Emil Lederer, Die Unternehmerorganisationen (1917)

Lederer’s German-language social-policy chronicle examines wartime employers’ organizations, principally in Germany, with a concluding Austrian comparison. Published in 1917, it traces organizational strength through strike insurance, employment exchanges, collective agreements, provision for disabled veterans, employer-supported unions, and salaried employees. Its central distinction is between workers’ temporary labor-market advantages and capital’s more durable institutional resources.

Organizational statistics require caution: declining membership or employment need not mean that employers’ associations have lost their capacity to act. Their machinery can survive wartime contraction and regain its reach as production expands. Workers’ organizations face a different difficulty:

Inzwischen hat sich die Mitgliederanzahl infolge weiterer Einziehungen und schwerer Organisierbarkeit der neuen weiblichen Arbeitskräfte erheblich weiter verringert.

English translation: In the meantime the number of members has diminished considerably further as a consequence of further call-ups and of the difficulty of organizing the new female labour force.

Military recruitment and difficulties organizing newly employed women weaken unions, whereas employers retain institutions capable of mobilizing their economic power. Strike-compensation arrangements and industrial coordination therefore remain significant even when ordinary industrial conflict is suspended. Lederer identifies a further tendency toward consolidation:

In derselben Richtung, auf Stärkung und Vereinheitlichung der Arbeitgeberorganisation, dürfte die Gründung des deutschen Industrierates wirken ¹⁸).

English translation: In the same direction, toward the strengthening and unification of the employers' organization, the founding of the German Industrial Council is likely to work 18).

Wartime welfare likewise has potentially lasting organizational effects. Assistance to workers’ families can serve humanitarian purposes while preserving enterprises’ connections with their experienced workforce:

Von den Arbeitgeberverbänden werden wiederholt die großen Aufwendungen hervorgehoben, welche industrielle Unternehmungen für die Kriegsunterstützungen an Angehörige ihrer einberufenen Arbeiter machen.

English translation: The employers' associations repeatedly emphasize the large outlays which industrial enterprises make for the war support payments to the dependants of their called-up workers.

Employment placement raises the related question of who controls access to work. Employers defend recruitment authority against arrangements that might constrain their selection of labor:

Insbesondere wird betont, daß der Unternehmer in der Lage sein müsse, die für seinen Betrieb geeignetsten Arbeiter auszuwählen.

English translation: In particular it is stressed that the employer must be in a position to select the workers most suitable for his enterprise.

For Lederer, this claim concerns more than administrative efficiency. Employment exchanges can regulate labor supply while preserving managerial discretion. Rehabilitation and placement of disabled veterans similarly combine assistance with recruitment for particular enterprises. Employers’ insistence on assessing capacity and remuneration themselves risks leaving vulnerable workers outside collective safeguards.

Collective agreements reveal how institutions change their practical meaning with economic circumstances. Wage rates that initially protected workers against reductions can restrain gains when labor becomes scarce and prices rise. Lederer acknowledges the contractual force of employers’ arguments but stresses that war transformed the conditions under which agreements were made. His proposal to distinguish fixed wages from a variable component linked to prices would address inflation while permitting reductions when prices fell. The dispute shows that support for binding agreements follows changing interests rather than permanent principles; it also exposes unions’ limited ability to prevent members from seeking higher individual wages.

Lederer connects workplace dependence with the possible expansion of employer-supported “yellow” unions, while acknowledging evidence of weak participation. Welfare provision, industrial concentration, and weakened independent organization may reinforce these associations. Resistance to independent salaried-employee unions extends the conflict over organizational autonomy beyond manual workers. Wartime cooperation thus offers no assurance of shared authority: employers can acknowledge common interests while retaining managerial command.

The ideological discussion examines how industrial contributions to the war become arguments for existing power. Employers present profits, labor recruitment, and managerial autonomy as national necessities while condemning workers’ pursuit of material advantage. Appeals to military discipline demand obedience in production, yet employers continue to insist on profitability. Lederer interprets these tensions as the elevation of sectional interests into general obligations, while distinguishing the employers’ press and its annexationist demands from industrial opinion as a whole.

Austria qualifies the German pattern. Although evidence on employers’ associations is limited, cartellization and union weakness favor industry. Smaller trades, disadvantaged by concentration and access to raw materials, can find common ground with workers over social protections that also limit large firms’ competitive advantages. Such accommodation remains contingent: renewed labor conflict could restore employer solidarity. Throughout, Lederer separates market conditions, organizational capacity, and ideological claims. Temporary wage gains and declarations of national unity can coexist with consolidated employer power rather than an enduring redistribution of authority.