Reconstruction and Cold War in Germany by Armin Grünbacher

Author:Armin Grünbacher [Grünbacher, Armin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General
ISBN: 9781351150620
Google: Fp1ADwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-11-28T01:31:47+00:00

Another means to encourage miners to stay was of course pay incentives. When the Nazis had stopped wage increases in 1936 a miner’s average gross pay per hour was RM 1. By 1948 it had increased to DM 1.21 and to DM 2.07 in 1952 and eventually to DM 2.20 in 195472. Miners’ wages were traditionally amongst the highest labour wages in Germany but with the iron and steel sector booming and short of labour, the steel plants could and did offer similarly high wages. Consequently, by 1955 the miners left the pits in increasing numbers to earn the same money for less dangerous and less hard work and most certainly under working conditions which were more favourable than those under-ground73.

The loss of trained labour naturally meant a reduction in productivity and output for the collieries. But with the coal price still fixed, the Unternehmens-verband Ruhrbergbau (UVR), the mines’ employers association, was hardly able to grant the 12 per cent pay rise demanded by the miners’ union in 1955. Despite this, the wage claim was not criticised by the UVR: it was perhaps even secretly welcomed since it gave the pit managers a chance to call for another increase in the coal price. The pay rise would have increased miners’ average hourly pay to DM 2.60. The resulting increased costs plus some extra, the managers hoped, would be covered by a rise of the coal price. Both the miners’ union and the UVR passed the problem to the politicians. Erhard knew that the miners’ wages had to rise to keep them in the pits but he also knew that the average price for coal would rise from DM 62.40 in 1954 to DM 68.60 per ton, increasing first electricity prices and then reduce the margins of the iron and steel industry before it would affect the rest of the economy. In addition, a pay rise for the miners would trigger demands for wage rises in other sectors74. As a response to this wage crisis and to avoid the negative effects of a direct pay rise, the federal government and the government of North Rhine Westphalia started to directly subsidise miners’ wages in October 1956. The so-called Bergmannslohn (miner’s wage) added up to DM 2.50 to a miner’s daily pay at the expense of DM 200 million a year for the tax payer and put the miners back at the top of the wage scale. In addition to this the collieries were allowed a special depreciation for underground machinery and a 6.5 per cent reduction of the Knappschaftsbeiträge, the special miners’ pension funds, again at the taxpayers’ expense. It is doubtful whether the Knappschaften at this stage really needed this subsidy for in November that year they lent the KfW DM 3 million for 15 years75. It was in actual fact nothing but a substitute to reduce wage costs (Lohnersatz).

In 1956 Erhard and the UVR eventually reached their main objective, the abolition of the price fixing by the High Authority and the German government.

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