The effectiveness of codetermination laws in cooperative and adversarial employment relations: When does regulation have bite?

Abstract

The German Code termination Law grants workers of establishments with 200 or more employees the right to have a works councillor who is fully exempted from his or her regular job duties while still paid his or her regular salary. We analyse theoretically and empirically how this de jure right to exemptions translates into de facto practice, and we explicitly take into account the nature of the employment relations participation regime. We find that the right of exemption has no effect in cooperative employment relations because exemptions are granted even in the absence of legal rights, but does make a difference in adversarial relations when exemptions are only granted above the threshold where legal rights force employers to do so, i.e., legal rights do make a decisive difference in exactly those situations when the legislators’ intent would not be realised without the right to legal enforcement.