German (and Japanese) industry has the exact opposite attitude and it makes me very curious what "top employees" means here, the only example given are managers, which is a group of people where performance is very difficult to measure and often based around person networking abilities and entirely divorced of performance.
That said any developer and engineering should be extremely careful when it comes to unions. In Germany they typically agitate against the interests of the engineers, especially in large companies. This comes naturally as unions get power according to democratic principles, so in most cases they agitate for benefits for unskilled workers at the cost of the engineers. At companies I worked for the Betriebsrat, which is staffed by the elected union, actively advocated for outsourcing engineering activities, so that manufacturing workers can get increased benefits.
That said any developer and engineering should be extremely careful when it comes to unions. In Germany they typically agitate against the interests of the engineers, especially in large companies. This comes naturally as unions get power according to democratic principles, so in most cases they agitate for benefits for unskilled workers at the cost of the engineers. At companies I worked for the Betriebsrat, which is staffed by the elected union, actively advocated for outsourcing engineering activities, so that manufacturing workers can get increased benefits.