German Association of foremen
The German Werkmeister-Verband ( DWV ), representing the interests of foremen in industry and related professions, was the oldest central union organization within the white-collar movement from 1884 to May 1933 .
Emergence
After local associations had merged, especially in the Rhineland, since the founding of the empire , the German Workers' Association was founded in Düsseldorf in 1884 . There he kept his seat permanently in order to emphasize the connection to the Rhenish-Westphalian industrial area . At the end of its founding year, DWV had 2,340 members.
Alignment and Development
Initially, the association focused on the economic self-help of its relatives and the maintenance of sociable coexistence. For example, a death and benefit fund was set up for the members and their widows and orphans. For the time it was very unusual that the wives of the members were involved in the life of the association. Soon, however, the DWV advocated that the protective provisions for commercial employees laid down in the Reichsgewerbeordnung at that time would also be extended to the foremen. In fact, in the 1880s and 1890s, some provisions of the trade regulations, in particular protection against dismissal, were improved in favor of the foremen, which was the first time that they were decoupled from the other company workers under social law. In 1907, a Werkmeister savings bank and a Werkmeister bookstore were founded. In 1910, the establishment of its own placement agency, which should enable unemployed masters to reject insufficiently paid positions, followed.
The DWV was part of the General Free Employees 'Association (AfA-Bund) founded on October 3, 1921 at the 1st AfA trade union congress in Düsseldorf as the successor organization to the Working Group of Independent Employees' Associations . In this union, it was one of the most authoritative and strongest organizations in the final phase of the Weimar Republic with around 130,000 members (1931).
In the course of the smashing of the trade unions by the National Socialist regime from May 1933, the German Werkmeister Association was first incorporated into the German Labor Front and then dissolved. In the tradition as a professional representative of the masters in industry, but not as a legal successor to the DWV, the Industriemeisterverband Deutschland eV was established in the young Federal Republic of Germany
Organ of publication
The organ of the DWV was the Deutsche Werkmeister-Zeitung .
Chairperson
- ???? - 1924: August Leonhardt
- 1922–1933: Hermann Buschmann (until 1924 as co-chair)
Literature (selection)
- Siegfried Aufhäuser : Deutscher Werkmeister-Verband (DWV.), In: Heyde, Ludwig (Hrsg.): International dictionary of trade unions, Berlin 1931, vol. 1, p. 392 f.