Potencial de crecimiento del mercado

1.3.3.1 The “East German labor”

A portion of this work deals with the study of industrial conflicts in GDR’s workplaces during the 1980s. I refer to one of the two actors in those conflicts as “East German labor”. The ex-pression does not refer to workers from any one specific sector, nor to blue or white-collar workers in particular,. It seeks conversely, to meld them. Such an abstraction may appear su-perficial.¹⁰⁶ Did any collective body worthy of the name 'East German labor' exist in the GDR? The reference to such an amorphous actor is put into further doubt by the importance of individual worker strategies in the struggles aimed at increasing wages while decreasing labor norms. What is the true value of observations on micro-phenomena taken from such a distant vantage point? Even Toynbee, who prefers to observe historical developments from far afield, asserted that the writing of history demanded one take the “ant perspective” as well as the “bird perspective”.

The reason why I decided to restrict myself to the “bird perspective” for the analysis of labor conflicts in the GDR relates to the hypothesis developed herein, which concerns intractable top-down conflicts at East German workplaces. My aim is not to detail how individual

106 I thank Thomas Lindenberger for his remarks which forced me to reflect on the labels used and inspired the following explanations.

tices, adapted to specific workplace conditions, enabled workers to influence wages and pro-ductivity (a concern which would necessitate a micro-historical approach). My objective is rather to focus on the cumulative effect of these many individual practices on the East Ger-man economy, as well as the regime’s attempts to ban them. This story can be told, I believe, from a macro-historical perspective.

Another problem relates to my use of the expression “East German labor”. One might argue that top-down conflicts over wages and working norms set workers against workers – they occurred, so to speak, within the “East German labor” -, as managers and party secretaries were themselves salaried employees. Furthermore some in the latter group would sometimes turn a blind eye to workers’ practices, which could make them more an ally than an adversary.

Here I ask for a bit of semantic tolerance on the part of the reader. One must keep in mind that when I refer to “East German labor” I am speaking of the vast majority of workers from the

“lower echelons”, with little or no official responsibility. I do not include those salaried em-ployees from the “upper echelons”, who bore significant responsibility in the regime struc-tures, in this category. In order to avoid any possible confusion, I define industrial conflicts opposing “labor” to “power-holders”.

The 1989-90 revolution saw the re-emergence of open collective action from workers at the workplaces. This shift from individual to collective action allows one to refocus our observa-tions and to eliminate the category of “East German labor”. From 1989 on it is possible to

“zoom” in on the activities of certain segments within “East German labor”. Worker activists are thus observed at their place of work by disseminating the documentation on 51 different worker initiatives displayed over GDR’s territory and Stasi reports on the situation in Erfurt-based enterprises.

1.3.3.2 Four trade unions from the German Confederation of Trade Unions

Unlike its East German counterpart, the West German labor movement can be observed through its organizations. The strategies implemented by four trade unions, all members of the German Confederation of Trade Unions (Deutscher Gewerkschaftbund, DGB), are exam-ined and traced over time in this study. They are: IG Metall; Chemistry, Paper and Ceramics Industrial Union (IG Chemie-Papier-Keramik); Public Service, Transport and Traffic Union (Gewerkschaft Öffentlicher Dienste, Transport und Verkehr) and Media Industrial Union (IG Medien). Aside from these four unions, the acts of intervention by the German Confederation of Trade Unions (DGB) will also be examined, though less systematically. The four DGB

unions on which this study focuses were chosen for their respective importance, as well as for their role in the West German labor movement in general.

These four organizations were cross-sectoral trade unions, bringing together workers from different industrial branches under one umbrella. IG Metall, the Public Service, Transport and Traffic Union, and the Chemistry, Paper and Ceramics Industrial Union were the largest three of the DGB’s 16 member organizations. Together, these four unions represented 60% of the 7,757,000 DGB members in 1989. IG Metall and the Media Industrial Union were at the fore-front of the “activist” wing of the DGB unions, whereas the Chemistry, Paper and Ceramics Industrial Union was the main exponent of its “accommodationist” wing.¹⁰⁷ The Public Ser-vice, Transport and Traffic Union was a “centrist” union, that often helped to broker com-promises in case where conflicts arose between the two wings.¹⁰⁸ Together, these four unions cover a substantial portion of the Federal Republic’s industrial, public and service sectors.

The numerical and functional importance of these organizations makes them the prime objects to observe in understanding the strategies developed by the West German labor movement.

As mentioned above, I argue that, despite some slight variations, all DGB unions first imple-mented a strategy of support and collaboration, thereafter followed by a strategy dedicated to legal extension and organizational expansion. Hence the sector-related and ideological differ-ences between these four unions – differdiffer-ences that led the author to select them for his survey sample – become a way to highlight the convergence of the West German unions’ politics on the occasion of the East German revolution and German reunification. I argue that the course pursued by these four unions exemplify an evolution that could be traced by observing any other West German trade union. When I refer to these four unions as “case studies”, it is not in the same sense that Jacques Revel uses the expression, namely as extreme manifestations necessary to identify a phenomenon.¹⁰⁹ It is rather as four expressions of the same process, four evolutionary developments that do not differ substantially from one another. I also depict them as variations on the same theme.

The prime limitation imposed on any study based on the observation of labor organizations is that, in most cases, they do not tell us much about workers’ reactions to unions’ politics.

107 This dichotomy was developed by Andrei S. Markovits (1986).

108 The relations between activist, centrist and accommodationist unions is again examined in chapter 3.1.

109 Fabiani and Revel 2005.

This study is not an exception to the rule on that front. Its story is told “from the top” and does not discuss either how the unions’ politics by rank-and-file West German workers or the consequences of said policy. I have tried to circumvent this problem by examining not only at the central union policies but also their implementation by the regional organs. Hence the camera’s perspective moves from the headquarters to the intermediary structures, but does not explore the realities confronted by workers on the shop floor.

1.3.3.3 Other actors to consider in further research

One of the most obvious limitations to this study is due to the actors under observation. De-spite examining 51 worker initiatives in the GDR and analyzing the situation at Erfurt-based enterprises and despite incorporating the regional dimension into the discussion on the various strategies of DBG unions, the points of observation remain high, to go back to Toynbee’s analogy once more. An excellent way to test the hypotheses and the conclusions developed over the following pages would be to analyze them “from the bottom up”, i.e., from a per-spective closer to realities faced by workers. For the study of labor in the GDR and the FRG, this could take the form of case studies of workers’ reactions in specific workplaces and cit-ies.