Creating flexibility and mobility on the labour market

To keep employment and innovation sustainably in Germany, we need more mobility and flexibility on the labour market. Innovation in the electrical engineering and electronics industry requires of our companies that new areas of business are built up and old businesses are restructured, new technologies are introduced and old technologies are phased out, new prodictions and more global value-creation networks are set up and discontinued production installations restructured. Jobs move within and between companies, between locations and countries. It is easier to transfer production capacities in the electrical engineering and electronics industry to countries with more favourable framework conditions than those in other branches of industry. At the same time, it is precisely in the electrical engineering and electronics industry that new fields of jobs occur due to the growing weight of software , solution and service companies.

To guarantee more job opportunities in Germany and facilitate sustainable innovation in this change in structure, we clearly need more dynamism on the labour market. However, labour and wage laws are regulated so strongly in Germany that they greatly curb the flexibility and mobility of work. That is why sixty percent of the ZVEI members are already no longer bound to tariffs and the number of effective regulations is increasing every year.

Adjustments both in individual labour law and in tariff law are a subject that ZVEI will drive  in close dialogue with member companies, the, BDI/BDA and above all Gesamtmetall and its regional associations  for the next 2 years.

• In labour law, not only the protection against wrongful dismissal but also a multitude of detailed regulations that are no longer comprehensible from the Working Hours regulation to the Part-Time Work Restriction Act must be thinned out and simplified.
• In tariff law, our industry needs more differentiation: regulations that are geared to the automotive industry is less and less applicable to the branches of our industry that are increasingly concerned with engineering, business services and software services. The ZVEI must together with Gesamtmetall settle how tariff agreements that are more suitable for the electrical engineering and electronics industry can be reached with the trade unions.
• The advantage of highly computerised production installations must be supported with international competitive agreements that facilitate the maximum utilization of the stock of capital in Germany.
• And finally we need more shaping scope at operational level through opening clauses for further tariff-bound business and simultaneous legal certainty for operational regulations that are agreed on with works councils.

Concrete ZVEI initiatives:

ZVEI initiative: Tariff policy for the electrical engineering and electronics industry – More flexibility and mobility on the labour market for innovation and service