Who's In Charge Here?

In the end, it's all about relationships. "I love both those guys," chortled German Chancellor Gerhard Schrder as his Minister of Labor, Walter Riester, exchanged barbs with his Minister of Economics, Werner Müller, over a core component of Germany's industrial culture: the right of workers to help run the companies they work for.

Riester says Germany's laws regarding so-called works councils—peer groups elected by employees to be liaisons with management—have tethered industrial workers to their companies for everyone's benefit; he thinks service and technology workers can benefit too. Müller concedes the laws delivered a certain stability in a...