Association of German clerks
The Association of German Retail Clerks (including the Association of German Retail Clerks, Leipzig , VDH) was a 1881 to 1920 existing association of persons working in commercial workers ( clerks ) to create self-help institutions and to enforce labor law aims. The VDH was a forerunner of the union federation of employees .
history
In 1881, 25 sales assistants came together in Leipzig to found a professional association. Since they had the whole of Germany in mind for their association, they made an appeal to all professional colleagues. The goals of the association were named:
- Support in the event of illness or death,
- Job vacancy support
- Granting loans in emergencies,
- free proof of employment by the association,
- Legal protection in the event of disputes arising from the employment relationship,
- Improvement of salary and employee conditions,
- Raising the overall status by regulating the apprenticeship system, the issue of female staff and working hours.
The appeal was received throughout Germany, and district associations were founded. In 1902 the number of members of the association was 57,000, fell to 23,000 in the First World War and then rose to 122,000. Numerous goals from the call were implemented. First, an employment agency was set up across the entire Reich, along with unemployment benefits and legal protection. With separate contributions, a health insurance fund was created in 1883, an old age and disability fund in 1885 and an orphan's fund in 1886.
The annual membership fee was initially 6 marks , later 3 marks and then rose to 18 marks by 1914. From 1885 the association published its own newspaper, the Association Papers .
As early as 1884, the association had spoken out in favor of the creation of commercial arbitration tribunals to resolve labor law disputes, which were implemented in the form of the commercial courts in 1904. From 1885 he advocated the Sunday rest in trade, which was finally achieved in 1892 with the amendment to the trade regulation amendment relating to trade .
Representatives of the VDH were appointed as experts in the commission for the commercial code of 1897. The association played a very important role in the establishment of the salaried employee insurance , which was first drawn up in the Insurance Act for Salaried Employees (VGfA) of December 20, 1911.
In the years 1914–1917, the VDH erected an administration building on Zeitzer Strasse (today Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse ) in Leipzig , which is still there today. In 1899 the association built a rest home in Niederschlema in the Ore Mountains .
In 1919, the Association of Clerks, in a call for a “Unified Association”, initially aimed at the cooperation of related associations with the aim of unifying them. The union federation of white-collar workers emerged from the eventual merger of the associations in November 1920.
literature
- Josef Reif : Association of German clerks in Leipzig. In: Ludwig Heyde (Hrsg.): International dictionary of trade unions . Vol. 2. Berlin, 1932 pp. 1865–1867 (PDF file)
Web links
- On the role of the VDH in the formation of the trade union federation of employees (The Federal Archives)
- Documents and newspaper articles on the Association of German Handlers in the 20th Century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
Individual evidence
- ^ Association sheets at libraries of the University of Heidelberg
- ^ Wolfgang Hocquél : Leipzig. Architecture from the Romanesque to the present. Passage-Verlag, Leipzig 2001, ISBN 3-932900-54-5 , p. 185
- ↑ Freiepresse.de