar workers and precariously employed people in particular.

The organisational structure of IGM was proving to be inefficient when it came to driving forward the unionisation of these ‘new’ groups of employees. Various attempts at reforming the organisation, such as the 1998 organisational reform (which focused on core areas), the merger of administrative offices where membership numbers were weak, or efforts at gaining greater policy influence, as was the case of the Alliance for Labour and Competitiveness (1999–2003), all were unable to reverse the trend. Even worse, IGM had to accept painful setbacks – probably the worst of which was a 2003 strike to expand the 35-hour working week to eastern Germany, which (with the exception of the steel industry) was cancelled without producing any results. The main reason for these defeats was that path-dependent strategies of renewal proved to be rather ineffective. IGM continued to focus on representing their members in their strongholds, such as the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) in the metalworking industry, despite the fact that the labour market – and the mode of operation of institutions – had fundamentally changed. Many commentators reflected on these factors and argued that the German model of industrial relations may have been exhausted, thereby providing unions with a limited space of action (Frege and Kelly, 2004: 188; Streeck, 2009).

Organisational change: The long way to ‘German Organising’

The position of IGM had changed fundamentally following the start of the millennium (Urban, 2013; Wetzel, 2014). The organisation had 2.3 million members in 2006, which meant that it had lost almost 1.5 million members since 1991 (Greef, 2014: 707). ² Although IGM continued to organise its traditional strongholds in the automotive and electronics industries, numerous defensive struggles resulted in the union exhibiting deficits in newly emerging sectors (i.e. renewable energies) and among specific groups of employees, such as precariously employed workers. In its core areas IGM had been able to preserve its services by assisting members in everyday work problems, regional collective bargaining agreements and co-determination at the institutional level. The coverage rate of these institutions had eroded however – including in the metalworking industry: the coverage rate of collective bargaining (in % of all employees in the private economy) had dropped (1996: 66% west, 48% east; 2015: 46% west, 28% east), while the coverage level for works councils had decreased (1996: 51% west, 43% east; 2015: 42% west, 33% east) (Ellguth and Kohaut, 2016). Also, in contrast to Thelen’s (1991) optimism about the role of works councils in supporting unions, the density of unionisation of works councils had dropped from 81% to 77% between 1994 and 2014.

IGM nevertheless retained its capability to act and create an organisational impetus. Even though first steps toward renewal had been taken earlier – among them the Zukunftsdebatte (‘debate on the future’) between 2000 and 2003 that involved ‘a survey covering 120,000 members and non-members, and an active dialogue, within and outside the union’ (Serrano, 2014: 226) – the most important changes at the national level came with the election of Berthold Huber and Detlef Wetzel as the new IGM leadership in 2007. In particular, the election of Detlef Wetzel, who was the president of the largest district of IGM in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), was the result of a perception of a deep crisis within IGM. Wetzel was among those who openly criticised the politics of the former president of IGM, Jürgen Peters (2003–2007), particularly the lack of membership participation, the focus on broader political rather than narrowly work-related issues, and the strategy in the strike for the 35-hour working week in eastern Germany, when Peters was still vice president. For the 2007 election, Wetzel formed an alliance with the former head of the Baden-Wurttemberg district, Berthold Huber, and was able to consolidate power on the national level.

During his career, vice president Wetzel had gathered experience in active membership recruitment at both the local level in his time at the administrative office in Siegen-Wittgenstein and also as IGM president of NRW (Serrano, 2014: 230; Turner, 2009: 303ff). During his time in the small town of Siegen from 1999 to 2003, Wetzel managed to reverse the local organisation’s membership loss and instead set it on a path of expansion by heavily relying on membership participation and recruitment of new members. In this period, Siegen-Wittgenstein was among the few administrative offices in Germany with growing membership. Compared to the overall trend in IGM’s district of NRW, the development was particularly striking as the district was facing membership shrinkage, industrial restructuring and low economic growth.

Due to his success in Siegen-Wittgenstein, Wetzel was elected head of the NRW district. ³ IGM NRW began using Wetzel’s successful experiences from Siegen-Wittgenstein and pushed for new bargaining strategies with membership involvement in collective bargaining, a focus on product quality and membership growth. Turner (2009: 304) sums up three key elements of NRW’s leadership ‘membership-oriented offensive’ strategy:

Tarif Aktiv (active bargaining) – aggressive negotiations at the firm level, with active member participation, to keep firms within the framework of sector collective bargaining contracts, or at the very least to negotiate acceptable company agreements; besser statt billiger (better not cheaper) – a proactive commitment to working with firms to raise product quality and productivity, drawing on present and future work force knowledge and skills, and in some cases bringing in outside experts in production reorganization; and membership growth – the mobilization of works councillors, union stewards, and members to recruit new members, with membership growth as the litmus test for the overall success of strategic reorientation.

Drawing on NRW’s successes, IGM started to re-frame its strategy and to change the structure of the union. There was consensus in the new leadership that IGM was facing a severe crisis and had to undergo a series of reforms. ⁴ In a programmatic paper on trade union renewal, Wetzel and his team (Wetzel et al., 2013) declared that social partnership and the hitherto existing system of industrial relations were eroding while at the same time, employers were less willing to compromise, thereby rendering the position of labour increasingly more precarious. Consequently, traditional trade union work was reaching its limits, thus requiring membership participation, organising and more conflict-oriented trade union work at the plant level. IGM leadership adopted this analysis to a large extent in its discussion article ‘Project IG Metall 2009’ (IGM, 2009).

Even though not all IGM officials shared this analysis, the new leadership opened up a space for experimentation with new forms of trade union work. This process of organisational renewal was largely motivated by centralised pressure from the national leadership. First, IGM carried out organisational reform – a source of considerable controversy within the organisation – by which the mode of work, focal points and distribution of resources were changed. ⁵ To this end, beginning in 2011, €16–20m were invested annually in an innovation fund that was earmarked for gaining new members and was controlled by Wetzel’s team. This was a sizeable portion of the total budget, with IGM’s revenue from union dues totalling around €459 in 2011. Over the course of this process positions and departments were shed, particularly at the head offices in Frankfurt am Main, while at the same time, a new functional division, ‘Members and Campaigns’, was created and money was provided for projects at the administrative offices (Wetzel, 2014). Notably, some of the new staff in this department had experience of organising campaigns together with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in the US, thus bringing in knowledge from other organisations.

The overall restructuring implied that new members could be unionised even in poorly organised sectors and groups of employees. Successful examples of this approach include the agency work campaign ‘Equal work – Equal pay’ (see Benassi and Dorigatti, 2015) and organising projects in the area of the automobile trade. In addition to this impetus from the head office, the redistribution of resources also created new latitude at individual administrative offices seeking to acquire new members, for example through temporary ‘Companies without Works Councils’ (CwC) projects. The new activities were also pushed forward by a targeted policy of hiring young activists, some of whom had gained experience with organisational work in social movements. Moreover, participation instruments that offered feedback opportunities for employees played a significant role. For instance, in 2013 IGM surveyed more than half a million employees to identify topics for its work (IGM, 2013a). IGM also restructured internal organisational processes, including a ‘return management system’ that was put into practice to persuade former members who had left the union to return to it, and a transparent ‘benchmark system’ with which to compare results produced by individual administrative offices. Additionally, the administrative offices received extra stimulus when they were allowed to keep 60% of the membership fees from new members in the first year and 40% thereafter (Silvia, 2013: 168ff.). To further the organisational learning process, a ‘transfer conference’ (Transfertagung) was held in 2015 and experiences were documented in handbooks and on webpages by the ‘Members and Campaigns’ division.

Ultimately IGM implemented a more efficient use of staff and infrastructural resources and carried out a reorientation combining IGM’s traditional repertoire of action with new elements of ‘German Organising’ (Wetzel, 2013: 22). Although this shift can be seen as a selective reception of the ‘organising model’ (Thomas, 2016), it boosted IGM’s organising efficiency, successfully increased its associational power, and gained new members: by the end of 2013 IGM had been able to attract more than 30,000 new members through its agency worker campaign alone (Urban, 2013: 216f.). The campaign work had an internal impact as well, helping to enhance the internal cohesion of the organisation. For instance, various youth campaigns like ‘Operation Takeover’ and events such as ‘youth camps’ heightened younger members’ identification with IGM. And individual campaigns, like the agency work campaign, sensitised the public to important topics, thus boosting the discursive power of the organisation. It is clear that national leadership played a key role in pushing forward IGM’s renewal, thus effectively helping to spread best practice models for organising and campaigning throughout the organisation.

The window of opportunity: ‘Crisis corporatism’ and labour market development

In addition to this process of organisational change, there were also external factors that contributed to IGM’s renewal. By 2008 the political situation had changed dramatically, as the effects of the 2008–2009 financial and economic crisis were so severe that political elites sought to close ranks with the heads of trade unions. A ‘revival of social partnership’ took place with the involvement of DGB trade unions (Haipeter, 2012: 118). Ironically, the crisis was a opportunity structure for trade union renewal and helped to revive political dialogue as a part German unions’ traditional repertoire of action. This ‘crisis corporatism’ (Urban, 2012) expressed itself at various levels (Haipeter, 2012: 119ff.). The industrial trade unions IGM and IG BCE successfully lobbied the government to be included and politically involved in economic summits (Konjunkturgipfel) held by the CDU/CSU and SPD Grand Coalition (2005–2009). New measures, such as the expansion of short-term work or a ‘car scrappage bonus’, were intended to promote jobs in the industrial sector. A deal was struck for collective bargaining as well: safeguarding of jobs in return for moderate pay rises. Jobs were secured at the company level by winding down working time accounts and short-time work (Schwarz-Kocher, 2014). This helped cushion the effects of the crisis on the labour market – at the expense of an intensification of labour performance and a wave of dismissals of agency workers. Although the gain in institutional power was rather temporary, the ensuing conservative-liberal government (2009–2013) kept up relations with the trade unions.

More importantly for IGM’s ability to leverage a window of opportunity, the crisis in 2008–2009 contributed to a reversal of the trend in the public discussion. Although German trade unions had increasingly drawn attention to precarious jobs in the labour market and had been able to achieve greater societal approval with active agenda-setting (minimum wage, etc.), cooperative crisis management helped cast trade unions as skilful problem-solvers (Haipeter, 2012: 406; Schulze-Cleven and Weishaupt, 2015; Urban, 2013: 214ff.). One positive outcome of the change in image and agenda setting was greater approval among the workforce for unionised companies, which has helped to fuel IGM’s organising successes over the last few years.

Another external factor that has contributed to IGM’s renewal is the labour market development of the past few years. Demographic changes combined with a contracting working population have led to recruitment shortages for skilled labour in various sectors, among them metalworking. This has improved the marketplace bargaining power of employees, thereby amplifying IGM’s latitude in collective bargaining. Shrinking unemployment is also reinforcing this trend. The average unemployment rate in 2015 was only 6.6%. As we will see in the following, this contributed to a new willingness of workers to organise.

New ways of working at the administrative offices

The renewal of IGM cannot be attributed solely to national initiatives and to the union taking advantage of opportunity structures. As mentioned earlier, the basis for revitalisation was a learning process that began at IGM’s individual administrative offices and, with support from national funds, successfully united different levels of the organisation. This is of tremendous importance, as a majority of the approximately 1100 political secretaries of IGM work in the 155 administrative offices (Prott, 2014: 300). In recent years, various administrative offices have had success restoring the image of IGM as an active force helping to shape the local region. This means that IGM members have not only regained visibility, reliability and the ability to act, but also that they more frequently have an impact on regional policy through networks aligned with unions.

One example that illustrates the process of union renewal is the eastern German administrative office AO East. In addition to stabilising the automotive sector in the region, organisational change played a key role in reversing the trend towards decline. This process began with the failure of the 2003 strike to introduce a 35-hour working week. Up until that point, the local trade union’s philosophy had been marked by a ‘plugging the dike’ mentality typical of eastern Germany (Meise, 2014: 138): AO East was hard hit by structural changes after reunification. IGM secretaries reacted to processes at companies hit by the crisis and attempted to negotiate solutions to ease the plight of employees. Their assistance concentrated on several key companies, and attempts at organising new companies failed in many cases. This strategy was of limited success. AO East consistently registered declining membership numbers, eventually sinking into the red financially in 2008. However, within a few years of the financial crisis, AO East had successfully boosted its membership by more than a third and had positively repositioned itself within the region. By 2015 it was among the biggest administrative offices in eastern Germany with about 26,000 members and eight trade union secretaries, as well as six administrative staff members.

In 2008, after several years of intensive crisis discussions at AO East, young trade union officials finally reframed the political agenda and began experimenting with new ways of working. According to one union official, the new organisational policy focused on plant conflicts: ‘We simply take those conflicts which are there, but we approach them differently’ (union official I). This involves the participation of members and public relations work: ‘No conflicts take place here any longer without a members’ assembly. We actually attempt […] to also manage every conflict so as to make it visible to the public’ (union official I). This participative approach, focused on empowering employees, is intended to strengthen the organisation at the plant level: ‘We address this very pointedly with them, saying: “Look, people, to be able to satisfy our demands we need a certain degree of associational power.”’ (union official I).

AO East relies on a specific form of condition-based trade union support for workers at the company level (Dörre et al., 2016: 99ff.). This is based on a strategy of laying down conditions before a works council is elected or a collective agreement is bargained. At AO East this threshold is at a union density of 60%. Members, activists and officials jointly develop a strategy to reach this threshold by providing employees opportunities for participation and discussion at members’ assemblies. If the 60% objective is not successfully attained, union officials do not enter into the conflict. If organising is successful – and a works council is established and a collective bargaining agreement concluded – there is follow-up work to ensure that company activists are encouraged to act. Condition-based trade union work becomes binding through a decision issued by the local union board, and only companies that have a union density of at least 45% are supposed to be represented on the board.

The success of AO East did not emanate from initiatives by the IGM head office, but AO East nonetheless benefitted from such initiatives. A cooperation project with two additional administrative offices in the same industrial region was developed and supported by the national organisation to expand staff resources at AO East (IGM, 2013b). This ‘Growth Area Project’ hired two additional organisers, candidates politically socialised in social movements and experienced in campaign-type work. The new secretaries are supposed to:

at least [have] a notion of emancipation. Because this is essentially what we do with our colleagues. They also have to become emancipated inside there [in the company] as well, take a stance and also be able to stand up for and defend their stance. (union official I)

Tail wind at companies

The top-down initiatives of IGM’s leadership and the new way of working at IGM’s administrative offices were eagerly welcomed at the company level. The labour market development mentioned earlier is a game changer at the plant level. While it is true that this development is due to a growth in precarious employment, like low-wage and part-time work, the trend towards a ‘precarious full-employment society’ (Dörre et al., 2013: 33) has led to a new self-awareness among precariously employed workers. As a result of their growing marketplace bargaining power, many workers are no longer willing to accept disciplining mechanisms, such as the fear of losing their jobs (Dörre et al., 2016: 53ff.). This bottom-up process can best be described by the example of eastern Germany: in a study on trade union renewal, we were able to determine that the generation of ‘work spartans’ (Behr, 2000) – those who were largely shaped by their experiences following the reunification of Germany (e.g. ‘survival communities’ within companies, low demands on working conditions and payment due to high unemployment) – are slowly losing their roles as opinion leaders on the shop floor (Dörre et al., 2016: 112ff.). As one IGM representative put it:

A generation is coming of age here that had nothing to do with the ‘generation of ownership by the people’ [the generation that was socialised in East German state-owned enterprises]. They have experienced a unique socialisation of their own. The vast majority of them has endured unemployment, low wages – nobody has ever thought about doing something about any of this on the shop floor. They have been bashed around and have been treated with utter contempt year-in, year-out, and have received a clear message: ‘if you don’t feel up to it, there are 100 other blokes waiting right outside the gates’. (union official I)

One example of a firm where this growing assertiveness of young and middle-age workers goes along with new forms of trade union work is Andensystems (pseudonym), a transnational producer of interior trim for cars, which has two small plants in AO East with a total of about 140 workers (100 fixed-term and 40 agency workers). For a long time Andensystems exploited low wages in East Germany with workers earning less than €8 per hour. Female workers in particular, who comprise about half of the workforce, were ‘humiliated and treated poorly’ (activist I). They were faced with demands for high flexibility, expected to neglect their care responsibilities for children in order to be more flexible with their working schedules, and were even publicly blamed as ‘the people who are not stress-resilient’ (works councillor I). In addition to despotic plant management, disregard for safety conditions at the plants was another crucial reason for worker discontent. An ill-prepared attempt to establish a works council failed in 2007, leading to quite a few workers leaving the plant.

In late 2011, the 10-year anniversary celebration of local Andensystems was the immediate cause of a conflict, as workers expected a salary increase after years of wage stagnation. A little group led by two 30-year-old activists finally approached IGM for support. IGM urged workers to organise 60% of the employees before founding a works council. When they ultimately decided to elect a works council, they faced resistance from the management, who actively tried to disturb the elections. In the end, however, management had to compromise with the well-organised employees. The organising process remained fragile until the works council’s first success: getting the company to provide appropriate work clothes free of charge to all employees. It took 2 more years before a collective agreement was reached at Andensystems. Wages increased in the first step by a double-digit value. The main activists participated in collective bargaining as members of a plant bargaining committee, thereby actively influencing IGM’s negotiation strategy. The vast majority of union members were also involved in this process through members’ assemblies. But there were also tensions. Even though the main activists described IGM as a competent advisor and helpful supporter – and today 80% of workers are organised in IGM – the activists also criticised the high pressure to self-organise that goes along with this condition-based trade union work approach. Moreover, worker identification with IGM remains rather weak. The case of Andensystems is therefore a good example of both the potential benefits and the possible complications of plant organising in East Germany.

These observations cannot simply be generalised for Germany as a whole, but they show that recent efforts by IGM – in contrast to a decade ago – went along with a bottom-up dynamic of growing assertiveness of workers. Today most new IGM members are recruited from the younger cohort of workers under 35. The image of IGM as a ‘go-getter’ and its focus on several key topics of concern to the young generation (precarity, low wages, etc.) are a major draw for potential young members. The backdrop of declining unemployment (growing marketplace bargaining power) is thus related to an improved image of IGM (increasing discursive power). Consequently, it has been possible for the union to successfully connect different levels of the organisation, and effectively demonstrate the national leadership’s strategic capacity for the empowerment of workers at the company level.

New challenges

The case of IGM, the biggest industrial trade union in the Western hemisphere, underscores how a trade union can renew through a process of organisational change. Our main argument is that IG Metall’s organisational renewal has taken place at various levels, with top-down initiatives from the national leadership structuring this process. Our findings are an important contribution to the scholarship on union revitalisation, as we have adapted Voss and Sherman’s (2000) argument on ‘breaking the iron law of oligarchy’ for the case of IGM (and perhaps other large centralised unions). As well as an existential political crisis endangering the stability of the organisation and questioning the traditional way of work and the hiring of outside activists for organising and campaigning activities, we have identified two additional important factors for union renewal.

First, top-down initiatives from the national leadership that support the administrative offices with additional resources for organising activities and launching nationwide campaigns, such as the agency work campaign ‘Equal work – Equal pay’, played a important role in trade union renewal. Building upon Voss and Sherman’s argument, we have revealed the importance of applying effective local and regional changes at the national level: since 2007, the national leadership has been inspired by positive experiences at the local and regional levels, which have been adopted by the national level and then effectively spread throughout the organisation. Organisational change can thus be understood as a multilevel process where regional success stories play a role as best practice examples for new initiatives from the national level, whereas top-down initiatives from the national leadership and the new way of working at IGM’s administrative offices contribute to the empowerment of workers at the company level.

Second, IGM was able to seize an opportunity structure for trade union action offered by the 2008–2009 financial and economic crisis, and revive social dialogue and temporarily stabilise institutional power. This development was further exacerbated by shortages in skilled labour and falling unemployment, leading to increasing marketplace bargaining power and helping to shape a young generation of employees willing to engage. Strategically, IGM has moved away from a one-sided orientation on institutional power. By combining the traditional repertoire of action of German unions with new strategies, such as organising and strategic campaigning, IGM has focused on revitalising associational power and boosting discursive power. Unlike Silvia (2013: 222) suggests, IGM has not embraced a social movement unionism strategy: it continues to rely on professional membership services, mainly mobilises its members in collective bargaining, and only rarely builds coalitions with social movements.

As a result, membership of IGM has grown since 2011. Between 2010 and 2015 overall membership increased by 34,000 (including unemployed and retired members), while the number of members who are currently employed has soared by 94,000. ⁶ IGM has been able to achieve real wage rises in the last few rounds of collective bargaining, and the erosion of regional collective agreements seems to have slowed down since 2013 (Ellguth and Kohaut, 2016: 286). Most recently, IGM is supporting a decentralisation of the organising model. After the trade union congress in 2015, responsibilities and financial resources amounting to €190m for the next 5 years have been handed over to IGM’s districts. Today, the districts are experimenting with different forms of the ‘German organising’ model. For instance, the Baden-Wurttemberg district mainly relies on traditional organising methods, while district Mitte urges the administrative offices to apply for specific projects. IGM is continuing with campaigns to organise precarious workers, such as crowd workers (workers who perform individual tasks outsourced through digital platforms) and service contract workers.

However, IGM is also facing challenges. One problem is the weakening of the DGB and differences between IGM and Ver.di, the service trade union. The two unions had different experiences in the wake of the 2008–2009 crisis. While Ver.di suffered from austerity policies and cut-backs in the public budget, IGM benefitted from stable industrial growth. More generally, organisational realities have developed along different trajectories over the last few years, with a dualisation of the German labour market emerging with low-paid and irregular employment increasing in the service sector in particular (Hassel, 2014). It is also for this reason that Ver.di has been unable to stop the loss of members to date. This problem is exacerbated by the digitisation of industrial activities, which blurs traditional organisational boundaries. Although initial arrangements and agreements demarcating the organisational domains of the two trade unions have been reached, there is still a danger of increasing competition between both organisations and a further political weakening of the DGB, thus reducing societal and institutional power as well.

Since 2015, another challenge has been the rise of the extreme political right. During its organising activities, IGM is confronted with right-wing activists at the factory level. In our research, we were able to observe individual cases where new factories were in fact lost due to political conflicts about issues such as immigration. In one of the administrative districts, about 100 members left IGM due to its progressive refugee policy. This situation is particularly important, because the emerging right-wing party AfD achieved strong results among workers and the unemployed in several elections for state parliaments. In both Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, the AfD had better results among these groups (Saxony-Anhalt – workers: 37%; unemployed: 38%; Mecklenburg-West Pomerania – workers: 33%; unemployed: 29%) than the Conservatives, the Social Democrats or the Left Party.

An additional problem can be found at the European level. The New Economic Governance in the aftermath of the 2008–2009 crisis has weakened the institutional power of European wage earners. Since 2011 a whole package of measures has been adopted for the countries in the Eurozone, including the ‘Six-Pack’, the ‘Europlus Pact’ and the ‘Fiscal Pact’, which place tighter constraints on the budget policy of member states while allowing for interventions in collective bargaining (Schulten and Müller, 2013: 291ff.). From a European perspective, the revitalisation of German trade unions therefore appears to constitute a deviation from the norm. Even if southern European trade unions have reacted to social reforms with impressive mobilisations, they face dwindling marketplace bargaining power, declining institutional power, and a drain of members. Up to now, IGM and other DGB trade unions have been unable to influence European crisis management policy laid down by the Merkel government, which could eventually have negative repercussions for German trade unions as well.

Generally speaking, the tensions among individual DGB unions, the government’s European politics and the rise of the Right show the limits of IGM’s plant-focused and membership recruitment-oriented revitalisation strategies. In view of these challenges, it is therefore too early to state whether the renewal of IGM will have a lasting societal impact and whether other individual German trade unions will also experience a revitalisation.