From 1922 to 1933, and again from 1951 Germany had had board level codetermination laws, inspired by collective agreements between worker unions and management.
[1] The 1919 Weimar Constitution said that, “Workers and employees shall be called upon to cooperate in common with employers, and on an equal footing, in the regulation of salaries and working conditions, as well as in the entire field of the economic development of the forces of production.”[2] The coal and steel industry had required half worker and half shareholder seats on the company supervisory board, but outside these sectors, the Works Constitution Act 1952 merely required one third representation.
By 1976, and given the success of worker participation, the governing social-liberal coalition decided that this should be raised.
The head of the supervisory board is always a shareholder representative who has two votes in case of a deadlock.
[6] Former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder established a Commission on Codetermination (Mitbestimmungskommission), which in 2005, came to no conclusion about possible reforms of the law.