Mining Association
The Zechenverband was an association of employers in the Ruhr mining industry founded on January 22, 1908 . The aim of the association was to represent the common interests of the mining companies towards the workers and employees. In 1933 it was disbanded.
The seat of the association was Essen , because since 1858 the association for mining interests in the Oberbergamtsviertel Dortmund had also been located there. Members of the new association could only be mines that were also represented in the association for mining interests. In fact, the association was almost a sub-organization of the association, since the same people usually sat on both boards. Bergrat Paul Randebrock from 1909 to 1912 and Alfred Hugenberg from 1912 to 1925 were chairmen of both organizations. Hans von und zu Loewenstein was the managing director of the colliery association throughout its existence .
The organization followed on from various forerunners such as the strike insurance association, which was formed after the miners' strike of 1889 . The discussions about the establishment of an employers 'association had intensified again after the rise of the miners' unions in the 1890s and especially after the strike of 1905 . In addition to the general cooperation in questions of workers and employees, the association maintained strike insurance for the member companies. Since 1910 he also had a proof of work. This placement office for job seekers served not least to discipline the workforce. On the one hand, it should prevent the constant change of job and, on the other, contribute to weakening the trade unions.
Before the First World War, the association refused to cooperate with the trade unions. Only at the end of the war did this change against the background of the looming revolution in October 1918. After the establishment of the Central Working Group (ZAG), the colliery association represented the employers' side in the district group for the Rhenish-Westphalian coal mining of the Reich Mining Working Group. Even after the end of the ZAG in 1924, the association remained a collective bargaining partner of the unions until 1933. The colliery association acted as a donor for the business association to promote the intellectual reconstruction forces and thus for the Hugenberg concern .
With the end of the trade unions in May 1933, the abolition of collective bargaining autonomy and the formation of the Reichsstand of German Industry, the association had largely lost its main tasks. It was effectively dissolved towards the end of June 1933. The remaining tasks were taken care of by the association for mining interests, which also took over the association's assets.
literature
- Stefan Przigoda: Business associations in the Ruhr mining industry. On the history of the mining association and the colliery association 1858-1933. German Mining Museum, Bochum 2002, ISBN 3-921533-86-4 . (also dissertation, Ruhr University Bochum, 2002)
- Wilhelm Hermann, Gertrude Hermann: The old mines on the Ruhr. Past and future of a key technology. With a catalog of the "life stories" of 477 mines . (The Blue Books series). Verlag Langewiesche successor, Königstein im Taunus, 6th, expanded by an excursion to S. 216 and updated in energy policy parts edition 2008, ISBN 978-3-7845-6994-9 (with "section of a coal mine" and a "map of the Grubenfelder und Schachtanlagen ”from 1922 and a map of the location of the 128 mines that mined in 1958), pages 59–82, especially pp. 71–82.