TY - JOUR
AU - Hoffrogge,, Ralf
AB - Abstract Germany and Britain have served as models of either corporatist or voluntarist industrial relations. The more recent typology of ‘varieties of capitalism’ then identified Britain as a model case of a ‘liberal market economy’ while Germany was portrayed as a (state) ‘co-ordinated market economy’. The mainstream of German-language labour history also tells this success story. Some research on the evolution of co-determination has portrayed its subject as a long-standing trait of German capitalism, with predecessors dating back as far as 1848. With its focus on the history of two key trade unions in core industries of Britain and Germany, the British metalworkers’ union the Amalgamated Society of Engineers / Amalgamated Engineering Union and the German Metal Workers’ Union / IG Metall, this article questions both exceptionalism and continuity. It argues that a path dependency exists in the structure of both unions and the industrial relations around them—but that this never came close to a linear evolution of voluntarism or corporatism. On closer examination, the history of both unions includes localist as well as centralist practices. From the 1890s both unions were part of collective bargaining with strong employers’ associations; especially after 1945 both were open to corporatist compromises. For West Germany only, such a compromise was found in the early 1950s, and not before, while in Britain that same compromise was attempted but failed during the crucial years between 1965 and 1979. Therefore, to quote Stefan Berger, this article argues that ‘similarities between the British and the German labour movements have been underestimated’. In discussions of labour, Germany and Britain have served as role models for either corporatist or voluntarist industrial relations.1 Corporatism seemed outdated in the late 1980s and was rediscovered as a ‘comparative advantage’ only a decade later: the typology of ‘varieties of capitalism’ once again identified Britain as model case of a ‘liberal market economy’ while Germany was portrayed as a (state) ‘coordinated market economy’.2 Such frameworks have opened up the perspective on traditional labour history with its strong focus on organization history—by integrating employers into the story, but also by transnational comparison. But paradoxically, their Weberian ideal types also tend to affirm narratives of national exceptionalism and almost determinist historical continuity. The German labour movement in particular seems to be a hostage of its corporatist or coordinated past. But like the hostage who experiences Stockholm syndrome, German trade unions seem to be at ease with a determined past and a foreseeable future: in October 2018 the German Trade Union Confederation and the Confederation of German Employers celebrated the centennial of the 1918 Stinnes-Legien Agreement with the slogan ‘100 Years of Social Partnership—Successful into the Future’.3 Mainstream German-language labour history shares this success story. Even the most recent and in many ways most advanced research on the evolution of co-determination (Mitbestimmung) portrays its subject as a longstanding trait of German capitalism, with predecessors dating back as far as the Revolution of 1848.4 Although German labour historiography discusses setbacks and ruptures, the main narrative is one of continuity, reminiscent of path dependency, although this concept, which describes how decisions and institutions created in the past limit future actions, is rarely used. Continuity seems to be self-evident.5 With its focus on the history of two key trade unions in core industries in Britain and Germany, this article questions both exceptionalism and continuity. I would argue that a longue durée path dependency exists in the structure of both unions. Owing to the unions’ size and influence, this long history definitively shaped the respective industrial relations around them, but it never came close to a linear evolution of voluntarism or corporatism. Close examination reveals that the history of both unions included localist as well as centralist practices. Both were part of collective bargaining with strong employers’ associations from the 1890s; both were open to corporatist compromise especially after 1945. But for West Germany such a compromise was found only in the early 1950s, and not before. The same was attempted in Britain but failed in the crucial years between 1965 and 1979. Therefore, this article argues that, to quote Stefan Berger, ‘similarities between the British and the German labour movements have been underestimated’.6 Path dependency exists, but in each stage of history a new generation of actors would react to challenges by rejecting or reproducing inherited patterns. Challenges like the First World War or the Great Depression were not just comparable but also synchronized: the two unions worked within the same global economy since Germany had caught up with British technological advance and had joined the world market for engineering products around 1860.7 My article therefore employs a framework of global history instead of Weberian ideal types. It suggests the path dependency of national trade unions be embedded in an international framework. I want to look for parallel responses to simultaneous challenges—and for the transfer of ideas and practices. In the case of metalworkers’ trade unions this transfer was institutionalized as early as 1900, when the Amalgamated Society of Engineers joined the International Metalworkers’ Federation, cofounded by the German Metal Workers’ Union in 1893.8 In 1971 the International Metalworkers’ Federation was complemented by the European Metalworkers’ Federation.9 Neither umbrella organization ever evolved into a European, let alone global, union—the nation state remained the legal framework for the conflict between capital and labour. This paradox of a globalizing economy regulated by nation states conserved national differences. Especially in the British case, organizational structures inherited from older stages of capitalist development were preserved. Nevertheless, such path dependency was and is constantly challenged by an equalizing effect of globalization that disrupted established industrial relations. I. A Tale of Two Trade Unions Official histories of the German metalworkers’ union Industriegewerkschaft Metall (IG Metall) and its predecessor the German Metal Workers’ Union (Deutscher Metallarbeiter-Verband, DMV) deliver a narrative of continuity and success.10 Founded in 1891 as the first industrial union in Germany, the DMV organized metalworkers and became the most influential union in the Weimar Republic. Banned by the Nazis in 1933, it was refounded as IG Metall in 1949. Both the DMV, with its 1.6 million members in 1919, and the contemporary IG Metall, with its 2.2 million members, could claim the title of the world’s largest free trade union. Scholars have portrayed IG Metall as the ‘vanguard’ of West German labour with strong continuities from the old DMV.11 However, recent research has stressed historical change: arguing that the DMV was completely marginalized within the Ruhr region, the heartland of German industrialization before 1914, a comparative regional study by Marco Swiniartzki identified a ‘craft-unionist’ stage for the early DMV.12 The persistence of craft unionism connects the DMV with the Amalgamated Society of Engineers (ASE) in Britain, rebranded the Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU) in 1920. Both unions organized skilled metalworkers, mainly turners and fitters, and both evolved into the biggest player in their industry in the final decade of the nineteenth century, retaining this position for generations. In 1964, the AEU had one million members and its collective contract with the Engineering Employers’ Federation had a similar ‘vanguard’ effect on British wages as had IG Metall’s collective bargaining in West Germany. Despite these similarities, the unions have been compared only in respect to mergers with other unions or as part of general comparative overviews.13 When comparisons are made in broader research, differences are stressed: the DMV was the first industrial union to evolve into German corporatism after the First World War; the ASE/AEU was one of many (ex)craft unions within a voluntarist system of industrial relations characterized by conflict-oriented collective bargaining without state intervention.14 II. Craft and Class before 1914 Both the AEU and the DMV evolved out of local craft-oriented trade unions. In Britain, the absence of repression since the repeal of the Combination Acts in 1824 favoured a slow concentration of local unions that resulted in the Amalgamated Society of Engineers in 1851.15 It organized mostly fitters and turners in mechanical engineering, excluding steel and foundry workers as well as electrical engineers, all of whom formed separate unions. The incentive for centralization stemmed from the concentration of capital and the national integration of local labour markets but did not break the barriers between the different professions of skilled workers. The ASE, the first in a series of New Model Unions, was based on centralized funds, high contributions and benefits. It could pay benefits for illness, unemployment and superannuation, providing insurance for life risks that were only later addressed by the state. But high contributions excluded low-paid unskilled workers, apprentices and women. Only a generation later the unskilled, triggered by mass strikes and inspired by socialist ideas from both Fabianism and continental socialism, would form ‘general’ unions without costly benefits, such as the National Union of Gas Workers and General Labourers, founded in 1889.16 The coexistence of craft unions, general unions and some professional unions led to a characteristic multi-unionism existing within the same factory. As for the DMV, the later but faster evolution of German capitalism after 1850 resulted in more rapid erosion of craft identities. First unionization efforts in the 1860s were led by the two socialist currents of Lassalleanism and Marxism, which merged into a united socialist party, the Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands, in 1875, including an adjunct metalworkers’ union.17 Repression followed quickly. In 1878 both party and trade union were banned by Bismarck’s Anti-Socialist Law. The prime mover for industrial unionism was neither socialist ideology nor the rapidity of industrialization; it was repression, which created shared experiences and made class identities more plausible than craft identities. When Bismarck was toppled in 1890, repression left a clean slate: the absence of precedent allowed the application of new principles. In addition, between 1883 and 1889 Bismarck had complemented repression with the establishment of public healthcare and social security as well as public accident insurance. Re-established German trade unions would provide strike pay and later unemployment benefits, but they did not need to provide healthcare or retirement benefits. The new DMV was able to avoid high contributions and embrace unskilled workers and low-paid women, although in practice unionization of these groups was limited in the first years.18 Despite this early bifurcation of craft-oriented multi-unionism and industrial unionism, there were shared patterns. Patriarchal and exclusive craft unionism had a hidden life within the socialist DMV, while within the all-male ASE oppositional socialists were advocating industrial unionism and the inclusion of women: in 1891, the very year DMV was founded, socialist Tom Mann ran for ASE general secretary on a reform platform.19 Centralized strike funds formed another shared pattern. A series of lockouts since 1890 by the strong employers’ association the Federation of German Metal Industries had made it essential for the DMV to establish such a fund. The creation of German employers’ associations was a direct reaction to the unionization of labour.20 But instead of destroying the unions, lockout strategies intensified centralization of both union funds and decision-making about strikes—in 1907 Berlin was the last DMV district to surrender strike autonomy to the DMV executive committee.21 In Britain the ASE had centralized strike funds even earlier and had similar experiences of employers’ hostility: a nationwide lockout in 1898 was organized by the Engineering Employers’ Federation and lost by the ASE. The Engineering Employers’ Federation had been modelled on German employers’ associations and the head of its powerful London branch was Alexander Siemens, from the German entrepreneurial dynasty.22 While the Siemens family exported concepts of class struggle on behalf of transnational capital, labour’s response was also transnational: Eleanor Marx, daughter of Karl Marx, organized a solidarity campaign. German trade unionists donated £14,000 to the striking British workers.23 This early entanglement shows the similarity and globality of the challenges for the ASE and DMV. For European trade unions, an active response to globalization started not in the 1990s but in the 1890s. While the Engineering Employers’ Federation had come to stay, other British industries lacked strong employers’ associations. The transfer of the German model was limited, with less pressure for British unions to amalgamate. However, the DMV and ASE had seen similar resistance by organized employers and neither union was integrated into the state—a culture of voluntarism and corporatism cannot be identified for this stage. III. Wartime Cooperation—Wartime Syndicalism The First World War was a watershed for the DMV and ASE. Both unions were urged by the state to join a cross-class alliance against an enemy that included union brothers on the other side of the Channel—the International Metalworkers’ Federation, directed by DMV general secretary Alexander Schlicke simply paused during the war. The unions’ reactions were strikingly similar. Executive committees of the AEU and DMV joined the war effort, but from 1917 shop stewards started rebellions that shook the unions’ foundations. Wildcat mass strikes erupted and shop stewards organized networks that evolved into alternative leadership: the Revolutionary Shop Stewards (Revolutionäre Obleute) within the DMV,24 the National Administrative Council of Shop Stewards in Britain.25 While ASE shop stewards were part of multi-union committees intended to ease demarcation conflicts, the DMV’s shop stewards had simply served as an intermediate level between officials and the membership. Introduced around 1897, shop stewards ended the absence of shop-floor representation caused by repression and persisting craft identities.26 Combining the strength of local craft control in the engineering industry with its centralized funds, the DMV grew rapidly in the period 1900 to 1914. But centralism had its price when DMV leadership gave its no-strike pledge in 1914. In 1916 the arrangement was formalized in the Law on Patriotic Auxiliary Service (Vaterländisches Hilfsdienstgesetz). The state forced employers to recognize unions and to accept factory committees (Arbeiterausschüsse), an unprecedented innovation. The DMV would eventually get access to the heavy industry in the Ruhr region, where early organization efforts had been futile because of rationalized production techniques and the extensive use of unskilled labour.27 In retrospect, the 1916 law was indeed a starting point for German co-determination, but at the time the new arrangement caused more conflict than cooperation.28 The Law on Patriotic Auxiliary Service was unpopular because it abolished the right to change one’s place of work without employer permission. The law and the no-strike pledge together deprived workers of all means to improve wages and working conditions. In the wake of severe food shortages and the rising cost of living, the factory committees could not mediate workers’ woes. Wildcat strikes spread, and by 1917 a respectable portion of the DMV’s shop stewards, with Berlin lathe operators at its core, had formed its own parallel organization, later called the Revolutionary Shop Stewards (Revolutionäre Obleute). The clandestine network organized three political mass strikes, in 1916, 1917 and January 1918, and prepared the uprising in Berlin in November 1918.29 A faction within the DMV therefore became the nucleus of the German Revolution and its council movement. Developments in Britain were similar. Some months before the war, the ASE had agreed to the York Memorandum, a framework for collective bargaining with employers.30 When hostilities started, the ASE pledged labour peace as part of the War Emergency Workers National Committee, but among the rank and file deteriorating working conditions and living conditions gave rise to widespread discontent. With metalworkers and the ammunitions industry at their core, wildcat strikes led by shop stewards erupted—a syndicalism born out of the failure of union leaders to gain concessions in exchange for labour peace.31 In Britain, the centre of unrest was not the capital, London, but Coventry and the Clyde. The movement was not solely dominated by the ASE but evolved out of multi-union shop-steward committees. After early attempts to repress it, from 1917 the co-ordinating National Administrative Council of Shop Stewards could operate legally,32 while its German counterpart organized clandestinely.33 Freedom of organization and being on the victorious side in 1918 together meant that British labour unrest stopped short of revolution. In Germany, the DMV leadership saw neither workers’ councils nor shop-steward syndicalism as desirable. In the midst of revolution, DMV official Hans Böckler became secretary of the new Central Working Association (Zentralarbeitsgemeinschaft), which united employers and unions. Unions gained employer recognition and the eight-hour day, but effectively give up all efforts at controlling industry.34 The Stinnes-Legien Agreement, named after the main negotiators, entrepreneur Hugo Stinnes and Carl Legien, head of the General Commission of German Trade Unions, was very unpopular within the DMV. Robert Dissmann, a prominent anti-war socialist elected as DMV chairman in 1919, took the DMV out of the agreement. In March 1919 mass strikes erupted once again and were suppressed by military means.35 In Berlin, these strikes were led by the Revolutionary Shop Stewards from the DMV, the most prominent of whom was Richard Müller. Despite demands for the integration of council socialism into the Weimar Constitution, only factory-level works councils (Betriebsräte) were institutionalized in 1920. With their obligation to labour peace, the works councils were both shrunken remnants of the council movement and updated versions of the 1916 factory committees. The narrative of a continuous German corporatism usually stresses that latter genealogy of co-operation, but it has also been argued that this first institution of nascent German corporatism was based on the conflict-oriented councils.36 At the time, many members of the works councils hoped that their institution would serve as base for a second revolution or the socialization of key industries.37 In Britain, wartime syndicalism was institutionalized in the same year, not by state-guaranteed works councils but within the ASE. A second amalgamation transformed the Amalgamated Society of Engineers into the Amalgamated Engineering Union in 1920, massively expanded to 460,000 members and with a new rulebook. The core ideas of those rules, which remained in effect until 1992, ensured a syndicalist heritage survived: all officials were to be elected from the rank and file; a national committee of fifty-two lay members would control the executive committee; president and general secretary would form a dual leadership. The AEU therefore had the most democratic rulebook in British trade unionism.38 But the shop steward movement had failed to bring about the ‘one big union’ which socialist reformer Tom Mann as first general secretary of AEU had proposed.39 Foundry workers, steelworkers and electricians remained separate, and even within engineering, the AEU coexisted with several other unions. The AEU had moved away from craft unionism but the bifurcation of industrial unionism and multi-unionism was still there. In summary, the Great War had pushed the ASE and DMV in a similar direction by providing a path for the corporatist integration of labour into the state. At the same time, the gains within this project were unconvincing for many, and a syndicalist and revolutionary moment emerged. Both options soon ended: the postwar crisis meant that employers and the state lost interest in corporatism, while mass strikes and conflict-oriented strategies became dysfunctional. The interwar years would see many open and unresolved conflicts but no coherent pattern of industrial relations, whether corporatist, voluntarist or syndicalist. IV. The Postwar Crisis, 1920–1924: Corporatism Denied In Britain, a movement of metalworkers on the Clyde that supported the forty-hour week was suppressed in 1919, a final defeat for the rebellious shop stewards.40 In addition, the postwar boom in 1919/20 relieved pressure. Mobilization ebbed and the core of the shop stewards’ movement merged into the new Communist Party of Great Britain in 1920.41 A similar process happened in Germany: in October 1920 Richard Müller and the Revolutionary Shop Stewards joined the German Communist Party and formed its National Union Central (Reichsgewerkschaftszentrale), which was crucial for communist trade union policy.42 These transformations were part of a transnational process: wartime radicals joined the global communist movement full of hope, but most of them left disappointed or were expelled as early as 1921.43 But it was the postwar crisis that eventually destroyed shop-floor militancy within the AEU and DMV. In Germany, the crisis started in 1919, characterized by interchanging waves of unemployment and inflation. While inflation boosted exports, the accelerating stages of currency devaluation between 1919 and 1923 annihilated trade union funds and disrupted collective bargaining. Wage increases were eaten up by devaluation; strikes had to be organized increasingly frequently but lost economic impact and political aspirations. In the eyes of DMV members, the German Revolution ebbed away into a giant wage movement that eventually was lost.44 As a result of the adverse conditions Dissmann and the new left leadership of the DMV felt pressure to avoid costly struggles and to discipline the membership. The DMV had left the Central Working Association but could not find a new strategy. Wage conflicts were futile, while political strikes to break the deadlock seemed risky given the military violence against civilian strikers in 1919.45 Dissmann’s leadership eventually relied on the new instrument of state arbitration, borrowing power from above as his wartime predecessors had done. But even this approach was unable to protect the most precious achievement of the Revolution: the eight-hour day. It was effectively abolished in 1924 within the metal industry. Unwilling to give in, Berlin metalworkers lost a defensive strike and worked without collective contract until 1928.46 A corporatist path was visible during the Weimar Republic but was abandoned by employers in 1924. Similar developments could be observed in Britain. When the postwar boom ended in winter 1920, it was not inflation but unemployment that disciplined the AEU: unemployment amongst its members was higher than 20 per cent every month from April 1921 to January 1923.47 The unemployment benefit collapsed and employers used the financial vulnerability for a lockout in the summer of 1922. The AEU had to accept both wage cuts and the employers’ ‘power to manage’ on the shop floor.48 Membership fell from 460,000 in 1920 to 234,000 in 1925.49 The AEU could not find an effective response to mass unemployment. The general secretary and executive committee relied on the procedure of the York Memorandum—accepting wage cuts in a national framework of collective bargaining seemed preferable to erratic wage diktat by single employers. The crisis of 1919/20–1924 was part of global economic instability and was replaced by a short economic upswing from 1924 to 1930. Both the DMV and AEU would recover, but they did not regain the strength of the years 1914 to 1921. They were not just weakened but also transformed by the crisis: they suffered a breakdown in shop-steward power, with shop stewards vulnerable to victimization during mass layoffs. Communist Party activists were particularly likely to lose their jobs, and within the DMV they also faced expulsion by a social-democratic leadership.50 Strong executive committees representing a passive membership became the mode of interwar unionism in both the AEU and DMV. The leaderships consolidated their power through their negotiating with state and employers. The latter were especially important in Britain, where, despite claims to the contrary in 1922, the Engineering Employers’ Federation never wanted to ‘smash’ the AEU—capital preferred a weak but reliable union.51 In Britain, the pattern of passive representation was interrupted by the General Strike of 1926, but the window for outbursts was short: prosperity soon ended and the next crisis, in 1930, had the same disciplining effects. While centralization prevailed for the AEU as a whole, local craft control in some industries had the adverse effect and strengthened the local level. For railways and docks, public institutions less affected by the crisis, the AEU shop stewards could achieve concessions. As for the DMV, the works councils were able to negotiate such concessions—judging by the results, craft control and local corporatist institutions worked rather similarly. Politically, the crisis of 1919–1924 meant the retreat of the state from industrial matters in both countries. Conservative governments were unwilling and social democrats and labour unable to resist employer pressure for laissez-faire. This was particularly remarkable in the case of Germany, where schemes for tripartist industrial relations had been enshrined in the Weimar Constitution in 1919: the new social contract provided not only for works councils but also for regional economic councils and a national Reichswirtschaftsrat, an economic council that would include representatives of both workers and employers.52 This was corporatism par excellence, but it was not implemented in whole or even part—employers and the state lost interest, and the DMV was limited to local leftovers such as the works councils. These proved unable to force employers into major concessions or to develop a culture of co-operation—especially in the German metal industry, conflict was the norm. A giant lockout at the heavy industry in the Ruhr region in 1928 put 200,000 metalworkers out of work—they had demanded a fifteen pfennig per hour wage increase. Arbitration by the social-democratic minister of Labour, Rudolf Wissell, was accepted by the DMV but not by the employers. Several court rulings went against the enforcement of this arbitration. Parliament supported Wissell, but eventually employers not only got away with a six pfennig wage increase in a second arbitration, but additionally in 1929 achieved a court ruling in which arbitration was declared generally non-binding.53 This Ruhr ironworkers conflict (Ruhreisenstreit) showed that while the DMV was open to tripartism, it was boycotted by employers and the judiciary, elements of the state largely unaffected by the events of 1918. Both Britain and Germany had the institutional ingredients for tripartite corporatism between 1916 and 1920. But these ingredients were never combined into a coherent system of industrial relations accepted by all parties. Looking at the interwar years, one might call both countries ‘voluntarist’. But this would imply a system with set roles, while in fact both the strike of the Ruhr ironworkers and the British General Strike showed how employers and labour each tried to overwhelm the other—there were no set roles in industrial relations, only open confrontation with no stable institutionalized or customary standard. V. War and Postwar Boom: A New Compromise? Having lost the Ruhr ironworkers’ strike as well as another major metalworkers’ strike in Berlin in 1930, the DMV went weakened into the final years of the Weimar Republic. Its centralization had led to the return of Betriebsferne, the estrangement of shop floor and leadership. Unable to mobilize, the DMV relied on state arbitration. Marco Swiniartzki links this dependency to the DMV’s failure when strikes against Hitler were on the agenda in 1933.54 No strikes took place. The DMV and all other unions were banned on 2 May 1933.55 Many DMV members later opposed Nazi rule and recent biographical research has unearthed heroic acts of resistance.56 But these were acts of individuals—the organization had failed. While the DMV was destroyed, its British counterpart profited from German militarism: when rearmament resumed in 1934, engineers were in demand. AEU’s unemployed, including formerly blacklisted troublemakers and communists, re-entered the factories. Muted shop-floor power gained new life under these conditions. But while the movements during the First World War had been syndicalist at least in practice, now activists from the Communist Party of Great Britain were dominant among AEU militants. In 1941 when the Soviet Union was attacked by German tanks, the Communist Party of Great Britain agitated against all strikes and pushed to increase production.57 The boom that strengthened shop-floor power therefore did not affect the AEU—there was no second round of wartime syndicalism. Instead, the Communist Party of Great Britain formed an alternative pole within the AEU’s electoral system. In Germany, the total destruction of the DMV meant that in 1945 the question was how trade unionism started anew might look. IG Metall, a reaffirmation of DMV’s industrial unionism founded in 1949, was the answer, It included the formerly independent Christian Metalworkers Union (Christlicher Metallarbeiterverband). As in 1890, again repression had centralized the German trade union landscape. While the prewar confederation of trade unions, the General German Trade Union Confederation (Allgemeiner Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund), had had fifty-two member unions, the new umbrella organization, the German Trade Union Confederation (Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund), led by Hans Böckler, started with only sixteen member organizations, most of them industrial unions.58 While the young IG Metall had high hopes for the socialization of key industries and industrial democracy, the election of a Conservative government and Allied resentment blocked these paths—as did IG Metall and the German Trade Union Conferederation, who were hesitant to fully mobilize their members. In the years between 1945 and 1949, even large-scale strikes led by local unionists were common, but they were met with distrust by the IG Metall leadership.59 Eventually, in 1951 IG Metall and the German Trade Union Confederation achieved co-determination rights (including board level representation) in the coal and steel industry and in 1952 a revised version of the works councils of the 1920s. Unlike during the Weimar Republic, however, these institutions stabilized along with the young federal republic, because this time they were accepted by Conservatives, who wished to avoid socialization. The acceptance of co-determination by employers and all factions within the state made possible what had proved impossible during the Weimar Republic: a stable culture of corporatism. As chairman of the German Trade Union Confederation, Böckler had in 1952 achieved what could not be achieved when he was secretary of the Central Working Association in 1918. But co-determination came at a price. The works councils could represent workers at the company level but were not allowed to strike. Other limitations emerged out of legal precedent. Today Germany still has no unified code of labour law similar to the Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch, the German civil code.60 A diverse collection of legal sources regulates labour relations, more similarly to the British legal framework than often assumed. Germany has no case law, but court rulings are of great importance in the realm of labour. For example, in 1958 IG Metall had to pay 100 million Deutschmarks to employers for a strike that formally violated an existing agreement that included a Friedenspflicht, a temporary pledge not to strike.61 This episode had a strong disciplining effect for the West German trade union movement as a whole. The Friedenspflicht has since become an institution in its own right, with strikes strictly avoided for the duration of a collective agreement. Right up to today, IG Metall has continued to include socialization within its programme, but in practice it accepted the existence of capitalism during postwar prosperity. In 2019 when a young social democrat started a rather hypothetical discussion about the socialization of the German automotive industry, the IG Metall Betriebsräte of both Daimler and BMW were first to protest.62 Since the 1950s, collective bargaining has been undertaken by IG Metall within a regionalized system in which one district would serve as the pilot, striking and then negotiating an agreement that would subsequently be adopted nationwide.63 Afterwards the works councils in prosperous firms might barter for a bonus. Like other periods of prosperity, the postwar boom had a decentralizing effect on trade union practice: IG Metall debated wage policy at the company level until well into the 1960s, in order to integrate rank-and-file demands.64 Another goal was to check the powerful works councils at major companies that had begun to form an alternative centre of power. Until 1956 IG Metall formalized a renewed system of shop stewards (Vertrauensleute) to counterbalance the works councils.65 IG Metall wanted to avoid purely company-level wage findings, which Otto Brenner, powerful chairman from 1956 to 1972, feared would atomize the organization.66 Eventually, a regionalized system effectively centralized by the pilot district system of collective bargaining prevailed. It proved especially effective in the fight for shorter hours: in 1966/67 IG Metall was the first West German trade union to secure a forty-hour week. In 1965 IG Metall had accepted the Meinhold formula, which bound wage increases to productivity—the union had finally found its place within German corporatism. That place was characterized by state guarantees concerning the legality of unions and works councils, but the state was never part of collective bargaining.67Tarifautonomie, an almost fetishized idea of non-intervention in collective bargaining, was so strong that Germany lacked a minimum wage until 2015—German corporatism was not tripartist, but had a certain voluntarist touch. The social compromise was not uncontested. Major wildcat strikes in September 1969, largely involving metalworkers, and a more local strike at the Ford plant in Cologne in 1973 showed that shop-floor militancy was not alien to German industrial relations.68 Britain saw similar events. In 1972 the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers, rebranded from the Amalgamated Engineering Union in 1971, was caught up in a wave of working-class militancy, including factory occupations, that had evolved out of small-scale struggles and a wage drift upwards during the boom years.69 The decentralized structure of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers and the legality of strikes called without union approval made it easy to push for local demands. Unlike in Britain, militancy in Germany was quickly confined within the system: IG Metall upgraded its modest wage demands and won an 11 per cent raise in 1970, now ignoring the Meinhold formula. The union was in the vanguard of bringing about higher wages and shorter hours, but once the framework of postwar German labour relations had been established, IG Metall never tried to break beyond the limits set by the Friedenspflicht. Thus, while the Weimar-era DMV had had high hopes for the Central Working Association and arbitration, only the postwar IG Metall grew into working corporatist structures, finding the mutuality with employers and the state that the DMV had lacked. VI. The Failure of Social Partnership and Industrial Unionism in Britain In Britain, the AEU could have experienced the same compromise. The Labour government of 1945 to 1950 had a no-strike agreement with the Trades Union Congress, promising to deliver the welfare state and nationalization of key industries in exchange, but it failed to institutionalize the labour peace in any way. Labour simply relied on its special relationship with the trade unions. In the engineering industry, despite upward wage drift and a tendency towards decentralized wage struggles in the 1950s, the AEU faced a strong employers’ association. With the York Memorandum it had a stable framework for collective bargaining, and this procedure was in use from 1914 to 1989, the entirety of the short twentieth century. One might argue that the procedures involving the AEU and Engineering Employers’ Federation combined with the special relations between the Trades Union Congress and the government was a corporatist setting in the making. Indeed, subsequent Conservative and Labour governments tried to go further and institutionalize labour relations in law. Initially, most trade unions were open to a regulatory compromise, but the British state was oriented towards unilateral action. It wanted to limit strikes and wage drift to support British exports, now lagging behind the Germany of the Economic Miracle. When Secretary of State Barbara Castle issued the white-paper proposal ‘In Place of Strife’ in 1969, the AEU was split. Sixteen of seventeen AEU-sponsored members of parliament supported legal regulation of trade unions, and AEU General Secretary John Boyd wanted to negotiate. But when the government offered nothing in exchange, AEU President Hugh Scanlon overrode Boyd.70 Scanlon and Jack Jones, secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union, spearheaded the protest against any regulation of trade union rights. While the German state offered works councils and co-determination in exchange for Friedenspflicht, Britain wanted labour peace without legal guarantees or institutions. No compromise was possible, and the divides hardened. In the short term, the AEU won: Scanlon and his allies fought off not only Barbara Castle but also Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath’s attempt at a new labour law in 1971. In times of economic boom, the AEU felt strong enough to confront the state. The AEU’s counterproposal, which had already been made in 1965, was voluntary amalgamation, which would end multi-unionism and demarcation issues blamed for the high number of strikes. But the plan failed. In 1971 the AEU merged with foundry workers, the white-collar union the Technical, Administrative and Supervisory Section (TASS) and construction workers to form the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers. But this federation was merely an umbrella for four unions unable to agree upon a common rulebook. AEU rules from 1920 did not provide for trade sections; all subdivisions were geographical. When TASS broke away in 1985, the merger had failed. In the midst of industrial decline, the AEU had lost its only hope for organizing white-collar workers. Long before, the AEU had lost another strategic partner when the National Union of Vehicle Builders (NUVB) declined a merger in 1969. In 1972, the NUVB chose to go with the Transport and General Workers Union. It was now impossible to unite all engineering workers within a single union, let alone all metalworkers. While IG Metall grew ever stronger as the sole union within the German automobile industry, the AEU became a minority organization even in this key sector. Therefore, when Scanlon confronted the government in 1971, the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers was outwardly strong but had an inner weakness: the path dependency of a former craft union unable to overcome fragmentation between general unions, former craft unions and professional unions. In a nutshell, I would argue that path dependency existed in Britain for multi-unionism but not for voluntarism. It proved difficult, perhaps impossible, to unite metalworkers into an industrial union because of decisions made as early as the 1890s, when general unions had formed without integrating former craft-based associations. But in 1969 and even afterwards, a corporatist compromise for Britain would have been not only possible but also likely—but only if the British state had offered substantial gains in exchange for its project of trade union legislation. VII. The Long Crisis of 1973 When the end of postwar prosperity unfolded into an age of economic uncertainty, the British Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers lost its shop-floor strength but proved unable to compensate the loss with successful mergers. If the union had negotiated a corporatist deal in 1969 or 1971, things might have looked different—but apart from the unilateral offers of the state, it was the union’s strength that had made compromise impossible. The union faced long political exclusion when the Thatcher government took office in 1979. Rebranded once more as the Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU), it tried to develop its own form of firm-based social partnership from the late 1980s until 2002, but it failed to imitate the German model since its partnership agreements with multinational corporations would not be guaranteed by law.71 At the same time, the AEU undertook a series of defensive mergers—finalizing the amalgamation with construction and foundry workers in 1986, merging with the electricians’ union in 1992, with finance workers in 2001 and the Transport and General Workers’ Union in 2007. In an unprecedented rush these mergers broke up all sectionalism inherited from the nineteenth century. But still the merging unions remained barely afloat. In 1970 the engineers alone had had 1.1 million members; in 2015 in its most recent incarnation, as Unite, the union, organizing for almost every industry and service, had 1.3 million members. In transforming into a super-union, the old AEU had merged itself out of existence. At the same time, IG Metall had it all: industrial unionism with no competition in its field, with even smaller industrial unions of textile workers and woodworkers merging with IG Metall in 1998 and 1999.72 IG Metall had corporatist institutions and access to a state that unlike in Britain was still open to industrial policy and economic intervention. Memories of the ties between mass unemployment and the rise of fascism as well as the presence of ‘another’ socialist Germany without unemployment kept German Conservatives on a corporatist track well into the 1980s.73 Policies of forced unemployment to break union power were unthinkable. Until the Schröder administration took office in 1998, the state tended to subsidize declining industries rather than implement free-market solutions. Therefore, when in 1973 the oil crisis signalled the end of the postwar boom, IG Metall was able to enter a new stage that can be termed ‘defensive corporatism’. Its predecessor was the ‘concerted action’ (Konzertierte Aktion), a tripartist effort to stabilize the economy in the short crisis of 1967. The wildcat strikes in 1969 were in part a reaction to this arrangement, which had been signed by IG Metall. When prosperity returned, workers rebelled to remove wage restraints. But after 1973, mass unemployment became a permanent disciplining feature in West Germany, continued after reunification.74 Periods of recovery did not reduce unemployment significantly. Rationalization efforts and the automatization of the automobile industry kept German productivity and exports high during the 1980s but meant jobless growth. Andrei Markovits argues that in 1974 an ‘era of mobilization’ ended.75 I would argue that only in this prolonged period of economic instability did the German social partnership become firm for IG Metall. From 1949 to 1969, when IG Metall was the least accommodationist of the German Trade Union Confederation’s unions, debates on wage policy at the company level and wildcat strikes brought into question both centralism and wage restraint; only after 1974 did the latter become a recurring policy. As it organized workers of export-oriented industries within a globalizing economy, IG Metall became accustomed to the idea of ‘protecting’ jobs by wage restraint. This defensive social partnership was not tripartist but happened in regional collective agreements and local compromises between works councils and management. Offensive struggles were not lacking: the 35-hour week was IG Metall’s great success in 1984. It would never be fully implemented, however, and the price paid for a reduction of hours was the flexibilization of working time: systematic overtime complemented by periods of shorter hours when demand was low. The current 2018 settlement on the possibility of a temporary 28-hour workweek, often misunderstood as a general reduction of hours, functions within these lines. This compromise, with flexibilization in return for shorter hours and job security, became a permanent feature after deindustrialization hit East Germany in 1990. IG Metall won a whole new territory—but the weakened union imported greater precarity rather than exporting collective agreements. In 1993 the first Härtefallklausel (hardship clause) was part of an agreement for the metal industry in eastern German, allowing the works councils to undercut standard wages to save firms from bankruptcy. In 2004, the Pforzheim Agreement institutionalized this approach on the national level—collective agreements were now regularly opened up, allowing lower wages or more temporary workers to save employment. While this step is often seen as the end of corporatism,76 I would argue that it is a rather a transformation into what I term a ‘defensive social partnership’. If corporatism had ended in 1973, it would not have merited the term ‘system’—rather it would have provided a temporary pattern in the boom years of 1952 to 1973. But its continuation in times of crisis merits its description as a long-standing path. Continuous development along the German corporatist path started not in 1916, but in 1952. It persists, but since the 1950s IG Metall has invested all its strength in corporatist arrangements in industries oriented towards the global market, such as the automotive industry and engineering. In these areas, works councils and collective agreements are still strong. Any harm to these industries would be a threat to the position of IG Metall, which explains the desire to extend any arrangement in which the state protects export industries and employers accept a union presence. IG Metall might yet change its tactics and orient itself towards organizing and strikes where employers are abandoning this pattern, but at the moment the risks are perceived as higher than the costs. Therefore, while the service workers union ver.di undertakes experiments with social-movement unionism, IG Metall is much more careful and sticks to social partnership, despite its current defensive nature. VIII. Conclusion When we compare the metalworkers’ unions the DMV / IG Metall in Germany and the Amalgamated Society of Engineers / Amalgamated Engineering Union in Britain, it becomes evident that national cultures of corporatism or voluntarism evolved much more slowly and erratically than usually assumed. In both countries, the seeds of tripartist corporatism were sown during the First World War, but in both countries state and employers abandoned these attempts in the postwar crisis years of 1920 to 1924, when unions were weakened by mass unemployment and inflation. Only in the 1950s did the German IG Metall grow into a working but non-tripartist corporatist arrangement. Attempts by British governments to create a similarly peaceful form of industrial relations by top-down regulation failed during the postwar boom. The true bifurcation of British and German industrial relations as seen from the perspective of metalworkers therefore comes much later—when, at the end of the postwar boom around 1973, IG Metall reformulated its corporatism into a defensive social partnership, while in Britain trade unions ultimately failed to achieve any corporatist partnership and were excluded from the political sphere and marginalized within society. Footnotes 1 A. Flanders, ‘The Tradition of Voluntarism’, British Journal for Industrial Relations, 12, 3 (1974), pp. 352–70; W. Streeck, Korporatismus in Deutschland: zwischen Nationalstaat und Europäischer Union (Frankfurt/Main, 1999); A. Rehling, Konfliktstrategie und Konsenssuche in der Krise: von der Zentralarbeitsgemeinschaft zur konzertierten Aktion (Baden-Baden, 2011). 2 M. Schröder, Varianten des Kapitalismus: die Unterschiede liberaler und koordinierter Marktwirtschaften (Wiesbaden, 2014), pp. 153–66; critical of this is Rehling, Konfliktstrategie, pp. 24–6. P. A. Hall and D. Soskice (eds), in B. Hancké, M. Rhodes and M. Thatcher (eds), Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage (Oxford and New York, 2001), 71–104; P. A. Hall, ‘The Evolution of Varieties of Capitalism in Europe’, in Beyond Varieties of Capitalism: Conflict, Contradiction, and Complementarities in the European Economy (Oxford, 2007), pp. 44–8. 3 Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (DGB) and Bund Deutscher Arbeitgeber (BDA), ‘100 Jahre Sozialpartnerschaft—Erfolgreich in die Zukunft’, 16 Oct. 2018, https://www.dgb.de/sozialpartner100, invitation celebrating the centennial of the Stinnes-Legien agreement. 4 W. Milert and R. Tschirbs, Die andere Demokratie: betriebliche Interessenvertretung in Deutschland, 1848 bis 2008 (Essen, 2012), pp. 45–51, 107–67. 5 On the concept of path dependency in history see P. Pierson, Politics in Time: History, Institutions and Social Analysis (Princeton, 2004), p. 10; S. E. Page. ‘Path Dependence’, Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 1, 1 (2006), pp. 87–115; P. A. David, ‘Clio and the Economics of QWERTY’, American Economic Review, 75, 2 (1985), pp. 332–7. 6 S. Berger, The British Labour Party and the German Social Democrats, 1900–1931 (Oxford, 1994), p. 2. 7 M. Swiniartzki, Der Deutsche Metallarbeiter-Verband 1891–1933: eine Gewerkschaft im Spannungsfeld zwischen Arbeitern, Betrieb und Politik (Cologne, 2017) p. 36. 8 F. Opel, 75 Jahre Eiserne Internationale, 1893–1968 (Frankfurt/Main, 1968), pp. 33–41. 9 The European Metalworkers’ Federation evolved out of an informal predecessor founded in 1963. Y. Clairmont, Vom europäischen Verbindungsbüro zur transnationalen Gewerkschaftsorganisation: Organisation, Strategien und Machtpotentiale des Europäischen Metallgewerkschaftsbundes bis 1990 (Stuttgart, 2014), pp. 101, 203. 10 F. Opel und D. Schneider, Fünfundsiebzig Jahre Industriegewerkschaft, 1891–1966: vom Deutschen Metallarbeiter-Verband zur Industriegewerkschaft Metall (Frankfurt/Main, 1966); IG Metall, 90 Jahre Industriegewerkschaft, 1891 bis 1981: vom Deutschen Metallarbeiter-Verband zur Industrie-Gewerkschaft Metall.  Ein Bericht in Wort und Bild (Cologne, 1981); K. T. Schmitz, IG Metall Vorstand and IG Metall, 100 Jahre Industriegewerkschaft, 1891 bis 1991: vom Deutschen Metallarbeiter-Verband zur Industriegewerkschaft Metall. Ein Bericht in Wort und Bild (Cologne, 1991); even Boris Barth, who looks at IG Metall in the period from 1989 to 2007 stresses the continuity of its norms and values; see B. Barth, Die IG Metall zwischen Wiedervereinigung und Finanzmarktkrise: ausgewählte Ereignisse der jüngeren Gewerkschaftsgeschichte (Freiburg, 2016). Despite the reference to ‘progress’, IG Metall Bayern gives a more multifaceted view of its history since 1947: IG Metall Bayern, Vom Wiederaufbau zur Arbeit 4.0: IG Metall Bayern. 70 Jahre Fortschritt durch Tarifpolitik (Hamburg, 2017). 11 A. S. Markovits, The Politics of the West German Trade Unions: Strategies of Class and Interest Representation in Growth and Crisis (Cambridge and New York, 1986), p. 179. 12 Swiniartzki, Der Deutsche Metallarbeiter-Verband; See also R. Boch, Handwerker-Sozialisten gegen Fabrikgesellschaft: lokale Fachvereine, Massengewerkschaft und industrielle Rationalisierung in Solingen, 1870 bis 1914 (Göttingen, 1985). 13 J. Waddington (ed.), Restructuring Representation: The Merger Process and Trade Union Structural Development in Ten Countries (Brussels and Berlin, 2005), pp. 120–1, 274–87; a more general comparison including the ASE can be found in W. J. Mommsen, Auf dem Wege zur Massengewerkschaft: die Entwicklung der Gewerkschaften in Deutschland und Großbritannien, 1880–1914 (Stuttgart, 1984); the early ASE, but not the DMV, is mentioned in C. Eisenberg, Deutsche und englische Gewerkschaften: Entstehung und Entwicklung bis 1878 im Vergleich (Göttingen, 1986). 14 S. Mielke, Internationales Gewerkschafts-Handbuch (Opladen, 1983), pp. 337–85, 494–520. See also, focussing on the employers’ associations, W.-U. Prigge, Metallindustrielle Arbeitgeberverbände in Großbritannien und der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: eine systemtheoretische Studie (Opladen, 1987). 15 J. B. Jefferys, The Story of the Engineers, 1800–1945 (London, 1945), pp. 1–27. 16 E. J. Hobsbawm, ‘Der New Unionism—eine komparative Betrachtung’, in W. J. Mommsen and H.-G. Husung (eds), Auf dem Wege zur Massengewerkschaft: die Entwicklung der Gewerkschaften in Deutschland und Großbritannien, 1880–1914 (Stuttgart, 1984), pp. 19–45. 17 Schmitz, IG Metall Vorstand and IG Metall, 100 Jahre Industriegewerkschaft, pp. 49–84. 18 Unionization percentages for women: 1.4% in 1891, 7% in 1914, 21% in 1917. IG Metall, Der DMV (Deutsche Metallarbeiter-Verband) in Zahlen (1932) (rept. Berlin, 1987); see also B. Kassel, Frauen in einer Männerwelt: Frauenerwerbsarbeit in der Metallindustrie und ihre Interessenvertretung durch den Deutschen Metallarbeiter-Verband (1891–1933) (Cologne, 1997), pp. 198–216. 19 Jefferys, Story of the Engineers, pp. 107–14. 20 R. Hoffrogge, Sozialismus und Arbeiterbewegung in Deutschland und Österreich: von den Anfängen bis 1914 (2nd edn, Stuttgart, 2017), pp. 117–23. 21 D. H. Müller, Gewerkschaftliche Versammlungsdemokratie und Arbeiterdelegierte vor 1918: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Lokalismus, des Syndikalismus und der entstehenden Rätebewegung (Berlin, 1985), pp. 246–50. 22 Jefferys, Story of the Engineers, p. 144. Alexander Siemens (1847–1928) was director of Siemens Brothers and Company Limited in London; see E. J. Bristow, Individualism versus Socialism in Britain, 1880–1914 (New York, 1987). 23 R. Holmes, Eleanor Marx: A Life (London, 2014), p. 421. 24 R. Hoffrogge, Working-Class Politics in the German Revolution: Richard Müller, the Revolutionary Shop Stewards and the Origins of the Council Movement (Leiden, 2015), pp. 35–71; Müller, Gewerkschaftliche Versammlungsdemokratie, pp. 285–329. 25 J. Hinton, The First Shop Stewards’ Movement (London, 1973); G. R. Degen, Shop Stewards: ihre zentrale Bedeutung für die Gewerkschaftsbewegung in Großbritannien (Frankfurt/Main, 1976), pp. 54–118. 26 Müller, Gewerkschaftliche Versammlungsdemokratie, pp. 226–39; Swiniartzki, Der Deutsche Metallarbeiter-Verband, pp. 177–84. 27 Swiniartzki, Der Deutsche Metallarbeiter-Verband, p. 286. 28 Milert and Tschirbs, Die andere Demokratie, pp. 109–10. 29 Hoffrogge, Working-Class Politics, pp. 35–65. 30 E. Frow and R. Frow, Engineering Struggles: Episodes in the Story of the Shop Stewards’ Movement (Manchester, 1982), p. 473. 31 Degen, Shop Stewards, pp. 54–88. 32 H. A. Clegg, A History of British Trade Unions since 1889, vol. 2: 1911–1933 (Oxford, 1964), p. 209; F. W. Carr, ‘Engineering Workers and the Rise of Labour in Coventry 1914–39’ (PhD thesis, University of Warwick, 1978), pp. 87–95. 33 Degen, Shop Stewards, pp. 68–83; Hoffrogge, Working-Class Politics, pp. 35–61. 34 Rehling, Konfliktstrategie, pp. 143–68. 35 D. Lange, Massenstreik und Schießbefehl: Generalstreik und Märzkämpfe in Berlin 1919 (Münster, 2012). 36 P. von Oertzen, Betriebsräte in der Novemberrevolution: eine politikwissenschaftliche Untersuchung über Ideengehalt und Struktur der betrieblichen und wirtschaftlichen Arbeiterräte in der deutschen Revolution 1918/19 (Düsseldorf, 1976). 37 E. Jacobi, R. Oehring and Rätegenossenschaft für Wirtschaftlichen Aufbau, Wirtschaftliches Kampfbuch für Betriebsräte (Berlin, 1920). 38 The AEU and its democratic structure have been studied by several generations of social scientists. See J. D. Edelstein, ‘Democracy in a National Union: The British AEU’, Industrial Relations, 4, 3 (1965), pp. 105–25; J. D. Edelstein and M. Warner, Comparative Union Democracy (London, 1975), pp. 265–6; L. James, Power in a Trade Union: The Role of the District Committee in the AUEW (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 20–40; T. R. Undy (ed.), Change in Trade Unions: The Development of UK Unions since the 1960s (London, 1981), p. 55. 39 T. Mann, One Big Union of Boiler Makers, Foundry Men, Engineers, and Steel Workers (London, 1920). 40 Degen, Shop Stewards, pp. 84–6. 41 R. Martin, Communism and the British Trade Unions: 1924–1933: A Study of the National Minority Movement (Oxford, 1969), pp. 16–19; J. Streiter, Von der Shop-Stewards-Bewegung zum National Minority Movement: die britische Gewerkschaftsopposition zwischen Syndikalismus und Kommunismus, 1919–1924 (1982), pp. 92–131; Degen, Shop Stewards, pp. 101–3. 42 Hoffrogge, Working-Class Politics, pp. 147–57. 43 R. Tosstorff, The Red International of Labour Unions (RILU) 1920–1937 (Leiden, 2016), pp. 238–96, 446–92. 44 L. Wentzel, Inflation und Arbeitslosigkeit: gewerkschaftliche Kämpfe und ihre Grenzen am Beispiel des Deutschen Metallarbeiter-Verbandes, 1919–1924 (Hannover, 1981), pp. 73–90, 148–60. 45 Lange, Massenstreik und Schießbefehl, pp. 134–48, 164–90; M. Jones, Founding Weimar: Violence and the German Revolution of 1918–1919 (Cambridge, 2016). 46 Wentzel, Inflation und Arbeitslosigkeit, pp. 164–74. 47 AEU Monthly Journal, April 1921 – January 1923. 48 J. Zeitlin, ‘The Internal Politics of Employer Organization: The Engineering Employers’ Federation 1896–1939’, in J. Zeitlin and S. Tolliday (eds), The Power to Manage? Employers and Industrial Relations in Comparative Historical Perspective (New York, 1991), pp. 46–70. 49 Jefferys, Story of the Engineers, p. 296. 50 Wentzel, Inflation und Arbeitslosigkeit, pp. 108–16. 51 AEU (ed.), The Attempt to Smash the A.E.U.—Part of a General Attack (London, 1922). 52 Rehling, Konfliktstrategie, pp. 169–91. 53 B. Weisbrod, Schwerindustrie in der Weimarer Republik: Interessenpolitik zwischen Stabilisierung und Krise (Wuppertal, 1978), pp. 415–56. 54 Swiniartzki, Der Deutsche Metallarbeiter-Verband, p. 413. 55 Schmitz, IG Metall Vorstand and IG Metall, 100 Jahre Industriegewerkschaft, pp. 278–88. 56 H. Stefan, Funktionäre des Einheitsverbandes der Metallarbeiter Berlins im NS-Staat: Widerstand und Verfolgung (Berlin, 2012). 57 R. Croucher, Engineers at War (London, 1982). 58 The East German IG Metall was organized simply as a section of the Freie Deutsche Gewerkschaftsbund (Free German Trade Union Federation). Lacking the freedom to strike, East German unions never became an independent actor within East German society. The two organizations had no affiliation during the Cold War; in 1990 IG Metall chose to dissolve IG Metall-East and only re-admit its members individually. 59 U. Fuhrmann, Die Entstehung der ‘Sozialen Marktwirtschaft’ 1948/49: eine historische Dispositivanalyse (Constance and Munich, 2017), pp. 73–7. 60 Article 30 of the Unification Treaty that covered the union of the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic in 1990 demanded the codification of a unified labour law, but it was never implemented. 61 Markovits, Politics of the West German Trade Unions, p. 193. 62 ‘Betriebsräte von BMW und Daimler halten SPD für “immer schwerer wählbar”‘, Manager-Magazin, 4 May 2019, https://www.manager-magazin.de/politik/deutschland/kevin-kuehnert-betriebsraete-becht-und-schocht-von-bmw-und-daimler-kritisieren-spd-a-1265768.html. 63 Markovits, Politics of the West German Trade Unions, pp. 174–9. 64 P. Birke, Wilde Streiks im Wirtschaftswunder: Arbeitskämpfe, Gewerkschaften und soziale Bewegungen in der Bundesrepublik und Dänemark (Frankfurt/Main and New York, 2007), pp. 158–90; U. Achten, Flächentarifvertrag & betriebsnahe Tarifpolitik: vom Anfang der Bundesrepublik bis in die 1990er Jahre (Hamburg, 2007), pp. 25–88. 65 Markovits, Politics of the West German Trade Unions, p. 187. 66 Achten, Flächentarifvertrag, pp. 27, 77; on Brenner see also J. Becker, Otto Brenner: eine Biographie (Göttingen, 2007). 67 Exemptions were the ‘concerted action’ in 1967 and the Bündnis für Arbeit in 1998. The minimum wage introduced in 2015 and more sectional agreements such as the Umweltprämie, an IG Metall-inspired state-funded subsidy of purchasers of new automobiles in 2009, might be added as tripartist efforts on a national level—such efforts in the German case were therefore more common in the era described as neoliberal. 68 Birke, Wilde Streiks im Wirtschaftswunder, pp. 218–48, 274–304. 69 K. Coates, ‘Introductory Review—Converting the Unions to Socialism’, Trade Union Register, 3 (1973), pp. 34–7; A. G. Tuckman, ‘Industrial Action and Hegemony: Workplace Occupation in Britain, 1971–1981’ (PhD Thesis, University of Hull, 1985). 70 I. Richter, Political Purpose in Trade Unions (London, 1973), pp. 241–3. 71 R. Hoffrogge, ‘Engineering New Labour: Trade Unions, Social Partnership, and the Stabilization of British Neoliberalism, 1985–2002’, Journal of Labour and Society, 21 (2018), pp. 301–16, https://doi.org/10.1111/lands.12340. 72 IG Metall Bayern, Vom Wiederaufbau zur Arbeit 4.0, pp. 115–31. 73 A. Wirsching, ‘“Neoliberalismus” als wirtschaftliches Ordnungsmodell? Die Bundesrepublik Deutschland in den 1980er Jahren’, in W. Plumpe and J. Scholtyseck (eds), Der Staat und die Ordnung der Wirtschaft: vom Kaiserreich bis zur Berliner Republik (Stuttgart, 2012), pp. 139–50. 74 A. Doering-Manteuffel, Nach dem Boom: Perspektiven auf die Zeitgeschichte seit 1970 (Göttingen, 2008). 75 Markovits, Politics of the West German Trade Unions, p. 236. 76 W. Streeck, ‘Nach dem Korporatismus: neue Eliten, neue Konflikte’, Max Planck Institut für Geschichte Working Papers, 5 (2005), http://www.mpi-fg-koeln.mpg.de/pu/workpap/wp05-4/wp05-4.html. © The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the German History Society. All rights reserved. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)
TI - Voluntarism, Corporatism and Path Dependency: The Metalworkers’ Unions Amalgamated Engineering Union and IG Metall and their Place in the History of British and German Industrial Relations
JO - German History
DO - 10.1093/gerhis/ghz037
DA - 2019-09-20
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/voluntarism-corporatism-and-path-dependency-the-metalworkers-unions-mj2MjOVc5O
SP - 327
VL - 37
IS - 3
DP - DeepDyve
ER -