Labor Relations in Postwar Germany

After the last war, the reconstruction of German labor organization faced great difficulties but proceeded rapidly and along partly new lines, com pared with earlier decades. Once the Republic was established in 1949, the German Federation of Trade Unions (DGB) was created, uniting sixteen indus dustrial or multi-industrial unions including 87 per cent of seven million organ ized workers and pledged to a nonpartisan political policy. So far attempts to split the DGB have failed, but the effort to inject a political program, in par ticular by the Social Democratic party, may yet succeed. The author discusses these and other problems, such as collective bargaining, work councils and other forms of employee representation and participation, and the settlement of labor disputes.—Ed

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