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Collective Bargaining or Legal Enactment? The Austrian Development1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Charles A. Gulick
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In the final years of the Nineteenth Century, when Sidney and Beatrice Webb crystallized parts of their research and of current thought in the terms “Method of Collective Bargaining” and “Method of Legal Enactment”, the ideas embodied in those terms were the foci of hot debates among working people and their leaders in the greater part of the western world. Gompers and his lieutenants in the adolescent American Federation of Labor (AFL) had convinced themselves that the federal character of the government of the United States plus the power of the judiciary to declare laws unconstitutional formed an insurmountable roadblock to comprehensive, effective use of legal enactment; but the dissenting voices were by no means muted. The leaders of the burgeoning “New Unionism” in England sought to combine more militant collective bargaining with more emphasis on attempts to secure protective legislation - to the evident displeasure of adherents of the aging “New Model”. In France, the infant General Confederation of Labor (CGT) scornfully rejected both of the Webbs' methods in favor of revolutionary syndicalism. And in Germany the workers' movements strode forward uncowed by the stick of Bismarck's anti-Socialist law and unseduced by the carrot of his social legislation.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 2 , Issue 3 , December 1957 , pp. 351 - 371
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1957

References

page 352 note 1 For some members conditions of employment are established by laws, ordinances, and service regulations which are not negotiated in the usual sense.

page 353 note 1 Deutschösterreichischer Gewerkschaftskongress, 1923, Protokoll, p. 238.Google Scholar With the passage of years the popular “quotation” frequently became “… to sever them means death for both.”

page 354 note 1 Deutsch, Julius, Geschichte der österreichischen Gewerkschaftsbewegung, vol. I, Wien 1929, p. 165.Google Scholar Deutsch, an outstanding historian of Austrian labor, notes that to the best of his knowledge this was the first time the collective contract appeared in a list of trade-union objectives.

page 354 note 2 Arbeitsstatistisches Amt im Handelsministerium, Die kollektiven Arbeits- und Lohnverträge in Österreich im Jahre 1906, Wien 1908, pp. 1–2.Google Scholar

page 354 note 3 Fehlinger, Hans and Klenner, Fritz, Die österreichische Gewerkschaftsbewegung, Wien 1948, p. 112.Google Scholar In a later publication, Die Österreichischen Gewerkschaften, vol. I, Wien 1951, p. 274Google Scholar, Klenner wrote that differences of opinion “on principle” about the purpose fulness of collective labor agreements “never existed in the Austrian trade union movement”. Evidence from other sources, such as the proceedings of trade union conferences and the histories of individual unions, demonstrates that the later statement is too sweeping.

page 355 note 1 Deutsch, , op. cit., vol. I, p. 383.Google Scholar

page 355 note 2 Klenner, , op. cit., vol. I, p. 274Google Scholar; Fehlinger, and , Klenner, op. cit., p. 112.Google Scholar

page 356 note 1 Klenner, , op. cit., vol. I, pp. 298 ff.Google Scholar Unfortunately, no source available to me specifies what Hueber meant by “nonsensical rubbish.”

page 357 note 1 In the encyclical Rerum Novarum of May 15, 1891, as translated and published by the Catholic Social Guild of Oxford under the title The Workers' Charter in 1933. See pp. 42, 12, and the general discussion of associations.

page 358 note 1 No reliable figures on the number of firms or handicraftsmen in this group could be found; its members employed “about 47,000” work people.

page 360 note 1 Except for 1911 when no data are available. Cf. Klenner, , op. cit., vol. I, pp. 283, 284, 574–380Google Scholar; Deutsch, , op. cit., vol. I, pp. 305, 439 ff.Google Scholar; Arbeitsstatistisches Amt im Handelsministerium, Die kollektiven Arbeits- und Lohnverträge in Österreich, 1906, pp. 1–28Google Scholar; ibid., 1907, pp. 1–26; ibid., 1908, pp. 1–25; ibid., 1909, pp. 1–45; ibid., 1910, pp. 1–49; ibid., 1912, pp. 1–18.

page 360 note 2 Hemala, Franz, Geschichte der Gewerkschaften (2d. ed.), Wien 1930, pp. 142, 306Google Scholar, passim.

page 363 note 1 For the texts of the laws see Staatsgesetzblatt, 1919, Nr. 283, and ibid., 1920, Nr. 16. In the immediately preceding discussion I have borrowed from my previous publication, Austria from Habsburg to Hitler, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles 1948, vol. I, esp. pp. 202–214; 219–222. Additional material, particularly on the importance of the works councils, their relation to the unions, and the steps by which they became primarily the instruments of the unions, will be found there.

page 363 note 2 Pertinax [Otto Leichter], Österreich 1934, Zurich 1935, p. 28; Jahrbuch 1928 des Bundes der freien Gewerkschaften Österreichs (cited hereafter as Gewerkschaftsbund, Jahrbuch), p. 65; ibid., 1929, pp. 193 ff., esp. p. 197; ibid., 1930, pp. 162 ff.; ibid., 1931, pp. 157 ff.; ibid., 1932, pp. 66 ff.

page 364 note 1 For details see my previously cited publication, esp. vol. I, pp. 272–290.

page 365 note 1 Klenner, , op. cit., vol. II, Wien 1953, pp. 1601–1611.Google Scholar

page 365 note 2 Der österreichische Arbeiter und Angestellte, Nov. 12, 1945, pp. I, 3Google Scholar; Dec. 12, 1945, p. 3; Jan. 12, 1946, pp. 2, 3. Because of the paper shortage this ÖGB publication appeared irregularly. From later generalized reports it is clear that almost all the unions were urging the use of joint contracts from the first days of liberation.

page 366 note 1 For a highly interesting and informative analysis of this and the four subsequent wageprice agreements see Edelman, Murray, National Economic Planning by Collective Bargaining, Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations, University of Illinois, 1954.Google Scholar

page 368 note 1 Bundesgesetzblatt, 1947Google Scholar, Nr. 76 (cited hereafter as BGBI.); ÖGB, Tätigkeitsbericht’ 1945–1947, pp. 1/28, 1/70, 1/71; ibid., 1951, p. 508; ibid., 1952, pp. 105–106; letter from Proksch, Anton, at the time General Secretary of the ÖGB, to me, October 10, 1955.Google Scholar

page 369 note 1 Op. cit., p. 21; see also pp. 59, 63, 71.

page 370 note 1 For one of several summaries of such ideas see Klenner, , op. cit., vol. II, pp. 1731 ff.Google Scholar

page 371 note 1 Österreichisches Statistisches Zentralamt, Statistische Nachrichten, vol. 10, n.s. (June, 1955). p. 233.Google Scholar Cited hereafter by title only. In 1955 the ÖGB decided to urge the amendment of the law to permit unions to make contracts with individual enterprises. The purposes were to check the tendencies of the works councils toward autonomous actions and to improve the status and prestige of the unions among the workers. ÖGB Kongress, 1955, Protokoll, p. 276; letters to me from union officials.