Concerted action

The Concerted Action refers to a process of coordination of interests between different policy actors in order to achieve a medium or long term better overall result means disregarding divergent short-term or subordinate objectives.

Socialist economic policy after 1967

With the fall of Ludwig Erhard of economic liberalism in the Federal Republic was first discredited and the policies have been temporarily stronger to Keynesian ideas that were practiced in the United States and other countries for some time. This was at first mainly in an attempt to control the global aggregate demand expression. In Germany such ideas of the SPD included in the adopted in May 1967 Stability and Growth Act, a, after federal and state governments " to respect the requirements of the macroeconomic equilibrium in their economic and financial policies " have (§ 1) and the federal government in the "trap the hazard of the objectives of § 1 [ ... ] orientation data for a simultaneous coordinated behavior (concerted action ) of local authorities, trade unions and employers' organizations to achieve the objectives of § 1 available " provides ( § 3). However, contrary to the Keynesian logic, it was the autonomy of the Bundesbank completely untouched.

Instead, one vote ( consultation ) of the macro- economically relevant behavior between government, local authorities, trade unions and the Bundesbank should be effected by successive rounds of talks. The aim was to achieve a high level of employment, price stability and a reasonable level of economic growth. Economics Minister Karl Schiller spoke of "the table of the social reason". On February 14, 1967 for the first time met a corresponding informal discussion.

Despite an initial success, the Concerted Action consolidated not a permanent corporatist institution. For the employers' associations and the Bundesbank she remained a no-obligation discussion forum, in which the associations shared their assessments of the general economic situation. For the unions, with their more decentralized structure of individual unions and their in the Federal Republic of comparatively low degree of organization of collective bargaining was at stake. Similarly, a potential threat to their room for maneuver to represent the economic interests of its members. In the early years, the unions felt obliged to wage restraint, and the Bundesbank returned to a less restrictive monetary policy. But after the discontent of the workers had ( September 1969 and 1973 ) announced two waves of wildcat strikes, lost the Concerted Action in the 1970s in importance and ended 1977/78 altogether. Because of a constitutional challenge of multi-employer associations against the co-determination law of 1976 the unions in 1977 their first participation provisionally; on the DGB Congress in 1978 was a definitive rejection of the provisional.

In health care,

Had Concerted Action in Health Care (starting 1977), the health care cost containment as the objective. Representatives of the state and from the health sector ( pharmaceutical companies, medical associations, hospitals, health insurance companies, not patients ) put under the auspices of the Federal Minister of Health at a table to contain the cost explosion in health care.

Since the reform of health care in 1992, the concerted action has no meaning in this area.

Alliance for Jobs

After the failure of the Concerted Action in the late 1970s, an attempt was under the red-green coalition in 1999 made ​​to revive the corporatist coordination between government, employers and trade unions under the name " Alliance for Jobs ", which did not succeed and in February / March was declared in 2003 for finally failed.