Flexible working in Germany

The spread of low-wage, low skill, low value-adding jobs within the third sector has been well documented in liberal market economies such as the United Kingdom. It may be expected that Germany, characterised as a coordinated market economy (CME), wherein “interaction among firms and other actors [and] depend[s] more heavily on non-market relationships” (Hall and Soskice, 2001: 8), would have a different story to tell. However, the expansion of the German tertiary sector has opened the door to the increase of low wage, low skill jobs, similar to those in the UK. Furthermore, labour market deregulation and reforms to employment contracts have similarly had an impact on the experience of work in Germany, especially for women workers. This article considers the extent to which state reform and other changes in the labour market have contributed to the decline in traditional working relationships and altered the landscape of the German labour market