Rezension: Die Stellung Berlins zu dem Tarifkampf des deutschen Baugewerbes im Jahre 1910

Emil Lederer: Review of Die Stellung Berlins zu dem Tarifkampf des deutschen Baugewerbes im Jahre 1910 (1910)

Lederer’s short review examines a pamphlet issued by the association of building firms in Berlin and its suburbs concerning the 1910 construction-industry lockout. Its significance lies in its evidence of divisions within the employers’ camp:

Diese Publikation ist deshalb von Bedeutung, weil sie einen trefflichen Einblick in die Strömungen, welche in der Arbeitgeberschaft vor und während der Aussperrung herrschten, gewährt.

English translation: This publication is significant because it affords an excellent insight into the currents which prevailed among the employers before and during the lock-out.

Lederer reads the pamphlet as confirmation of the explanation previously advanced in the Archiv’s “Sozialpolitische Chronik”: demands for centralized collective agreements served a strategy of enlarging the conflict sufficiently to crush the opposing side. His central conceptual distinction is between collective bargaining as a means of accommodating interests and organizational centralization as an instrument of power.

The review moves from this strategic interpretation to the Berlin employers’ dissent. While maintaining their position as employers, they judged the national federation’s demands incompatible with the idea of collective agreement and attributed them to Rhenish-Westphalian and industrial influences. Lederer reports that the pamphlet contests each demand as grounds for a lockout and praises the unions’ skill and restraint.

Als unanzweifelbares Dokument für die Strömungen in den Unternehmerkreisen wird die Schrift noch lange Anspruch auf Beachtung erheben können.

English translation: As an indubitable document of the currents in employer circles, the tract will long be able to lay claim to attention.

This documentary judgment leads to a sharper political conclusion. For Lederer, the limited reception of the Berlin position reveals the majority orientation of German employers’ organizations: power struggle rather than peaceful adjustment. Conversely, unions’ professed commitment to class struggle does not preclude practical readiness to compromise. The review’s force comes from using employers’ own internal criticism to challenge the identification of employer organization with negotiated industrial peace.