Works councils and workplace health promotion in Germany

• Published in: Economic and industrial democracy Vol. 43; no. 3; pp. 1059 - 1094
• Main Authors: Jirjahn, Uwe, Mohrenweiser, Jens, Smith, Stephen C
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.08.2022; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: Collective bargaining; Health education; Health promotion; Markets; Occupational health; Ownership; Work site programmes; Workplaces; Works councils; Germany; works council; workplace health promotion; occupational health and safety; Non-union employee representation
• ISSN: 0143-831X; 1461-7099
• DOI: 10.1177/0143831X20971051

From a theoretical viewpoint, there can be market failures and organizational failures resulting in an underprovision of occupational health and safety. Works councils may help mitigate these failures. Using establishment data from Germany, the empirical analysis in this article confirms that the incidence of a works council is significantly associated with an increased likelihood that the establishment provides more workplace health promotion than required by law. This result also holds in regressions accounting for the possible endogeneity of works council incidence. Furthermore, analysing potentially moderating factors such as collective bargaining coverage, industry, type of ownership, multi-establishment status and product market competition, the article finds a positive association between works councils and workplace health promotion for the various types of establishments examined. Finally, this study goes beyond the mere incidence of workplace health promotion and shows that works councils are positively associated with a series of different measures of workplace health promotion.