Germany

Abstract

The experiences with works councils and the compulsory arbitration and conciliation machinery were to remain in the memory of trade union leaders. Against an oscillating economic background of spurts in expansion and spasms of chaos, the long-term growth of German trade unions has displayed four basic features. In spite of determined opposition from both the state and employers during the Imperial era, the German trade unions, although weakened by internal division, found themselves ultimately catapulted into significant positions of social and political influence after the 1918 revolution. The wage freeze inherited by the Allies rendered collective bargaining over money wages of secondary importance in trade union policy until the relaxation of the freeze in November 1948. The re-emergence of this bargaining function, along with the mounting conviction that their political influence was waning, were behind trade union attempts to avoid the divisions of the pre-Hitler period.