New Perspectives for the Liberation of Women by Stefan Engel & Monika Gärtner-Engel

Author:Stefan Engel & Monika Gärtner-Engel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Neuer Weg
Published: 2016-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

1 year-end figures in each case

2 as percentage of the dependently employed (blue- and white-collar workers and civil servants)

Source: DGB Executive Board; Labor and Social Statistics of the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs; our own computations

Whereas 3,890,000 women were organized in DGB unions in 1991, in 1998 it was only 2,534,000. The 35 percent drop in women’s membership was appreciably more than the 28 percent loss of men members.

These membership losses in the DGB unions and especially among women cannot be explained simply on the basis of rising unemployment, as several official statements coming from union headquarters try to do. For one thing, women’s share of the actively employed continues to rise. For another, unionization levels are clearly on the wane in the factories, too. For instance, the “Report to the 15th IG Metall Women’s Conference in 1995,” p. 11, states:

Since 1986, the number of jobs in the metalworking industry has declined by 9.5 percent; membership has declined by 5 percent, and membership in the factories, by 14.8 percent.

The main reasons for the decline in membership in the unions are not unemployment and structural changes in the German economy. The reasons are to be found in the policy of class collaboration between the monopoly associations and the union leadership. In the nineties, the Rightist union leadership devoted itself to assisting in smoothly effecting mass layoffs, general wage reduction and dismantling of social benefits without a fight. Of course, for an increasing number of blue- and whitecollar people, this causes the class character and purpose of union organization to become blurred.

Among women, the rejection of petty-bourgeois feminism as new principle of union work is an added reason. The masses of women workers and women salary earners do not wish to compete with their men or quarrel with them over quota jobs or careers in companies or unions. They are interested in solving the real problems stemming from the double exploitation and oppression of women. But these problems play an increasingly smaller role in the unions’ work among women.

The criticism and rejection of petty-bourgeois feminism have repeatedly given rise to new initiatives for union work among women on the basis of struggle. The National Women’s Conference of the Metal Workers’ Union in 1995 was the first national union body to raise the demand for the 30-hour workweek with full wage compensation. This is an offensive demand to combat mass unemployment at the expense of the monopolies’ profits, one that invigorates the common struggle of men and women workers. But it is more than that. It has such great importance for women workers, the wives of workers and female salary earners also because it mitigates the “breaking test” to which they are put by the intensity of their work and facilitates their participation in political and cultural life.

When class consciousness awakened on a broad level in connection with the October 1996 strikes for the defense of continued wage payment in the event of illness, working women again came forward as an independent force.

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