6

WORKER PARTICIPATION AND THE GERMAN TRADE UNIONS: AN UNFULFILLED DREAM?

Christopher S. Allen

Rapid industrialization in the latter half of the nineteenth century fundamentally transformed Germany. As a growing industrial society displaced the remnants of a largely feudal one, wage laborers particularly were affected. Many of them had to make the transition from agrarian peasants to factory workers within the space of a generation. During this period workers suffered great hardship, and large numbers responded with militant collective action. A wave of unionization soon followed as these peasant workers tried to withstand the changes that expanding capitalism had imposed on them.¹

One factor that aided workers’ collective response was the penetration of Marxism (and other socialist theories) into the working class. The nascent organized working class drew on these theories and—building on German craft skill traditions that had their roots in the feudal guilds—soon made demands for worker participation, if not control.² Yet cutting across this participatory trajectory was the strong reliance by German labor on the benefits derived from the state. Chancellor Otto von Bismarck initiated a social insurance system in the 1880s to coopt the militant edge of the left. He also simultaneously banned the social Democratic party (SPD) from 1878 to 1890. This kind of state paternalism became deeply embedded in German political institutions and left its mark on the organized working class.³ By the early twentieth century, however, the reemergence of the SPD and the growing strength of unions as industrialization continued resulted in increased benefits for the working class from the state. Yet a tension developed within organized labor around the issue of participation. Should the labor movement primarily emphasize strategies of worker control at the point of production, or should it use its increasing access to the state to create participatory institutions that would help enhance their power in the workplace?

This article will examine this long-standing tension around worker participation in Germany. It will argue that the simplistic “choice” between workplace or statist strategies has shaped patterns of response within the labor movement that have led it down blind alleys. The limitations of this either/or false choice have sometimes even let unions slide even further away from participation only to emphasize American-style wage bargaining. In essence, German unions have been frustrated in their goal of attaining worker control via participation because they have been unable to synthesize both approaches. On one side are those who are concerned primarily with worker participation and control within firms but who do not develop strategies to spread it throughout the labor movement. On the other side are those who rely on the state in hopes that it will then give greater institutional and legal support for worker participation and influence but who neglect the workplace.

The conclusion will suggest that strategies to increase participation and influence over working life in West German society depend on finding an approach that avoids this false either/or choice. Such an approach would have to link the microstrategies of the workplace to the macro-strategies of pressuring the state. In so doing, it would not only increase participatory power within the West German labor movement, it might also generate a labor movement better able to address the increasingly adverse structural and political conditions in the West German economy of the 1980s.

Rapid Industrialization, Reliance on the State, and the Erosion of Participatory Workplace Traditions

As the first wave of heavy German industrial expansion shot forward in the 1850s and 1860s, German firms in the Ruhr (by then under Prussian control) faced a desperate labor shortage. Both through their own initiative and under the aegis of the state, the region’s employers soon recruited thousands of workers from rural eastern Prussia for employment in the coal mines and the iron foundries. But the initial response by German workers proved to be a radical one.⁴ Rapid industrialization produced a general economic and social dislocation. Combined with the taking root of the ideas of Marx and other German socialists and the fact that these peasant workers collectively faced the same kind of subordinate relationship with their new industrial employers as they did with their old feudal ones, a large labor movement soon grew in Germany.

But though the nature of the rapid industrialization created a militant labor movement, the type of militance did not emphasize the earlier tradition of participatory skill of German workers. Prior to this period of rapid industrialization the numerous German states had been characterized by small-scale artisanal production. The guildlike structure of this still feudal society accorded skilled workers with an important position. Yet during the third quarter of the nineteenth century German industry stressed large-scale capital investment and export-led growth. A major change had occurred in the structure of German industry. Investment goods were emphasized, which meant that domestic demand took second place. Thus, the early trade union and socialist leaders had first to mobilize around issues that addressed the low pay and very adverse working conditions, and only secondarily those that played on workers’ skills. For despite the genuine radical impulses among early trade unionists, demands for a fundamental alteration of the economic and political order were forced to take second place to more immediate material needs.⁵ By emphasizing consumption, however, the unions had found an issue that spoke directly to workers’ concrete needs. The movement then grew rapidly during the 1870s and intensified its attacks on the employers’ harsh methods of industrialization as the late nineteenth-century depression took hold.⁶

This radicalization in the late 1870s and the early 1880s caused Chancellor Otto von Bismarck to undertake the two-pronged action of banning the SPD via his “anti-socialist” legislation, yet simultaneously stealing some of the movement’s thunder by initiating numerous welfare state measures.⁷ Bismarck took this action both because of the “fragility” of the country’s political economy and because he doubted whether individual industrialists would be able to see beyond their own specific interests to those of the economy as a whole:

The evolving conflicts between state and social democracy convinced the state bureaucracy, that the political question must be solved by state policy and not by private contracts. Therefore the state took away some . . . rights over the worker from the entrepreneur. But this was not done to give the worker more codetermination, but to give the state more security over its citizens.⁸

Although the “outlawed” SPD was made legal again in the 1890s (after growing still stronger as an underground movement in the 1880s), the intervention of the state had an important impact on the SPD and the trade unions. Although Bismarck’s action was ostensibly a maneuver to “coopt” the nascent German left, this action left a legacy often described as a Staatsfixierung (state fixation) within both the “political arm” and the “labor arm” of the organized working class.⁹

Although such state action in the 1880s imposed heavy restrictions on the working class, considerable benefit was provided, a fact not lost on the leaders of the German left. This contributed to the SPD’s changing its political perspective following the death of Friedrich Engels in 1893, as Eduard Bernstein emerged as the party’s leader and began to stress “evolutionary” as opposed to “revolutionary” socialism.¹⁰ Trade union leaders also came to believe that, were they to fail to attain the goals that they considered most important via their struggles in the labor market, they then could turn to the SPD and the state and try to fulfill them in the political arena. Significantly, this reliance of the union movement on the state for important needs served to reinforce the powerful thrust of legalization that had long pervaded other aspects of social and economic relations. In fact, this development placed the German union movement on a trajectory in which it would devote substantial effort to achieving and maintaining institutional legitimacy. In many cases unions would look to the state to sanction forms of participation between workers and employers, rather than first pressing for participation themselves via militant action. They were encouraged in this belief by the 1910 Imperial Court (Reichsgericht) decision that trade unions and wage-bargaining contracts had to be accepted by industry, thereby giving the unions a degree of institutional legitimacy that had been denied them even during the Bismarck years.

Although some analysts considered such change in direction as a necessary adaptation to a changed landscape,¹¹ critics on the left argued that the German unions and the SPD lost much of the participatory and transformative vision that had been present (though not prominent) since the 1860s and 1870s.¹² The latter group did not necessarily argue that the “parliamentary road to socialism” was an inappropriate avenue. They did, however, assert strongly that primary emphasis on electoral action and reliance on the state tended to turn the movement away from the equally important task of transforming capitalism in the industrial arena.

More important for this article, however, the German labor movement devoted most of its labor market activities to “quantitative” change in the size of pay envelopes, and to attaining access to political power that had been denied them by the inequities of the Wilhelmian Reich’s political system. Consequently, they tended to downplay the participatory thrust that also earlier underpinned the German labor movement. Furthermore, by identifying their fate with immediate material interests, the needs of their respective firms (as defined by business leaders), and an increasingly militaristic German state, the trade unions surrendered the opportunity to challenge the direction of the German economy as World War I loomed.¹³ Thus, by 1914 major portions of both the trade unions and the SPD—lacking a vision to transform German capitalism—supported the declaration of war, a decision that caused a deeply rooted split on the left both within Germany and internationally.¹⁴

The Rise and Decline of the Workers’ Council Movement During the Weimar Republic

In many respects the split that World War I actualized within the German trade union movement (and, more broadly, within the German left) was part of the same debate that had originated in the nineteenth century. Namely, was the trade union to be a vehicle for the securing of material and social rewards for its membership by relying on the state in capitalist society, or was it to be a vehicle for transforming society via a socialist program for worker participation and control? The debate over goals and strategy resumed even more sharply at the outset of the Weimar Republic. The loss of the war, the destruction of the Second Reich, and the economic chaos that followed caused the left wing of the unions and the socialist movement to question again whether they could attain their goals by relying only on fragile and uncertain parliamentary institutions.

The most visible manifestation of this response was the Council Movement (Rätebewegung) during 1918–19, when German labor experienced its most militant push toward worker participation and control. But the councils did not spring from thin air. This renewed surge of militance by some German workers was not just the result of the war and the breakdown of the Second Reich’s political institutions. It had earlier roots. Although demands for worker participation declined in some industries during the course of rapid industrialization from the 1870s to the 1910s, important participatory patterns survived in others, particularly those that were more labor intensive.¹⁵

Moore noted that participatory traditions eroded in the more capital-intensive iron and steel industries (i.e., the most reactionary prior to World War I as well as in the 1920s and 1930s). Although highly paid throughout the war years, iron and steel workers had lost interest in participation within the workplace due to the increased capital intensity and the reduced control over the changes that management imposed from above. Yet when the later war years and the turmoil of 1918–19 sharply constrained the iron and steel employers’ maneuverability, the union leaders representing these industries had no experience bargaining for (or winning) more qualitative workplace demands. They preferred to embark on a pattern that offered them integration into the institutional hierarchy of Weimar, and not an opportunity for greater power.

The more-labor-intensive coal industry, on the other hand, generated a different response. Although nonmilitant with respect to wages before the war (as compared with workers in iron and steel), workers in this sector had bargained for and won a considerable number of rights concerning the structure of the workplace. Yet, when the employers in this sector tried to impose some of the same retrenchment-oriented demands as did employers in iron and steel, they were met by a very militant union response. Moore argued that the miners’ capacity for rebellion against the mine owners owed much to the miners’ having a positive standard from the past (i.e., before the employers’ concession demands) to compare against the present. Perhaps the miners even continued to push for workplace control because they already had a degree of control before the war and viewed as an injustice the employers’ taking away this bargained-for right.¹⁶

It was this residual issue from the nineteenth century—worker control—that animated much of the debate within the German unions and working class in 1918–19. The old regime had collapsed with the Kaiser’s abdication after Germany’s loss of World War I. And the long-suppressed German left believed the political vacuum was an opportunity to achieve social, political, and economic justice. The revolutionary upsurge of late 1918 and early 1919 soon followed. A major force behind the short-lived revolution at the outset of the Weimar years was the movement within the factories for workers’ councils (Arbeiterräte). The councils were envisioned as mechanisms that could address sectoral and workplace issues that their adherents felt the trade union leadership had long since neglected. The movement drew strength during this brief period—organizing workers and soldiers councils during 1918–19—in which questions of what to produce (as well as direct self-government) were major considerations. Not surprisingly, many union leaders saw this movement as a threat to their authority in the workplace.¹⁷

Opposition to the councils came from the employers, of course. But it also came from the leadership of the unions. For the first few years of the Weimar Republic there were two forces within the socialist trade union confederation (ADGB), namely, the “council democrats” and the “social partners.”¹⁸ The former tendency was represented primarily by the mine workers and by elements of those Metalworkers Union members not in iron and steel. The movement reached its apex during 1918 as it argued for worker control via councils that were to be instituted at the region, firm, and plant levels and would oversee both production and investment. The latter tendency, which arose in 1918 with the formation of the Central Labor Community (Zentrale Arbeitsgemeinschaft), argued for a “cooperative” posture among the unions, employers, and the state. The community proposed that the employers’ associations and the unions acknowledge each other as “agents of order” (Ordnungsfaktoren) responsible for disciplining those of its members who became unruly, in order that the performance of affected sectors not be impeded. The community hoped to avoid the more strident forms of conflict among the parties, thus paving the way for an environment that would be mutually beneficial.

In making their demands on the state, the “social partners” criticized the “council democrats” for engaging in a form of struggle that could undermine the institutional legitimacy that the unions had long since fought for and finally won. The latter, on the other hand, felt that this particular form of union integration served only to officially confirm the same kind of “junior partner” status that labor had held during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This case was fraught with danger in the eyes of the “council democrats” because the unions would then bear responsibility for events over which they had no real control. This split between the two organizations that represented the working class on the shop floor obviously proved disastrous for the ability of either tendency to fashion an appropriate response. The “council democrats” felt betrayed because they felt that the official union movement was willing to dispatch shopfloor democracy in exchange for recognition by the employers, but without gaining any real power in return. The “social partners,” on the other hand, felt that these rank-and-file workers failed to appreciate the gains that had been made when compared with the unions’ position prior to the war. Consequently, an opportunity was lost for a reciprocal relationship in which the leadership and the rank and file could rely on each other for an even greater measure of strength than each possessed individually.

The split between the rank and file and the leadership was further solidified when the ADGB leader Carl Legien joined forces with the increasingly conservative SPD government leadership and the employers’ association to pass legislation that established works councils (Betriebsräte) as opposed to workers’ councils (Arbeiterräte).¹⁹ The “social partners’” victory over the “council democrats” was thus complete. Although one of the main reasons for the union leadership’s preference for works councils over workers’ councils was that the employers believed that the latter threatened to undermine its authority at the workplace, the works councils in practice tended to do just that, but from a different direction. Each of the works councils was firm- or plant-specific, existed in all workplaces with twenty or more employees, and was officially independent of the unions. Consequently, in practice many eventually came to be dominated by the firms and thus “competed” with the unions in a way the leadership had never envisioned.

With the beating back of this radical impulse from the rank and file by the leadership during the early 1920s, the dominant “social partners” among the leading unions still felt that they could achieve their goals via cooperation with the employers and the SPD-led government. However, the prolonged recession in the early 1920s, followed by the hyperinflationary wave in 1923, caused these union leaders to initially question some of their post-World War I assumptions. Yet after 1924 there was some change in the mainstream union position on new approaches. Some felt that they had greater latitude to combine elements of the “social partnership” approach with more radical attempts to democratize the economy.²⁰

Several left-wing economists within the labor movement saw this opening as an opportunity to move beyond this “foot-in-the-door” status and begin to direct the German economy in a much more democratic direction.²¹ Napthali argued in 1925 that such a transformation of the economy was possible for several reasons: (1) the highly organized and cartelized condition of the economy facilitated a greater degree of social control, (2) the large monopolies were highly visible and thus generated many opportunities for their monitoring, (3) one of the major advantages of democracy was that popular forces could be elected and thus use the state in a way that satisfied needs of working people, and (4) the general inability of private capital to successfully self-regulate would force it to turn to the state for aid, to which the left would then attach numerous conditions. Among the ways in which Napthali felt that these goals could be effected were by: state control of the monopoly sectors, the establishment of Gemeinwirtschaft firms such as a workers’ bank, the institution of industrial democracy in the large enterprises in which the unions would have increased influence at both the firm-wide and plant levels (cf. the works councils), and a general democratization of labor relations in which workers would be formally recognized as persons and not as a commodity or factor of production.²²

The movement for economic democracy during the Weimar period however, proved comparatively short-lived since it had not made deep enough inroads into union bargaining. In fact, with the more shell-like works councils having supplanted the more rank-and-file-based workers’ councils as the dominant plant-level institutions, it was much more difficult to mobilize workers after organs that would have been ideal for this purpose had themselves been demobilized.²³ The left-wing economists’ attempts to use the state to democratize the labor movement from above did not work, as the split between the rank and file and the union leadership was not to be easily overcome. In fact, the opportunity to develop participatory skills during the immediate post-World War I years and then use them to create supportive national-level institutions had been lost. With the deepening splits on the German left, the onset of the Depression in 1929, and the rise of the Nazis, the possibilities looked even bleaker.

Thus, when the Depression arrived, the union leaders and the SPD discarded attempts at participation—if only in this “top down” fashion—in favor of defending their respective interests. The radical push for worker control, as symbolized by the workers’ council movement, had been pushed back. And because the debate over participatory strategies had been framed in such workplace-vs.-statist terms, another opportunity had been lost to cast this issue in more positive-sum terms. This weakened position of German organized labor with respect to strategies of participation proved illustrative of the left’s larger failure to shape the agenda of the German political economy in a different direction as the Weimar Republic was overcome by the Nazis. Consequently, under the “labor front” of the Third Reich, workers suffered extensively as all of the Weimar labor organizations, and all of the left and centrist political parties were abolished by the mid-1930s.²⁴

“Half a Loaf”: Institutionalization of Worker Participation

With the near-complete destruction of German economy and society during World War II, the organized German working class faced formidable problems in 1945. But because the large firms were discredited for their complicity with the Nazis, the labor movement also had opportunities. The unions—having been smashed by the Nazis—had widespread political legitimacy after the war. Hans Böckler, the leader of the (West) German Confederation of Labor (Deutsche Gewerkschaftsbund, DGB), articulated a two-pronged union strategy that—not surprisingly—drew on German labor’s statist and workplace-based ideals of participation. The first goal called on the state to guarantee the influence of organized labor by allowing it, via specific legislation, to play a much more democratic and egalitarian role in the strategies of firms, thereby influencing the macroeconomy. The second goal called for organized labor to act simultaneously as a greater “counterpower” (Gegenmacht) to the employers via increased participation in the workplace.

To attain these goals of societal and workplace participation, the unions returned during the immediate postwar years to a key theme that they hoped would bring both goals to fruition, namely, economic democracy.

Democratization in this framework, by necessity, always implied the active participation of workers in the production process. Only through the complete democratization of economic life could capitalism’s Profitlogik (profit logic) be defeated by a more equitable and more socially oriented system. This democratizing process, never fully implemented during Weimar, was to involve the institutionalization of an all-encompassing framework of Mitbestimmung (codetermination). . . . Moreover, Mitbestimmung was important in the unions’ eyes . . . because it was seen as the chosen strategic vehicle for implementing the other parts of the unions’ package of postwar (objectives)—full employment, production for social needs, socialization of key industries and social justice.²⁵

Yet, as the Cold War developed, as economic growth based on a free-enterprise capitalist model took hold, and as the conservative Christlich-Demokratische Union/Christlich-Soziale Union (CDU/CSU) became the dominant political actor, the unions found each of their two goals increasingly less attainable. The rapid economic growth—combined with the changed postwar political climate—quickly accorded to the employers a rehabilitated stature that resulted in much less successful union attempts at worker participation than they had hoped for in the late 1940s. Specifically, the unions got less institutionalized participation through the state and less participatory influence in the workplace than they had hoped. More importantly, rather than being mutually compatible, these two weakened forms of participation created a new institutional division among German workers.

First, the economic takeoff during the 1950s worked directly against the unions’ (and the SPD’s) macroeconomic goal, namely, that the state take a more active role in economic affairs. Specifically, for the unions, this can be seen by the outcome of the 1951 Codetermination Law in Coal and Steel (Montanmitbestimmungsgesetz), which was much more limited than the unions had originally envisioned, although there were clearly some benefits for the unions in this law. First, since labor and capital were granted parity on the supervisory board of directors (Aufsichtsrat) and since unions were allowed to place union leaders from outside the company on this board, union members occupied over 90 percent of the labor board seats. Second, the unions won the right to name the “labor director” to the day-to-day management board (Vorstand) of each firm. Third, the law provided for a neutral member of the board of directors—appointed by both labor and capital—to cast the tie-breaking vote on deadlocked issues.²⁶

Yet this law proved ultimately limited in that it was confined to only coal and steel and, to this day, has never been extended to other sectors of the economy. What was to serve as the grand foundation to link influence and control of firms and sectors to the macroeconomy was institutionally limited from the outset. It became a “special” provision for coal and steel. Furthermore, under Montanmitbestimmung the unions were restricted to only near parity at the supervisory board, which met infrequently. Last, most important plant decisions were made at the management-board level, and the labor director was always only one member of this management-dominated board.

The 1952 Works Constitution Law proved even more restrictive for the unions, but in a way that restricted their ability to gain participatory rights within the workplace.

This law severely restricted the unions’ scope of action within the plant and made the works councils the only legal representative of the workers on the shopfloor. At the same time, this law also limited significantly the Betriebsräte’s (works councils’) range of activities in the plant. For example, works councils could not participate in the mobilization of strikes, were prohibited from divulging company secrets, including to the unions, and were asked to help maintain a harmonious relationship between employer and employees. Their tasks, according to this law, remained largely confined to the supervision of grievance procedures and certain forms of workplace security. Thus, the unions’ original model of an ideal-type Betriebsrat—an activist on the shopfloor involved in economic, political and social matters—became merely a mediator of personnel problems.²⁷

This meant that day-to-day union politics was stripped of many of its qualitative dimensions and replaced with the more quantitative concerns of attaining higher wages. Thus, at a theoretical level, the structure of the West German industrial relations system—both codetermination and the works councils—served to channel organized labor’s response within distinctly manageable directions. The net result was that the structure sharply constrained the unions’ ability to have real influence either in the macro-economy (via the boards of directors) or in the workplace.

Despite the absence of genuine participation, the period from the early 1950s through the mid-1960s for the West German unions was viewed as a mixed blessing. If the unions were unable to achieve their original goals, they at least had the satisfaction of attaining codetermination in limited form. If there was no official union influence in the councils, at least many union members were active in the councils. The works councils may not have been the organs of control originally envisioned, but they did provide a number of tangible benefits for workers. Moreover, as German economic performance improved, wages increased and unemployment decreased. And, as a further measure of the supposed cooperativeness of the German trade unions, several authors have pointed to the relatively low strike levels in the Federal Republic as compared to other industrialized countries.²⁸

Yet, in a way, this period represented a somewhat false paradise. The easy acceptance by the unions of a regime of increasing wages, generous fringe benefits, and decreasing unemployment took them that much further away from their goal of genuine participation, either in the workplace or via statist institutions. The unions seemed lulled into a false sense of security that depended on the employers’ “delivering the goods.” And as long as this was the case, then the unions’ quantitative emphases were quite appropriate. More fundamentally however, the unions’ position signified something else: Once the unions established this quantitative posture, it became that much more difficult to mobilize the membership around such qualitative issues as participation when the years of economic growth ended. Plus, with the full circumscription of the power of the works councils to shape fundamental change, any attempt to use these institutions to deal with issues of new technologies and changed workplace relations would be most difficult indeed.

Participation, Institutions, and Political Mobilization

The 1960s and early 1970s saw increased structural changes in the West German economy. Among these were greater capital intensity, the beginnings of disparities among groups of sectors, and the influx of Gastarbeiter (guestworkers) to overcome the labor shortage that began in the 1960s.²⁹ The unions saw an opportunity to increase their power and did so by again stressing statist and workplace forms of participation.

A key factor that enabled the unions to push both forms of participation from the mid-1960s to the onset of the crisis in the mid-1970s was the SPD’s attaining political power. When the SPD participated with the CDU/CSU in the Grand Coalition from 1966 to 1969 and became the major political actor in the social-liberal coalition after 1969, the unions believed that “their” party had finally attained power. The unions felt that the weakened participatory arenas of the 1950s would be augmented by stronger ones during the 1970s.³⁰ Although Willey may have overrated the post-1969 left-wing influence, the period did witness a growing union emphasis on political institutions as an arena for struggle after the primary emphasis on collective bargaining from the early 1950s to the mid 1960s. The unions’ initial hopes for the SPD-led coalition lay in the area of improving the two laws governing worker participation, namely the workplace-oriented Works Constitution Act (Betriebsverfassungsgesetz) and the more macroeconomically important extension of full codetermination (Mitbestimmung) from the coal and steel industries to all sectors of the economy.³¹

The unions proved successful in attaining increased power at the shop floor (at the expense of the works councils) when the Works Constitution Act was revised in 1972. Their hopes for the extension of full-parity Mitbestimmung, on the other hand, were less well realized.³² Although a watered-down version was finally passed in 1976, it was not finally approved by the Constitutional Court (Bundesgericht) until 1979.³³ These two pieces of legislation indicated very clearly the limitations of what the unions could expect from “their” party as the economy worsened during the years following the first oil crisis in 1973–74.

In essence, the SPD-led government was much less “theirs” than they had hoped. A number of constraints still continued to face the unions. The employers put great pressure on the government to prevent the extension of full-parity codetermination. The “junior” member of the government coalition, the Freie Demokratische Partei (FDP), became increasingly anxious as the unions pushed for increased power and influence. Some of their members began to complain of a “trade union state.” Last, the complicated legal structure of the industrial relations system had a degree of institutional permanence that was very difficult to alter.

Although the unions derived greater benefits from statist and workplace-oriented forms of participation in the early 1970s than they did in either the 1920s or 1950s, the two forms of participation never were adequately synthesized. Two examples are most illustrative.

First, in the euphoria of the high-growth, low-unemployment years of the Willy Brandt-led SPD/FDP coalition, concern began to be raised—initially by left-wing unionists and the youth wing (Jusos) of the SPD—that the state should deal more directly with the question of investment. This school of thought argued that the new government move beyond the Keynesian “global guidance”³⁴ and allocate capital in areas that would combine social utility and the maintenance of high employment levels. In other words, this would be a direct form of statist participation. Called Investitionslenkung (investment direction), it would make up for some of the “antisocial” deficiencies of investment decisions based on market-oriented criteria, its advocates argued. Similar in intent to French-style planning, Investitionslenkung proved far less influential in Germany. Its adherents were unsuccessful in gaining much support among either the mainstream of the SPD or a majority of the trade union movement.

Meeting with considerable opposition by the more probusiness FDP, the government was able only to pass legislation establishing Investitionsmeldestellen (investment registries), which required firms to “advise” the state where they planned to make future investments. As the boom years faded with the onset of the OPEC oil shock in late 1973, so too did demands for Investitionslenkung, which (in this particular incarnation) seemed to be as dependent on a growing economy as was the mid-1920s model of economic democracy. This 1970s vision of Investitionslenkung seemed to remain only at the level of economic theory, as its supporters were unable to apply it successfully to the real problems of structural change, which grew more severe by the mid 1970s. It remained unconnected to the workplace.

The second upsurge of participatory sentiment to arise in the early 1970s was the beginning of union demands (in this case by IG Metall) for the “humanization of work” via “qualitative” changes in the workplace. First surfacing in 1972 at a conference (and then in a wage framework contract during the following year), these demands went beyond the unions’ traditional goals of higher wages and fringe benefits.³⁵ Among the issues raised were a growing dissatisfaction with the repetitive nature of mass-production work, concern over workplace health and safety issues, and a growing concern with the possible adverse impact of technological change. Unlike Investitionslenkung, however, these demands later found their way into union bargaining rounds during the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The problem for the unions during the 1970s (as much as it was during the 1920s) was that the demands for economic democracy at the macro level and the demands for participation and worker control at the micro level remained out of sync. The humanization-of-work demand remained confined to the workplace level and the macroeconomic demands such as Investitionslenkung remained only a “top down” concept. Consequently, this led some analysts to view the unions’ primary reliance on the SPD-led coalition government during the late 1960s and early 1970s (and not using their own strength to develop new departures such as a radical form of humanization of work) as an avenue that would not prove fruitful in the long run.³⁶

Members of this latter group viewed the unions’ position in the German political economy as one of weakness rather than one of strength. In the unions’ two-pronged emphasis on higher wages in the labor market, on the one hand, and reliance on “their” SPD on the other, these observers claimed that unions were merely solidifying their “junior partner” status by playing too passive a role with respect to those forces who wielded real power in the West German political economy. Pointing to such German union response as a prime example of “corporatism,” analysts such as Schmitter and Panitch found it unlikely that the German unions could improve their position, especially in an economy that began to deteriorate by the mid-1970s. Jacobi and Mueller-Jentsch, however, did see the possibility for more effective union response if militant shop stewards (in part helped by the 1972 Works Constitution Act, which gave the unions slightly more workplace power at the expense of the works councils) could serve as a better link between the rank and file and the leadership.³⁷ Yet they argued that the unions, given this entrenched corporatist trajectory, would likely be unwilling to push rank-and-file demands far enough for any real gains.

In one sense this latter group of critics was right in that the unions were confronted with an ever more unsympathetic SPD-led government as the 1970s progressed. And when combined with the employers’ more aggressive tactics in the labor market, their theories seemed that much more well reinforced. The employers undertook such measures as forcing the unions to accept considerable wage restraint after 1975, turning to the lockout as a collective-bargaining tool, and attempting to have the 1976 Mitbestimmung law ruled unconstitutional. Consequently, these critics’ characterization of the unions’ posture as one of comparative timidity appeared not that far from the mark. However, lacking from this left-wing criticism was any concrete alternative to synthesize the two participatory traditions. However, new attempts to do so would take place in the 1980s, with only limited success.

The Unions, Structural Change, and Worker Participation

As a much more perilous economic era arrived by the mid-1970s, the unions were generally ill placed to deal with the crisis they faced. They had little understanding of how these structural changes would fundamentally alter the institutional framework within which they had worked since the early 1950s. In short, the majority of union leadership felt that the best remedy to their troubles was simply more of the kind of aggressive wage bargaining and demands on the SPD-led state rather than innovative forms of participation. The mainstream union leaders rarely acknowledged those critics inside the labor movement who wanted to mobilize the membership around both qualitative (i.e., participative) and quantitative goals, and not just an exclusive concentration on the latter. Whether this pattern will continue through the 1980s remains uncertain.

In fact, both the chemical workers’ union (IG Chemie) and the metalworkers’ union (IG Metall) missed opportunities to mobilize their respective memberships. At its convention in 1980, IG Chemie dramatically put down a rank-and-file challenge that emphasized just these issues. In IG Metall the innovative demands of regional leader Franz Steinkühler in Baden Wurttemburg in 1978 were not picked up by the IG Metall leadership in Frankfurt. As a result, both unions seemed to have lost a golden opportunity to challenge (and possibly shape via widespread worker participation) the scope and pattern of German industry’s transformation.

In one respect, the unions’ continued emphasis on wages and fringe benefits—while neglecting to make full use of those participatory institutions they had—played right into the hands of their most severe critics. This right-wing view called for increased employer latitude because it was argued that the strength of the unions (i.e., with respect to their retaining comparatively high wage standards) had begun to result in the “overload” of the system.³⁸ Ranging from such prescriptions as continued union wage restraint, increased freedom by employers to invest outside of the Federal Republic, more rapid introduction of labor-saving technology, and, in general, more “room to maneuver” by German business, these conservative suggestions were largely rejected out of hand by both union leadership and the rank and file. Yet despite the verbal opposition to the employers’ bold new overtures, the unions generally missed the opportunity to use the works councils and Mitbestimmung to place conditions on the kinds of aggressive demands that the employers had begun to make.

Because militant forms of participation—both statist and workplace oriented—had long been neglected, the leaders of the DGB and many major unions faced a serious dilemma in explaining the difficulties the union movement faced. More importantly, they were uncertain how to chart a course that would extricate them from their precarious situation. As a movement that had retained a postwar adherence to increasing consumer demand via aggressive bargaining for wages and fringe benefits (not surprising, given German industry’s historic preoccupation with investment-led economic growth), the leadership of the German trade unions continued to emphasize Keynesian solutions—and not power-enhancing participation—throughout the 1970s. Not only did they adhere closely to their “wage consumption model” as the basis of their economic philosophy,³⁹ they failed to appreciate the full structural dimensions of the crisis, and the possibilities that existing—if shell-like—organs of participation offered.

One reason why they retained this faith in the capacity of increased demand was that they thought that a similar application of Keynesianism on a large scale would help the German economy “export its way out of the recession,” as these measures did during the recession of 1966–67. Yet when this policy failed to produce economic recovery because of the resistance of the employers to increased wages, the German union leadership became uncertain as to how to proceed. And, given their having put most of their political emphasis on the legal attainment of full-parity Mitbestimmung—without attempting to mobilize and empower the rank and file—the unions faced tighter constraints.⁴⁰

The push for the 1976 Mitbestimmung law is an excellent example of how the concern for attaining a more legally “legitimate” participatory mechanism was unaccompanied by the more fundamental need to mobilize workers at the point of production. The unions reasoned that the broadening of the codetermination mechanism would help them immensely. Yet, in doing so, they placed far more emphasis on the form than they did on the content.⁴¹ The unions seemed to think that if the law were only passed, then they would have more influence and control at the workplace. What the unions apparently did not fully realize was that effective influence and control depended not on the passage of a law but on the active mobilization and participation of their membership.

After 1977, however, union analysts finally began to stress solutions that were more structural as the increased levels of unemployment (to 4 and 5 percent by the late 1970s and to 8 and 9 percent by the early 1980s) called into question the efficacy of a primary reliance on Keynesian solutions. However, most of the “Strukturpolitik” that the unions demanded was defensive and revolved around demands for subsidies that would protect jobs in the most disadvantaged sectors (i.e., steel). But the union leadership rarely was able to make an effort to go beyond these limited strategies and mobilize workers around more offensive policies. An example of the failure to apply offensive structural policies was seen in the DGB’s failure to resuscitate the concept of “investment direction” (Investitionslenkung) at the 1981 congress when it was raised on the convention floor.⁴²

Some individuals during the post-1975 period, both inside and outside the union movement, went beyond the limitations of the mainstream DGB approaches. They tried to address the structural dimensions of the crisis that the German unions faced by linking potential solutions to structural problems with innovative forms of participation. In particular, they looked at the impact of new technologies, structural adjustment, and investment patterns as the German economy was rapidly being transformed.⁴³ Naschold’s contribution was especially valuable because he argued that the most appropriate method to get at these issues was for the unions to unite the micro issue of humanization of work (Humanisierung der Arbeit) with the macro issue of investment direction (Investitionslenkung). He argued that a successful resolution of the problem of technological change depended on each of these two programs’ reinforcing the other. And the glue that could do so would be a type of genuine worker participation that could mobilize workers for workplace change that would also lead to progressive, job-creating economic growth. He concluded that humanization of work (without longer term goals) and investment direction (without the support of the union rank and file) as separate programs would be far too easily circumvented by the employers and their political allies.

More specifically, if the unions were interested in a safe and humanized workplace, then they would have to be interested in qualitative issues of technology. If the unions were interested in technology, then they would have to address issues of how it was introduced into the workplace. And if they were interested in how it was introduced into the workplace, then they would have to concern themselves with patterns of investment. And despite all the discussions that had taken place in the German labor movement over at least a decade on these general themes, very few individuals had been able to understand how they might all fit together.

The union that took the most innovative approach to using forms of participation to address structural problems was IG Metall. But even this union was blocked from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s by more traditional forces within the union from implementing these approaches. A good contrast can be seen in the conduct of two major strikes by IG Metall in 1978 and 1979. The first was in the metalworking and auto sectors in the Stuttgart area. The second was in the steel industry in the Ruhr. The different conditions of the respective industries meant that the union had to stress different themes in each sector. For machine tools and autos—sectors that were still very strong but needed some transformation—the major issues involved union attempts to shape this process of technological change. Yet for steel—an industry in profound decline—the major issues involved union attempts to share a decreasing number of jobs in a declining sector. For one union to devise different policies for the different conditions in various sectors proved a most difficult task.

In an attempt that began to deal with these changes, the metalworkers’ union (IG Metall) introduced a series of qualitative issues into the collective-bargaining process during the 1978 wage-bargaining round. Concerned very much with the structural and technological change that had disastrous impact on its workers (particularly in the auto and metalworking sectors in the Stuttgart area), the regional IG Metall leadership in the person of Franz Steinkühler brought to the collective-bargaining table issues that had been discussed in his portion of the union since the early 1970s. Namely, he argued that the union in these sectors should demand both quantitative and qualitative outcomes. He reasoned that the pre–1973–74 pattern of waiting for the employers to grant ever-increasing wage packets had gone and that if the union wanted to reattain secure employment, high wages, and fringe benefits, then it would have to take the concept of worker participation seriously and bargain for the reshaping of industry in ways that would benefit German workers. Steinkuehler and IG Metall were successful in integrating these qualitative, or worker control, issues into the collective-bargaining framework during the spring of 1978. IG Metall won concessions on deskilling and dequalifying workers and also gained access to new areas of information regarding job classifications, which previously had resided only with the employers. The union was also able to institutionalize regularized consultation between works councils and employers about all new developments regarding changes in the production process, an especially significant development since the employers, at that time, still had held up passage of the 1976 Mitbestimmung law.⁴⁴

Despite these successes in adding participation and control dimensions to union strategies in these sectors, the experience in other industries retained a more traditional West German postwar pattern. In late 1978 and early 1979 IG Metall struck the Ruhr-based steel industry. Just as the economic position of steel differed from autos and machine tools, so too did IG Metall’s strategy in the Ruhr differ from the Stuttgart-area experience. Instead of qualitative collective bargaining over the most appropriate way to introduce new technology, IG Metall bargained in the steel industry for a workweek of less than 40 hours. The union originally saw this as an innovative demand because it argued that reducing the workweek would force the employers to add more workers and thereby alleviate the region’s above-average unemployment rate.

The union failed to attain its goal of a substantial reduction of the workweek, settling for an “approach toward” (Einstieg in) its goal. In practice, this meant that the average workweek was reduced to approximately 39 hours. But more seriously, the gradual introduction of work-time reduction allowed the employers to manage this change in their production schedules without any increase in jobs at all. Thus, rather than being an innovative strategy of challenging the employers on work scheduling, this action was economically not very different from the more traditional Keynesian measures the unions had practiced for years. Specifically, because the union never explicitly challenged the employers’ ability to control the work process, this “innovative” shorter workweek served only to increase industry costs; the union never devised a strategy to restructure the production process. In short, because the unions were not able to combine the issue of shortened working time with qualitative demands to control the outcome of this process, they have been unable to create the new jobs Germany badly needs.

Unfortunately for those in the union movement who wanted to follow through on the Stuttgart area’s qualitative, participatory collective bargaining of 1978, the outcome of the steel strike left a difficult legacy. The union leaders believed that the strike failed because they had not bargained hard enough or long enough for a reduced workweek. Most of the leaders did not consider that perhaps the strike failed because of their unwillingness (or inability) to more directly challenge the employers over control of the process of restructuring.

This development had adverse effects during the first few years of the 1980s because the failure of the 1979 strike simply increased the union’s resolve to push the reduced work-time issue even more strongly the next time (1984) they could bargain with the employers over nonwage, or general framework, issues. Ironically, it was Steinkühler himself who led the fight for the 35-hour week during the metal industry strikes in the spring of 1984. As much as those in the unions who shared Steinkühler’s perception realized the need to move toward qualitative collective bargaining, the overwhelming sentiment among the union leadership was to push the 35-hour issue.

And push the 35-hour workweek demand was precisely what the IG Metall leadership did in a bitter seven-week strike during the spring of 1984. Suffering a similar fate as in the steel strike in 1979, IG Metall was able to win only a gradual introduction of a workweek reduction to 38.5 hours, and only for some workers. Like the steel strike, the 1984 metalworkers’ strike was also unable to move beyond the simple demand for an immediate introduction of a 35-hour week. Gone were the innovative participatory demands of 1978 that involved workers on the shop floor in the introduction of new technology and the general restructuring of the industry. During the 1984 strike there were virtually no attempts to bargain over such qualitative issues as the introduction of technology, the restructuring of the workplace, or the response of the employers to demands for more workplace “flexibility.” And IG Metall was not alone in this pattern of backsliding from qualitative to quantitative issues. The printing union (IG Druck und Papier) also conducted a strike in 1984 over the same issue and with essentially the same result.

On a theoretical level, the problem with the issue of the 35-hour week (and perhaps work-time reduction in general)—at least in their current incarnation—is that they assume that there is a static number of jobs. Once one buys this explanation, the only path available is to find a way to share this finite number of workplaces among all workers.⁴⁵ The problem is that this conception cedes a crucially important portion of the industrial terrain to the employers without a struggle. It never challenges them about what work is and who defines how it is to take place. It takes too literally the German terms for employer and employee, namely, Arbeitgeber (work giver) and Arbeitnehmer (work taker). By focusing only on shortening existing work time and not on the creation of productive and socially valuable work that needs to be done in all industrialized societies, this movement will likely prove far less successful than its adherents hope. Without innovative forms of participation as a foundation, proposals to reduce work time are too easily circumvented by the employers.

Conclusion

Why the departure from the more innovative participatory patterns of the 1970s to the more traditional quantitative bargaining (despite the supposed innovativeness of the 35-hour demand)? Or more fundamentally, why have German unions during four distinct historical periods—the Second Reich, Weimar, the immediate postwar period, and the post-oil-crisis years—been unable to generate more impressive forms of worker control out of these participative institutions? Despite the elaborate participatory traditions—at both the state and workplace levels—the unions still remain unconvinced as to the transformatory possibilities of genuine participation and the actualization of their own potential power. The primary lesson that the German unions should take from alternative movements like the Green party is not the 35-hour demand, but rather the new concern for qualitative improvements in working life.

Unlike those in most other industrialized countries, workers in West Germany already have structures in place that could be used to challenge the employers and propose solutions to economic crisis themselves. Unions in West Germany, as in all industrialized countries, should realize that the post–World War II age of receiving ever higher wages and fringe benefits is gone. Employers are no longer able to “deliver the goods” to workers as they did during the 1960s and early 1970s. In fact, employers in most sectors have no monopoly of wisdom on how to perform in an increasingly competitive world economy. In short, if German unions are to take up issues that management can no longer solve, then they—like all unions in these difficult times—must begin to see themselves as producers of value in society and not just as consumers. In so doing, they will come to see themselves as also having the right to direct such previously sacrosanct management functions as work scheduling and the scope and pace of technological innovation. Ultimately, they will have to be prepared to use measures that challenge management’s unilateral control of the production process.

But they also have to find ways of taking their participatory successes in the workplace and linking them to broader movements for economic and political control. This mobilization from the bottom is particularly important because—as the corporatist literature has shown—there is real danger for any labor movement in believing that participation can be generated from the top. Higher level participatory institutions are crucial, but only as vehicles to diffuse participation that has already been generated within the workplace.

Notes

1. See the “peasant worker” argument of Charles Sabel in his Work and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).

2. See Wolfgang Abendroth, A Short History of the European Working Class (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972).

3. See Edward Crankshaw, Bismarck (New York: Viking, 1981).

4. Lawrence Schofer, “Patterns of Labor Protest: Upper Silesia, 1865–1914,” Journal of Labor History 5, no. 4 (1972): 21–38; and Peter Stearns, “Adaptation to Industrialization: German Workers as a Test Case,” Central European History 3, nos. 3–4 (Dec. 1970): 303–331.

5. Dieter Schuster, Die Deutsche Gewerkschaftsbewegung (Bad Godesburg: Vorwärts-Druck, 1976); Helga Grebing, Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung: Ein Überblick, 2d ed. (Munich: Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung, 1966); and Bernd Otto, Gewerkschaftsbewegung in Deutschland (Cologne: Bund Verlag, 1975).

6. Hans Rosenberg, “The Political and Social Consequences of the Great Depression in Central Europe, 1873–1896,” Economic History Review 8 (1943): 58–73.

7. Vernon L. Lidtke, The Outlawed Party: Social Democracy in Germany, 1878–1890 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966).

8. Eckhard J. Häberle, “Worker Participation and Entrepreneurial Power in Industrial Organization: An Hypothesis on the German Historical Development” (unpublished, Institute of Political Science, University of Heidelberg, March 1977).

9. For a more thorough discussion of this theme, see Andrei S. Markovits and Christopher S. Allen, “Trade Unions and the Economic Crisis: The West German Case,” in Peter Gourevitch et al., Unions and Economic Crisis: Britain, West Germany and Sweden (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1984).

10. Guenther Roth, The Social Democrats in Imperial Germany (Totowa, N.J.: Bedminster Press, 1963).

11. Gerhard Ritter, Arbeiterbewegung im Wilhelmischen Reich (Berlin: Colloquium Verlag, 1963).

12. D. Groh, Negative Integration und revolutionäre Attentismus (Frankfurt am Main: Propyläen, 1973); and Hans Joseph Steinberg, Sozialismus und deutsche Sozialdemokratie (Bonn: Dietz Verlag, 1979).

13. Ritter, Staatskunst und Kriegshandwerk, 4 vols. (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1954).

14. A. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, War and German Society (New York: H. Fertig, 1971); and Jürgen Kocka, Klassengessellschaft im Kriege (Göttingen: Vandenhoek und Ruprecht, 1973).

15. Barrington Moore, Injustice: The Social Bases of Obedience and Revolt (White Plains, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1978).

16. Robert Giebish, “Miners and Workers Control in 1918–19” (paper presented at the Center for European Studies, Harvard University, Oct. 1980).

17. Eberhard Kolb, Arbeiterrate in der deutschen Innenpolitik, 1918–1919 (Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1962). For an excellent analysis of workers’ council movements throughout Europe during this period, see Carmen Sirianni, “Workers’ Control in the Era of WWI,” Theory and Society 9, no. 1 (Jan. 1980): 29–88; and for a more elaborate analysis, see Carmen Sirianni and James Cronin, eds., Work, Community, and Power: The Experience of Labor in Europe and America, 1900–1925 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983).

18. Hans Limmer, Die deutsche Gewerkschaftsbewegung (Munich: Olzog Verlag), 50–54; and Gerard Braunthal, Socialist Labor and Politics in Weimar Germany (Hamden: Archon Books, 1978).

19. The SPD became the dominant party of government during the early Weimar years, but its policies grew increasingly conservative as party right-wingers gained the upper hand and as it entered into coalitions with nonsocialist parties.

20. David Abraham, “Economic Democracy in Germany” (paper presented at the Center for European Studies, Harvard University, Oct. 29, 1982).

21. Hilferding, Finance Capital (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981); and Fritz Nephali, Wirtschaftsdemokratie: ihr Wesen, Weg und Ziel (Berlin: Verlagsgesellschaft des Allgemeinem Deutschen Gewerkschaftsbundes, 1928).

22. Napthali, Wirtschaftsdemokratie.

23. Peter von Oertzen, Betriebsräte in der Novemberrevolution (Dusseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1963).

24. Timothy W. Mason, Arbeiterklasse und Volksgemeinschaft (Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1975); “Labour in the Third Reich,” Past and Present 33 (April 1966): 112–31; Max H. Kele, Nazis and Workers: National Socialist Appeals to German Workers, 1918–1933 (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1972); and Juergen Kuczynski, Germany Under Fascism (London: Frederick Muller, 1944).

25. Markovits and Allen, “Trade Unions and the Economic Crisis,” 96.

26. Ibid., 97.

27. Ibid., 98.

28. Walter Korpi and Michael Shalev, “Strikes, Power and Politics in Western Nations, 1900–1976” (paper presented at the Conference of Europeanists, Washington, D.C., March 28–30, 1979).

29. Andrei S. Markovits and Samantha Kazarinov, “Class Conflict, Capitalism, and Social Democracy: The Case of Migrant Workers in the Federal Republic of Germany,” Comparative Politics 10, no. 3 (April 1978): 373–91; and Stephen Castles and Godula Kosack, “Immigrant Workers and Trade Unions in the German Federal Republic,” Radical America 8, no. 6 (Nov.-Dec. 1974): 55 77.

30. Richard J. Willey, “Trade Unions and Political Parties in the Federal Republic of Germany,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 28, no. 1 (Oct. 1974): 38–59. For a critical view of the first few years of the Brandt government, see Emil Bandholz, Zwischen Godesberg und Grossindustrie oder Wo Steht die SPD? (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt Verlag, 1971).

31. Gerhard Leminsky and Berndt Otto, Politik und Programmatik des deutschen Gewerkschaftsbundes (Cologne: Bund Verlag, 1974).

32. Alfred Diamant, “Democratizing the Workplace: The Myth and Reality of Mitbestimmung in the Federal Republic of Germany,” in G. David Garson, Worker Self-Management in Industry: The Western European Experience (New York: Praeger, 1977); and Hans G. Nutzinger, “Mitbestimmung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Stellung und Perspektiven” (unpublished, University of Heidelberg, Alfred Weber Institut, Feb. 1977).

33. “Das Mitbestimmungsgesetz ist verfassungsgemass,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 2, 1979.

34. Jeremiah M. Riemer, “Crisis and Intervention in the West German Economy: A Political Analysis of Changes in the Policy Making Machinery During the 1960s and 1970s” (Ph.D. diss. Cornell University, 1983).

35. IG Metall, Werktage werden besser (Frankfurt am Main: IG Metall, 1973).

36. Joachim Bergmann and Walther Mueller-Jentsch, “The Federal Republic of Germany: Cooperative Unionism and Dual Bargaining System Challenged,” in Solomon Barkin, ed., Worker Militancy and its Consequences, 2d ed. (New York: Praeger, 1983); Guenter Minnerup, “The Bundesrepublik Today,” New Left Review 99 (Sept.–Oct. 1976): 3–44; and Jörg Goldberg and Heinz Jung, Die Wirtschaftskrise 1974–1976 in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Frankfurt am Main: VMB, 1976).

37. The unions had always viewed the “dual” nature of the union and council systems as a real impediment to union influence on the shop floor. They were, however, able to use their influence with the SPD-led coalition to pass in 1972 a revision of the Works Constitution Law in their favor.

38. Michael Crozier et al., The Crisis of Democracy (New York: New York University Press, 1975); and OECD, Working Paper on Industrial Relations, Collective Bargaining and Government Policies—National Report: Federal Republic of Germany (Paris, May 16, 1978).

39. Andrei S. Markovits and Christopher S. Allen, “Trade Union Response to the Centemporary Economic Problems in Western Europe: The Context of Current Debates and Policies in the Federal Republic of Germany,” Economic and Industrial Democracy 2, no. 1 (1981): 49–85.

40. Gerhard Leminsky, “The German Trade Unions” (paper presented at the Center for European Studies, Harvard University, Nov. 15, 1980).

41. See Jutta Helm, “Codetermination in West Germany: What Difference Has It Made?” (paper presented at the 1984 APSA Meetings, Washington, D.C.).

42. DGB, Geschäftsbericht, 1977–1981, passim.

43. See the numerous articles on these themes in Andrei S. Markovits, ed., The Political Economy of West Germany (New York: Praeger, 1982). See also Frieder Naschold, Probleme einer “sozialorientierten Forschungs und Entwicklungspolitik”—Das Program “Humanisierung des Arbeitslebens” am Scheideweg (Berlin: IIVG, 1979); Eckart Hildebrand, “Im Betrieb überleben mit der neuen Technik: Arbeitserfahrungen eines Drehers,” in Otto Jacobi, Eberhard Schmidt, and Walther Mueller-Jentsch, eds., Moderne Zeiten—Alte Rezepte, Kritische Gewerkschaftsjarbücher, 1980-81 (Berlin: Rotbuch Verlag, 1980); Joseph Huber and Jiri Kosta, eds., Wirtschaftsdemokratie in der Diskussion (Cologne: Europäische Verlaganstalt, 1978); Guenter Brandt et al., Computer und Arbeitsprozess (Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, 1975); Otto Ulrich, “Technicher Fortschritt und die Gesellschaft des Arbeitslosen,” Technologie und Politik 10 (April 1978): 28–47; and see also Gewerkschaftliche Monatshefte (April 1980), the entire issue of which was devoted to the impact technological change was having on German workers.

44. Markovits and Allen, “Trade Unions and the Economic Crisis,” 168. The printers’ union, IG Druck und Papier, also waged a strike in 1978 over qualitative issues and was successful in winning concessions from the employers on input into job redesign. See Projektgruppe Gewerkschaftsforschung, Tarifpolitik 1978: Lohnpolitische Kooperation und Arbeitssicherungskämpfe (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 1979).

45. Claus Offe, “Worktime Reform Politics” (paper presented at the Harvard University Center for European Studies, March 27, 1985). To paraphrase Offe, “if there is no more work, then let’s distribute it more evenly.” This theme is treated more broadly in Claus Offe, Disorganized Capitalism: Contemporary Transformations of Work and Politics (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985), particularly in chapter 5.