Works Councils and Workplace Health Promotion in Germany

Uwe Jirjahn, Jens Mohrenweiser and Stephen Smith

No 12113, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: From a theoretical viewpoint, there can be market failures resulting in an underprovision of occupational health and safety. Works councils may help mitigate these failures. Using establishment data from Germany, our empirical analysis 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 a recursive bivariate probit regression accounting for the possible endogeneity of works council incidence. Furthermore, analyzing potentially moderating factors such as collective bargaining coverage, industry, type of ownership, multi-establishment status and product market competition, we find a positive association between works councils and workplace health promotion for the various types of establishments examined. Finally, we go beyond the mere incidence of workplace health promotion and show that works councils are positively associated with a series of different measures of workplace health promotion.

Keywords: occupational health and safety; works council; non-union employee representation; workplace health promotion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 J28 J50 J81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 52 pages
Date: 2019-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published - revised version published in: Economic and Industrial Democracy, 2022, 43 (3), 1059-1094

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Related works:
Journal Article: Works councils and workplace health promotion in Germany (2022)
Working Paper: Works Councils and Workplace Health Promotion in Germany (2019)
Working Paper: Works Councils and Workplace Health Promotion in Germany (2019)
Working Paper: Works Councils and Workplace Health Promotion in Germany (2019)
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