Ahrensburg model

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The company Joh. Friedrich Behrens from Ahrensburg (near Hamburg) was one of the first companies in Germany in which employees had extensive rights to participate . The model of co-determination practiced there became known as the Ahrensburg model and is still the most interesting example of a partnership model to this day.

The enterprise

Joh. Friedrich Behrens founded the company under his name in Hamburg in 1910. After the business premises were destroyed in World War II , he sold it in 1946 to his chess friends Carl Backhaus and Hans Rodmann for 20,000 Reichsmarks . What was left at this point were the customer files, a few rolls of wire and a stapling machine that was only delivered after the destruction. In Hamburg, Am Strohaus 2, production was resumed in 1947. In 1951 the company moved to a ruined building in Ahrensburg. The company grew very quickly. In the mid-1970s, it employed around 550 people, who were mainly involved in the production of staples, pneumatic nailers and machines for the production of staples. Today the company operates under the name Johann Friedrich Behrens AG, is listed on the stock exchange and has state-of-the-art production facilities for the manufacture of staples and nails.

Development and course of the Ahrensburg model

1945–1952

After the war, Backhaus and Rodmann were concerned not just with an investment, but with the realization of their socio-political ideas. Germany was at the zero point and one was striving for a future that can best be described with the phrase “democratic socialism” . Backhaus and Rodmann bought the company in order to experiment with company democratic models.

The starting point for the employee participation model was the “Kampfgemeinschaft für totale Demokratie” founded in 1943 , which in a brochure printed after the war took the view that “all political democracy is at risk if there are no other areas of society that have democratic structures” , for example in companies.

In 1947 Backhaus and Rodmann presented their employees with their ideas in writing for the first time. The letter made the employees a "proposal for the reorganization of labor relations" . What was meant was a “democratic company community” in which primarily equal rights between the owners and employees should be achieved. The key points were:

  1. Documented equality between owners and employees,
  2. Merging the interests of employees and employers,
  3. Equal rights for all "company participants according to ability and performance" when participating in the company,
  4. All those involved receive a “fair share of the effective labor yield and the real change in value of the company” .

Until the first company agreement , Joh. Friedrich Behrens practiced plebiscitary co-determination that was not subject to any codified rules. Once a month, a meeting was held between the management and the 35 employees at the time, at which all sorts of things were discussed and decided.

1953-1966

At a works meeting in 1953, a works agreement was presented to the employees in which their rights were specified as follows:

  1. Every employee who has been with the company for at least three years, is at least 25 years old and has not exceeded the age of 65 could receive the status of a “company participant” with the approval of the “company participation assembly” .
  2. He thus had the right to acquire an entitlement to profit sharing upon application to the management .
  3. He was also able to elect a managing director to the company management.
  4. Once a month, the “company involved” had to be informed by the management about the course of business development.
  5. The amounts from the company profit- sharing scheme that are allotted to each “company involved” were made available to the company as a loan to “cover the company's capital requirements ” , as stated in the company agreement. Interest on the loan amounts was 6% and could be terminated with a notice period of 6 months at the end of the year.

In the mid-fifties, a team of Hamburg judges and lawyers called up by Backhaus and Rodmann worked on drawing up a social contract, the core of which was to be the “political will” of the “democratic operating community” . These corporate law agreements came into force in 1958 and contained regulations according to which the employees converted their profit shares, which they had previously acquired as loan receivables, into limited partner contributions of a newly founded limited partnership. The role of the limited partners (employees) has been significantly expanded through the creation of an advisory board made up of a majority of employees. In terms of content, it went far beyond the framework laid down in the Works Constitution Act .

1967-1976

In 1967 the articles of association underwent a fundamental change for trade tax reasons: the company became an oHG ( general partnership ) and the limited partners were atypical silent partners. The contract was based on the following principles:

  1. Each partner subordinates his or her interests to that of all.
  2. Everyone brings a maximum of hard work and dedication to the community.
  3. In addition to their technical skills, everyone should develop an understanding of the company and its goals.

Everyone working for Behrens, i.e. entrepreneurs (personally liable partners) and employees (silent partners), are to be regarded as having equal rights and equal status. The management had to obtain the approval of the advisory board for essential actions and business decisions. It consisted of five members, two of whom were sent by the personally liable partners and three were elected by the silent partners. The following were subject to approval:

  • Acquisition, sale or encumbrance of land,
  • Construction of new buildings or larger conversions,
  • Acquisition of fixed assets with an individual value of over DM 20,000,
  • Establishment or closure of branches,
  • Start of new branches of production,
  • Appointment of authorized signatories,
  • Conclusion of employment and employment contracts with a gross monthly salary of over DM 1,500

In 1972, for example, the shareholders' meeting consisted of around 200 silent partners and four personally liable partners (management). The participation of an employee as a partner was completely voluntary, but had to be elected by a majority by the shareholders' meeting. In 1976, 265 of the 465 employees (i.e. 57%) were shareholders in the company.

In the course of the further expansion of the circle of "decision-makers" and the increasing age of opinion leaders who are experienced in discussion, the disadvantages of the employee participation practiced at Behrens also became increasingly apparent:

  • There was a battle between the sexes. Female applicants for the status of a silent partner often received a required majority (or not) with only a very narrow voting result. The reason is to be found in the fact that in the early 1970s, the majority of women did rather simple work in the packaging department or canteen and, in the opinion of their older, male colleagues, did not have the necessary qualifications to help shape it.
  • Due to the increasing number of shareholders, shareholders' meetings became mass events at which real participation rights could no longer be exercised. Most of the participants did not dare to speak and left the speaking to the experienced opinion leaders.
  • In practice, codecision was limited to three things: election of the advisory board members, approval of applications for the admission of new shareholders and approval of changes to the contract.

In a survey carried out in 1985, nine out of ten employees rated the influence of the shareholders' meeting as “in the end rather low” or “practically zero” . Formalities took up an ever larger space. Due to the increasing pressure to conform and the increasingly complex individual business issues, the originally intended grassroots co-determination could never develop properly.

From 1973 - after one of the personally liable partners resigned - there was an increasing number of dormant partners. Until then, termination of the shareholder relationship was taboo, that is, one could terminate but did not do so. Only with the termination of the employment relationship also ended the shareholder status.

Among the first to quit in 1973 was the employee with the second longest seniority. That had a certain signal effect. The number of layoffs increased. The capital contributions of the terminating parties were paid out only after a multi-year repayment plan, but they were immediately liabilities on the company's balance sheet.

Like all companies, Joh. Friedrich Behrens was of course subject to the laws of the free market economy . In 1975 it was the house banks that insisted that the company stop the outflow of equity. All the more so as Friedrich Behrens made a significant loss this year for the first time in his history. After several months of discussions among all shareholders, it was decided to give the company the legal form of a corporation , namely a stock corporation . For this purpose, on November 5, 1975, the "BeA Fixing Technology AG" was founded, which took over the company "Joh. Friedrich Behrens" on January 1, 1977 under their name. All partners (three personally liable and 257 silent partners) passed the resolution unanimously.

1977 (end of model)

All partners were now shareholders. At the age of seventy-three, founder Carl Backhaus also left at the end of 1975. The two remaining personally liable became board members. The advisory board now corresponded to the supervisory board. In this respect, participation was initially guaranteed. Significant change: According to the AktG, the company profit can only be distributed to shareholders, i. H. the addition of new "partners", who only saved their share from profit sharing, was no longer possible. Society had now become an anonymous society. The sale of the (bearer) shares in the company could no longer be controlled by her, and a real sell-off began. Long before the stocks were traded on the stock exchange, banks were buying employee stocks on a large scale. It had become easy for the employee-shareholder to get "his money". They liked to keep their job at "BeA". The company flourished again, but participation in the capital didn't have to be. In July 1980 Joh. Friedrich Behrens AG was admitted to trading on the Hamburg Stock Exchange. Only a few employees were to be found at general meetings.

Summary

Probably the greatest achievement of the Ahrensburg model was that in the course of the model practice at Joh. Friedrich Behrens an open relationship, free of arbitrary acts and recklessness, developed between the workforce and the company management, which was shaped by decades of good manners and long after the model ended Company continued to have an impact. This was also reflected in the company collective agreements that the company had negotiated with IG Metall for decades. In them, the rights of the works council were extended beyond the Works Constitution Act. Naturally, this part was not affected by the conversion into an AG and continued to exist.

Web links

  1. ↑ Sabine Rueckert: Kalli's great coup , online at: DIE ZEIT 13/1998. Retrieved February 3, 2013
  2. ↑ Stormarn Lexicon Carl Backhaus

literature

  • Combat group for total democracy , program from November 15, 1945
  • The triple system - a proposal for the realization of total democracy in the state, economy and culture , series of publications of the Kampfgemeinschaft für Totale Demokratie, issue 3, German-English edition, Hamburg, June 1947
  • Burkhard Voges: Experiences with the company partnership - illustrated using the example of Joh. Friedrich Behrens, Ahrensburg - in comparison with other plans and practices of co-determination and profit-sharing , diploma thesis with Jens Lübbert, University of Hamburg, 1969.
  • Eike Ballerstedt: Sociological aspects of internal partnership , Munich 1971, Piper-Verlag, ISBN 3492018815
  • Edward E. Lawler: Motivation in Organizations , Stuttgart, 1977, ISBN 3258024421
  • Documentation from the Carl Backhaus Foundation , Ahrensburg:
    • Joh. Friedrich Behrens - Articles of Association of March 21, 1960 (as of April 30, 1965)
    • Joh. Friedrich Behrens - Articles of Association of September 16, 1967 (as of November 27, 1971)
    • Rules of Procedure of the Advisory Board of Joh. Friedrich Behrens from May 15, 1975
    • Articles of Association of Joh. Friedrich Behrens AG dated August 17, 1982
    • Pool contract of the shareholders of Joh. Friedrich Behrens from April 20, 1977