In the present debate about options for the modernization of trade unions, the predominant argument being propounded is that trade unions and workers' representatives at plant level should take more ‘responsibility’ for the competitiveness of the firms. Among other things, they are advised to enter into ‘alliances’ with management at the level of qualification politics. This paper considers some important collective bargaining arrangements which the German trade unions have negotiated over the last few years in order to improve mutually beneficial further training decisions within German firms. The emphasis is on the potential of different agreements for achieving efficiency and equality objectives in the context of contemporary changes in production and restructuring processes.

The 2008/9 financial and economic crisis has discredited the neoliberal narrative which claims that the market is self-correcting and that private enterprise is superior to the public sector. In Europe, it turned out that the crisis highlighted the social and the democratic (as well as the ecological) deficits which have arisen over the past 30 years and which finally had eroded some of the most distinctive features of the European Social Model (ESM). However, the crisis has at least opened up space in the political discourse for alternative ideas concerning the creation of a more socially sustainable economy. In the essay it is argued that a renewed ESM is indispensable for a type of European integration based on social equality and environmental responsibility. After a short reference to Polanyi´s concepts of decommodification and disembedded capitalism the paper summarises the debate about the ESM and tries to capture its essence as it developed during the postwar decades. In the next section, the erosion of the ESM is described and important drivers of neoliberal restructuring in the EU are identified. The following part outlines major objectives in a possible revitalisation of the ESM based on three major projects: the renewal of the European welfare states, the reconstruction and expansion of the public sector and the democratisation of the EU and of European societies. ABSTRACTThe 2008/9 financial and economic crisis has discredited the neoliberal narrative which claims that the market is self-correcting and that private enterprise is superior to the public sector. In Europe, it turned out that the crisis highlighted the social and the democratic (as well as the ecological) deficits which have arisen over the past 30 years and which finally had eroded some of the most distinctive features of the European Social Model (ESM). However, the crisis has at least opened up space in the political discourse for alternative ideas concerning the creation of a more socially sustainable economy. In the essay it is argued that a renewed ESM is indispensable for a type of European integration based on social equality and environmental responsibility. After a short reference to Polanyi´s concepts of decommodification and disembedded capitalism the paper summarises the debate about the ESM and tries to capture its essence as it developed during the postwar decades. In the next section, the erosion of the ESM is described and important drivers of neoliberal restructuring in the EU are identified. The following part outlines major objectives in a possible revitalisation of the ESM based on three major projects: the renewal of the European welfare states, the reconstruction and expansion of the public sector and the democratisation of the EU and of European societies.

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Collective bargaining has in the past set a floor to competitive undercutting of wages and employment conditions, acting as a source of `industrial citizenship'. European economic integration threatens to initiate a neo-liberal regime and to undermine national structures of collective regulation. Trade unions seem compelled to acquiesce in the policies of individual companies striving to survive in the face of intensified market forces. The authors suggest that unions can escape their current dilemmas only through developing new forms of political intervention aiming at the creation of effective European procedures of employment regulation.