Industrial Relations and Trade Unions

My first research topics were collective labor relations and labor unions, with my first publication appearing in 1972. My particular focus was initially on the organizational dimension of trade unionism, which from an early stage I approached from an internationally comparative perspective, especially with the United Kingdom. Later my focus shifted to collective bargaining autonomy as an independent regulatory system within capitalist democracy, which easily connected with the corporatism discourse of the 1970s and 1980s. Early attempts at a sociological understanding of labor law as an institution drew on the conceptual tradition of status and contract, particularly in my habilitation lecture. All of this led to a series of interventions in public policy, both in Germany and in the United States. More recently, there has been a return to a theory of labor law in the 20th century, situated between revolutionary socialism and reactionary neoliberalism.