Having seen piles of headlines about stagnant wage growth in Germany, I had to look up some stats, and found these links:
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/wage-growth https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/wage-growth
Except for 2009/10 being particularly bad in the US, wage growth seems much stronger in the US.
And when I look at tech salaries in the EU, I'm not sure I want that. Or at least that attitude to compensation.
This the same everywhere outside the US though. Salaries are much lower as the skill ceiling tends to be much lower and there is more skilled labour available.
The US just has a huge amount of investment, a small skilled labour force and a more meritocratic outlook in general (bear in mind, even just 50 years ago, being a manager or not would depend on your family and school in the UK for example, and you wouldn't even eat with your subordinates).
I don't think worker representation would change much there, the Americans already have it so good.
But anyway, it makes arguments of "look how well Germany is doing" not very compelling to me.
I don't hate the idea of codetermination tbh, but I do have lots of questions about how it would work in practice.
At the very least you have to ask whether contractors get a vote, which gets you into a question if incentive and which workers are more or less aligned with a company.