Exporting or Abandoning the `German Model'?: Labour Policies of German Manufacturing Firms in Central Europe

Abstract

There are empirical and theoretical reasons to doubt whether German firms wholly transfer their `high-road' employment practices and industrial relations when shifting production to countries in central and eastern Europe. Yet neither are they likely radically to abandon these patterns. This article examines German subsidiaries in Poland and the Czech Republic, highlighting three important labour practices (working-time accounts, vocational training and approaches to industrial relations). The empirical findings reveal that highly internationalized firms, namely the large multinational corporations, appear most inclined to retain the German pattern, since they are still firmly embedded in the German institutional system of industrial relations.