Good work

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Good work is the motto for an initiative by the German trade unions . It serves as a model for a modern, humane working environment and should again focus on the quality of working conditions.

Gute Arbeit is also an index defined by the DGB with which the development of the quality of work in Germany is monitored, as well as the title of a magazine Gute Arbeit (Subtitle: Health Protection and Work Design ) published by Bund-Verlag since 1988 .

History of the Good Work Mission Statement

The concept of good work ties in with the “ Humanization of Working Life ” project that was pursued in the 1970s and 1980s . Good work is also based on the model of the International Labor Organization of “Decent Work” - adapted and further developed to meet the demands of industrialized countries .

As a model of labor policy, the term good work was first introduced by IG Metall at the beginning of the 1990s in the collective bargaining discussion about a “2000 collective bargaining reform”.

In view of extensive operational reorganization measures in the German economy, the trade unions in the 1990s concentrated on a policy of securing employment and income. The topic of good work only came up again in 2002 with the IG Metall conference "Good work - humane work design as a future trade union task". In October 2003 the IG Metall project “ Gute Arbeit” was decided as a cross-sectional task for the union's interest representation. However, good work only became a comprehensive topic of trade union labor policy in 2006, when joint efforts for “humane and good work” were decided at the DGB Federal Congress. The development of the “Good Work” index was also initiated there.

The concept of good work describes the union and works council draft for the ideal-typical design of work in the interests of the employees.

Good work is essentially based on four thematic pillars.

  1. Good work is well paid work.
  2. Good work is safe work (protection against dismissal, suppression of temporary work, fixed-term contracts and work contracts).
  3. Good work is humane work (limitation of workload, compatibility of family and work ...).
  4. Good work offers opportunities for advancement and further training.

Good work is shaped by works councils and unions. Works councils try to make the maximum out of the rights given to them by the Works Constitution Act. Among other things, the focus is on the design of working time regulations. The topic of strategic personnel planning is also becoming increasingly important in modern works council work.

The works council efforts are ideally complemented by consistent collective bargaining by the unions. The trend here is towards a mix of qualitative and quantitative requirements. In the case of quantitative demands, it is always a question of more or less, e.g. B. more wages, more days off, less hours to be performed with the same wages. Qualitative wage policy, on the other hand, essentially calls for a better one. An example of qualitative collective bargaining policy would be a collective labor agreement that defines a better distribution of the working hours to be performed or the exclusion of certain types of fixed-term contracts.

Whether through works council or union activity, in the end the topic of good work is about the sustainable and long-term design of work in the interests of the employees. Good work is the alternative to neoliberal approaches in which only the entrepreneur and the market have to define the framework conditions of work.

politics and society

The term decent work is slowly gaining importance in the political and social arena.

At the initiative of the Federal Government at the time, trade unions , employers' associations , social security agencies , the federal states, the federal government and companies came together in May 2002 in the “ New Quality of Work Initiative ” (INQA). INQA aims to combine the social interests of employees in healthy and health-promoting working conditions with the economic interests of companies.

In a resolution of the European Council of May 2007, the European Union included the concept of good work in its “Community strategy on health and safety at work for the period 2007 to 2012”.

In the SPD basic program of October 2007 good work was included in the new SPD basic program.

In churches and social organizations, “good work” is increasingly being discussed as a concept of a humane world of work.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Schröder, Lothar (ed.); Urban, Hans-Jürgen. (Ed.): Gute Arbeit: Areas of action for companies, politics and trade unions. Frankfurt a. M .: Bund, 2009. ISBN 978-3-7663-3883-9 .
  2. ↑ "Gute Arbeit" magazine
  3. ↑ Article Gute Arbeit ( Memento from December 10, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) in the Wiki Gute Arbeit des DGB
  4. ↑ Pickshaus, Klaus (ed.): Congress Gute Arbeit: a better working world is feasible ; Conference documentation Congress 6. – 7. December 2006, Berlin. Frankfurt a. M .: Industriegewerkschaft Metall, 2007. P. 17 f