Stinnes Legien Agreement
The Stinnes-Legien Agreement (official: Statute for the Working Group of industrial and commercial employers and employees in Germany . ) Of 15 November 1918, a collective agreement (contract) between 21 commercial and industrial employers' associations and seven unions ( Free , Christian and Polish trade unions ). It owes its name to the two leading signatories: the Ruhr industrialist Hugo Stinnes and the chairman of the General Commission of the German Trade Unions Carl Legien , but on the employers' side it was also signed by Alfred Hugenberg (newspaper company), Friedrich Springorum ( Hoesch AG ), Hans von Raumer ( Zentralverband der German electrical engineering industry ), Carl Friedrich von Siemens , Walther Rathenau ( AEG ) and Ernst Borsig and on the employee side Adam Stegerwald ( Christian trade unions ), Gustav Hartmann ( Hirsch-Duncker trade unions ) and Anton Höfle ( German Association of Technicians ).
The employers' associations recognized the trade unions as representatives of the workforce (No. 1 of the agreement) and agreed to regulate the working conditions through collective agreements (No. 6 of the agreement; later called collective agreements ). At the same time, the employers agreed to set up workers' committees in the companies (No. 7 of the agreement; later referred to as works councils ) and to introduce the eight-hour day (No. 9 of the agreement). A central committee for the implementation of the agreement was established (Nos. 10 and 11 of the agreement), the decisions of which were to be binding (No. 12 of the agreement). For the unions, the agreement meant a socio-political breakthrough, because with it, large and heavy industry made a radical departure from its previous anti-union policy. If the state had recognized the unions with the auxiliary service law of December 5, 1916 as legitimate representatives of the interests of the workers, they were now accepted by the employers as collective bargaining partners.
At the same time, the partners of the agreement agreed a statute for the working group of industrial and commercial employers and employees in Germany. There the organs of the working group (central board and central committee) were determined and the structure in specialist groups (for every branch of industry or trade with more than 100,000 employees) and their organs determined (§ 2 of the statutes).
What was for the trade unions as a contract of fundamental importance for the change in the relationship between capital and labor, was for the entrepreneurs an emergency and expedient alliance. Fearing that their factories would socialize in the November Revolution, they signed the agreement a few days after the revolution broke out (November 9). "The big industrialists were extremely worried about a coming socialization [...] They were ready for anything, if only they kept their property."
Nonetheless, the agreement served as a template for the legal regulation of collective bargaining relations between trade unions and employers' associations - initially in the Weimar Republic ( regulation on collective agreements, workers' and salaried employees' committees and arbitration of labor disputes ) of December 23, 1918 and later in the United Economic Area and in of the Federal Republic of Germany ( Collective Agreement Act of April 9, 1949). It can therefore be understood as an early founding document of the social partnership , which only fully developed in the social order of the Federal Republic of Germany.
literature
- Gerald D. Feldman , Irmgard Steinisch: The Origins of the Stinnes-Legien Agreement. A documentation . In: IWK = International Scientific Correspondence on the History of the German Workers' Movement, issue 19/20, 1973, pp. 45-103.
- Gerald D. Feldman: German entrepreneurship between war and revolution. The creation of the Stinnes-Legien Agreement . In: Gerald D. Feldman: From World War I to the Great Depression. Studies on German economic and social history 1914–1932 . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1984, ISBN 3-525-35719-2 , pp. 100-127.
- Gerald Feldman and Irmgard Steinisch Industry and Trade Unions 1918-1924, The overwhelmed central working group . Stuttgart: Series of quarterly books for contemporary history , n. 50. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1985, pp. 135-137, ISBN 3-421-06258-7 PDF
- Dieter Krüger The Stinnes-Legien Agreement 1918-1924 . Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-428-15490-6 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Reichs-Arbeitsblatt (Volume XVI. - No. 12), 1918 p. 874 f.
- ↑ Reichsgesetzblatt (RGBl.) 1916 pp. 1333-1339
- ^ Reichs-Arbeitsblatt (Volume XVI. - No. 12), 1918 p. 874 f.
- ^ Arthur Rosenberg: History of the Weimar Republic . Edited by Kurt Kersten, EVA, Frankfurt am Main 1961, p. 8.
- ↑ Reichsgesetzblatt (RGBl.) 1918, pp. 1456 ff.
- ↑ Collective Agreement Act of April 9, 1949 . In: The President of the Economic Council (ed.): Law Gazette of the Administration of the United Economic Area 1949, Part 1. 1949 No. 11 , p. 55 ( online at the information system of the Hessian state parliament [PDF; 1.7 MB ]).