Goals of collective bargaining

The goal of modern collective bargaining is to safeguard the competitiveness of labour as a factor of production including vis-à-vis foreign countries. Since the deregulation of the European insurance market in the mid-1990s, international competition has played an increasingly important role for German insurance companies. This has required a consistent policy of cost stabilisation to maintain competiveness.

Modest wage rate adjustments, a transition to flexible working hours and other framework agreement work conditions are the central focus. Given that collective agreements should only contain minimum conditions, the goal of a responsible collective bargaining policy is to design collective agreements such that there is still leeway for company-level arrangements.

On the following pages you will find fundamental information on collective bargaining issues in the German insurance industry