Brunswick cash register
| Brunswick cash register | |
|---|---|
|
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| social insurance | Statutory health insurance |
| Cash register type | Substitute fund (workers substitute fund) |
| legal form | Federal corporation under public law with classic self-administration (Art. 87 (2) GG) |
| founding | 1874 |
| resolution | 1996 |
| Seat | Hamburg |
| Board | Udo Kruse (Chairman) |
| Board of Directors | Heinz Meinbresse (Chairman) |
| Budget volume | 150 million DM |
| Offices | 21st |
The Braunschweiger Kassel (BK) was a nationwide substitute fund based in Hamburg. It was founded in 1874 and dissolved in 1996. Most recently, she looked after 32,818 insured persons (including 5,757 family members) through 21 branches and numerous insured elders.
founding
The tailors were one of the professional groups that recognized the necessity and importance of self-help institutions for social security early in the 19th century. The “General German Tailoring Association”, founded in 1867, had set itself the task of improving the social conditions of its professional group. According to its founders, this also included adequate health protection. In 1874, the program item “Centralization of all health and death funds in one insurance association” was implemented: The local support funds of the Schneider were combined in Braunschweig to form a central support association with traditional self-administration by its members. All of this took place before work began on social legislation (1881: “Imperial Embassy”) and the establishment of statutory health insurance (1883).
Challenge socialist laws
Soon the support association was confronted with the socialist laws (1878 to 1890). But he survived those years. The trained tailor and later trade unionist Hugo Karpf, born in 1895, points out that this should not be overestimated because the leading heads of the tailoring movement stayed together in their "tailor's office" during this time and thus met again after the socialist laws expired were able to intervene in the political debate with their know-how. One of them - August Reimann - was of the opinion at the time that in this situation it was ultimately not only a matter of statutes and short-term and long-term goals, but also of personalities who convincingly took on "the matter".
Seat of the cash register
Braunschweig was the seat of the cash register for a long time. It was not until 1933 that the head office was relocated to Hamburg. This relocation was primarily for political reasons. Up until this point in time, the managing director of the Deutscher Schneiderbund was always also managing director of the cash register.
Importance of self-management
Movement through social reporting: Time and again, the health insurance fund carried out investigations into the health conditions at workplaces in the clothing industry and even triggered debates in the German Reichstag. In the self-administration of the “old tailor's office”, the living conditions of the tailors were almost inevitably always an “issue”. Because the self-administrators saw time and again how their professional colleagues quickly got into existential hardship when they were ill and could hardly pay for the burial of their dead, so they wanted to act. Their everyday experiences were confirmed by analyzes of the expenditure on benefits, which showed that illnesses predominated in their occupation that indicated certain stressful living and working conditions. One exchanged ideas (often quite lively) and thought about what the tailor's office could do for its members (documented by the collection of the minutes of the self-administration meetings at that time). This also included social reporting in the political arena in order to generate political awareness and political pressure. Trade unionists and politicians are still dependent on such information today.
Over the decades, the self-government used the legally limited possibilities of its autonomy to expand the statutory insurance cover through additional services as required. In the 1950s, for example, she introduced the very expensive right to childbirth in a maternity hospital (a right that is taken for granted today and no one speaks about it). In the 1980s, the Braunschweig cash register was one of the cash registers that was the first to lower the age limit for early diagnosis examinations.
Movement through social reporting
The practical cooperation between the health insurance fund and the trade union in researching health conditions in the tailoring was also successful. At the turn of the century, the cash register showed that 48.3 percent of all deaths in the clothing industry in 1896 were due to pulmonary and laryngeal tuberculosis and that the average age of those who died was 39 years. The health insurance fund submitted an expert opinion from Medical Councilor Dr. Elben and the well-known industrial hygienist Professor Sommerfeld. This led to heated debates in the German Reichstag and ultimately had a positive impact on collective bargaining and the trade inspection.
From 1955 to 1963, the health insurance fund carried out surveys on typical work-related illnesses in clothing, the drama of which was confirmed by the Hygiene Institute of the University of Hamburg . What is common knowledge today was for the first time thoroughly researched using data and knowledge from the Braunschweig cash register. The popular state program “Humanization of Working Life” (HdA) was only started much later (1974).
Sensitivity of self-administration and identity attractiveness of smaller health insurance companies
Karl Betz, the former managing director of the health insurance fund (1953–1981) describes in the jubilee publication “Von der Zeit demanded” (Hamburg 1974) the conscientiousness and objectivity with which the rights and obligations of insured persons were discussed in the 19th century. On the one hand, there was the idea of "providing honest and decent services that avoid all unnecessary effort" (today formally stipulated in § 12 SGB V under the keyword "economic efficiency"), on the other hand, any abuse to prevent. Each member in turn was obliged to visit the sick for two weeks (and thus also to carry out health checks). That would be unthinkable today.
Udo Kruse (successor to Karl Betz from 1981 to 1996) has been involved in group-related self-administration work on a full-time basis for a long time. And he has seen how such a group-related commitment - as it used to be in numerous, mostly small professional, company and local health insurance funds - inevitably had to go under in today's large funds. Because of this group bond, there were once thousands of health insurance companies in Germany. In 1913 there were 21,492 cash registers, in 1970 1,815 cash registers and in 2016 only 118 cash registers (statistics) . The time required a different focus.
Membership rights and membership development
On December 16, 1913, the old tailor's insurance company was approved as the first replacement insurance company in Germany. The group of people they were allowed to admit was thus fixed and could not be changed until 1996. This restriction increased the insured's sense of identity because they all belonged to the same professional group. This was unproblematic for the existence of the fund as long as there were enough employees in the clothing industry who could become members of the fund. However, when the number of employees fell radically from the 1970s, the fund ran into financial difficulties. In 1970 there were around 384,000 employees in the West German clothing industry, but by 1996 the number had dropped to around 150,000. This means that only just under 30% of the jobs in 1970 were available (globalization) . The expansion of the business area to the new federal states did not bring any relief either, because the East German clothing industry almost completely collapsed after reunification. Of the 110,000 jobs in 1989, only around 11,000 were left in 1994.
Rejected expansion of the group of receptive people
Against the background of the dramatic collapse in employment, the health insurance fund made an early effort to carefully expand its group of receptive people. In the early 1980s, for example, she submitted an application to the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs to extend it to employees in the textile industry and to all employees in the clothing industry. At that time, by far not all employees in the clothing industry could become members of the BK. In addition to the employees, there were whole groups of industrial workers. This could have the consequence that in a clothing company of two people working next to each other one was receptive and one was not.
In recruiting these capable employees, the fund was in competition with the compulsory health insurance funds (local health insurance funds, company health insurance funds, guild health insurance funds). In this competition she was severely disadvantaged from the start, because only those who submitted a corresponding application for membership became a member. Anyone who did not do this (because they did not know the "Alternative Substitute Fund" or could not assess its offer) was assigned by law (without a declaration of intent and without a declaration of membership) to the responsible health insurance fund. The cash register was also disadvantaged until the 1980s because it only had limited advertising rights. For example, it was forbidden to recruit members through posters, leaflets and circulars to non-members under threat of revocation of their admission. The basis for this was the decree of the Reich and Prussian Labor Ministers dated April 10, 1937, which was still valid in the Federal Republic of Germany (addressed to the supervisory authority and the substitute funds only brought to their attention). This had to be documented in their business instructions and had to be expressly conveyed to the employees. Former managing director Udo Kruse remembers how he was expressly obliged to do so in 1974 at the beginning of his employment.
Although the cash register was ultimately dependent on word of mouth, it was very successful in the clothing industry until the employment crisis. Their strength was their identity. Work colleagues often ensured that newcomers became members of their occupational health insurance.
The political framework
The efforts to secure livelihoods made due to the employment crisis were aimed at a slight expansion of the group of people that had been established since 1913 to include all employees in the clothing and textile industries. She also wanted to compete with the compulsory funds for them (with the competitive disadvantages described). The professional health insurance fund for the clothing industry was to become the “professional health insurance fund for textile fashion clothing”. One wanted to continue to rely on the historically grown identity attractiveness.
The then General Manager Udo Kruse describes that although he was shown understanding of the unsatisfactory situation in internal discussions in the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, there was no willingness to expand the group of people who were capable of receiving even a slight amount, because this would create the rigid competitive boundary between the Substitute funds and the compulsory funds would be affected. In the ministry, they expected considerable political resistance from the local health insurance funds against such an expansion, because they feared a domino effect in the competition between the substitute funds and the compulsory funds. At that time, they felt inferior to the substitute health insurance funds in the competition for image reasons. In those places where citizens could choose between a compulsory fund and an employee substitute fund, they usually opted for the substitute fund. When the restrictions on competition were lifted in 1996 with the reorganization of the electoral health insurance system , it was completely different: the local health insurance funds have since then been able to assert themselves in competition with the replacement funds.
At the beginning of the 1980s, however, the chief executive in the Federal Ministry was told that an expansion would only be dealt with if it was possible to get approval from the local health insurance funds or the then Federal Association of Local Health Insurance Funds (BdO). The subsequent talks with the BdO were unsuccessful, however. Efforts to extend the law to include committee work were also unsuccessful . A corresponding approach was rejected by the majority of the committee. When around ten years later the old restrictions were rigorously removed through the reorganization of the electoral system and unrestricted competition began, it was too late for the Braunschweig health insurance company. It dissolved on December 31, 1996. Most of their policyholders and employees were taken over by the DAK .
The Board of Directors (1996)
Women in the majority of self-government: In its first decades self-government was shaped by the classic tailor. Women didn't matter. When women (especially seamstresses) then predominated in membership (proportion of women: 79.3% in the old federal states, 91.5% in the new federal states), this also had an effect on self-administration. On the last board of directors, women were in the majority. The last Board of Directors was composed of: Heinz Meinbresse (Kaarst, Chairman), Jean Eggen (Mönchengladbach, Deputy Chairman), Walter Scharf (Sulzbach, Secretary), Günther Bär (Munich), Günther Brand (Fulda), Udo Dehnert (Seeretz ), Renate Knops (Aidhausen), Marlies Kubek (Schloss Holte-Stukenbrock), Brigitte Mohr (Dortmund), Eva Sitz (Aue), Vesna Witschel (Winsen / Luhe), Efser Yazici (Munich), Karlheinz Zoll (Wörth)
Individual evidence
- ^ Eduard Bernstein: History of the German Tailoring Movement, Berlin 1913, p. 180.
- ^ Hugo Karpf: Home work and trade union, Cologne 1980, p. 27 f.
- ^ Karl Betz: Demanded from time, Ed .: Braunschweiger Kassel, Hamburg 1974, p. 36f.
- ^ Karl Betz: Demanded from time, ed .: Braunschweiger Kassel, Hamburg 1974, p. 11f.
- ^ Udo Kruse, Silke Kruse: Dynamic Self-Administration, Hamburg 1985.
- ^ Karl Betz: Demanded from time, ed .: Braunschweiger Kassel, Hamburg 1974, p. 26ff.
- ↑ Silke Kruse, Udo Kruse: And again and again threatens creative destruction, Oldenburg 2016, p. 38f.
- ^ Annual report 1996, publisher: Braunschweiger Kassel, Hamburg 1997.
- ↑ Explained in detail in: Udo Kruse: Competition without advertising? In: Arbeit und Sozialpolitik, 36th vol. (1982), no. 11, pp. 378-380.
- ↑ Since January 1, 1996, all insured persons have had the right to choose their own health insurance company, which gives them the opportunity to choose their own health insurance company. The legally assigned health insurance fund does not apply (exception: seasickness insurance, federal miners' and agricultural health insurance).
Current replacement funds:
Barmer replacement funds |
DAK health |
Commercial Health Insurance Fund |
HEK - Hanseatic Health Insurance Fund |
Commercial health insurance - KKH |
Techniker Krankenkasse
Former substitute funds:
Braunschweiger |
Brühler |
Book printer |
Gardener |
Gmünder |
Hamburg Munchener |
HZK |
KEH |
Fields of lights |
Neptune