Workers' Secretariat

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Workers' secretariats emerged in Germany during the period of high industrialization from 1894 as advice centers for workers . They were used by the trade unions to advise their members on labor law . After the First World War they were z. Partly supported by the municipalities . Today the tasks are performed by the DGB legal protection .

origin

The need for competent advice on legal issues grew among workers, particularly after the introduction of social security and as a result of labor legislation. Many workers were overwhelmed with the regulations and sought help, for example to find out which claims they could assert from public authorities. The regular lawyers were too expensive and the information provided by hack lawyers was not reliable enough.

The unions responded to this need by founding workers 'secretariats and hiring mostly full-time workers' secretaries. The first institution of this type was founded in Nuremberg by the local union cartel in 1894 . The member unions shared the cost of a permanent employee.

shape

Based on this model, forty institutions were established by 1905, which together carried out around 100,000 consultations annually. In 1914 there were workers' secretariats of the free , Christian trade unions as well as the Hirsch-Duncker trade unions in around 150 large and medium-sized towns. The Protestant and Catholic workers' associations also founded comparable institutions.

As part of the free trade unions, eleven district workers' offices were set up at the offices of the upper insurance offices. In 1903 a central secretariat followed in Berlin , the seat of the Reich Insurance Office.

The focus was on questions about social security and labor law . The workers 'secretariats represented their clients' rights in court. In addition, they observed the social policy legislation and tried to influence and control its implementation. Consultation was free for union members. In some workers' secretariats not only union members but all those seeking advice were given advice. The workers' secretary Friedrich Ebert , who enforced this in Bremen , hoped to win new union members.

The secretariats did not conduct the processes themselves, but outsourced this task to lawyers.

The concept of the workers 'secretariats existed in this form mainly in Germany, because the German workers' movement saw itself not only as a class struggle, but also as a social aid organization.

literature

  • Shin, Myoung-Hoon: The workers 'secretariats in the German workers' movement. An institution for trade union social policy in interaction with state social policy in the German Empire, World War I and in the Weimar Republic . The other publishing house, Tönning 2007, ISBN 9783899596724 .
  • Klaus Tenfelde , workers secretaries. Careers in the German labor movement before 1914 , Heidelberg 1993.
  • Peter-Christian Witt : Friedrich Ebert . Bonn 1987, ISBN 3-87831-446-9 , p. 37 f.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. See the report on the establishment of the first workers' secretariat in Nuremberg in 1894, in: Collection of sources for the history of German social policy from 1867 to 1914 , III. Department: Expansion and differentiation of social policy since the beginning of the New Course (1890-1904) , Volume 1, Basic Questions of Social Policy , edited by Wolfgang Ayaß , Darmstadt 2016, No. 77.
  2. Jedermanns Lexikon in ten volumes , Verlaganstalt Hermann Klemm A.-G., Berlin-Grunewald 1929, p. 135.