Making Up for Holidays in Post-Liberation France

In post-liberation France, everything was geared to production for the ongoing Allied war effort. That meant that much of the punishing labor rhythm introduced under the German occupation was initially kept in place. Most notably, the working week remained fixed at 48 hours. The famous “law of 40 hours,” the crown jewel of the Popular Front government that had been repealed by the Vichy regime in 1941, was only reintroduced in February 1946; and even then, many exemptions remained for industries vital to the reconstruction of France.Footnote ²⁶ If these productivist measures had the full backing of communist and socialist trade unionists at the helm of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), they were anathema to miners in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais basin. In the wake of the September 1944 liberation, several pits refused to re-launch extraction under a 48-hour week and the immediate application of the “law of 40 hours” became a recurrent demand during workers’ demonstrations.Footnote ²⁷

A more protracted conflict over working hours in the mines developed over the course of the winter. After miners had stayed away from work on Saint Barbara’s Day (December 4),Footnote ²⁸ Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day, holidays that had been observed in interwar France, the Ministry of Industrial Production ordered them to make up the lost shifts on three free Sundays across the first months of 1945. The first of these Sunday shifts, to make up the hours lost on New Year’s Day, was scheduled for January 7. The news that New Year’s Day would retroactively not be treated as a public holiday in liberated France, which only reached miners when the ruling of the ministry was posted at their pits on January 5, caused considerable consternation in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais basin. There was a distinct peak in strike activity on January 5 and 6. Miners at the Dourges pits in Oignies went on strike on January 6 over their meager food rations and only returned to work on January 8, thereby effectively canceling the make-up shift.Footnote ²⁹ Elsewhere, angry miners did specifically cite the Sunday shift among their grievances. At the Anzin pits, approximately half of the workforce refused to descend on January 5, arguing that the bonus for Sunday work did not suffice.Footnote ³⁰ On the same day, miners at the Calonne-Ricouard pits in Bruay-Artois threatened to walk out, complaining that no one had told them that New Year’s Day would have to be made up and that they were now presented with a fait accompli.Footnote ³¹

In response to this particular strike threat, the local CGT and Communist Party section published a placard calling on miners to work on January 7. It denounced the “defeatist and anti-national talk,” urging miners not to show up for the Sunday shift, that was going around in the town. This sort of talk was the work of “agents of the fifth column,” it went on, who were “speculating on the situation in our country, on the lack of food, etc.” With reference to the French forced laborers and prisoners of war who still found themselves in the Reich, it insisted that there was no place “for procrastinations of this kind when there are more than three million of our children, of our brothers, suffering and dying behind barbed wire.” It would therefore be “a fratricidal crime not to take up our tools and shorten their suffering and deportation.”Footnote ³²

Despite such appeals, the January 7 shift ended in failure as more than half of the miners failed to turn up.Footnote ³³ Miners made it clear that the desperate food situation, especially the lack of fats (meat, butter, etc.) that were so vital to laborers in physically demanding jobs, hardly warranted the extra effort on their part. After the German occupation, which had seen the miners of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region go on strike against Sunday and holiday shifts in the autumn of 1943, many also rejected Sunday work out of principle.Footnote ³⁴

The question of how to proceed after the first Sunday shift had fallen through divided employers and trade unions. The mining companies urged the government to scrap the two remaining make-up shifts, arguing that it had been “a psychological error” to ask miners to work on Sundays in view of the extreme material hardships.Footnote ³⁵ The trade unions, conversely, doubled down on both their insistence on further make-up shifts and their criticism of the patriotism among miners, whom they reproached for having turned up in large numbers for Sunday shifts in the earlier years of the German occupation but now refusing to put in the hours in liberated France. A manifesto published by the Anzin branch of the CGT Mining Union branded the January 7 shift “a complete fiasco” and lamented that miners had “let down the trade unions, the [employers’] federation, the public authorities, as well as the population.” The manifesto went on to explain that miners were asked to work extra shifts not only to speed up the return of prisoners of war and deportees but also to press their historical demands for the nationalization of the mines. Having “placed its confidence in the patriotism of miners,” the national unity government under Charles de Gaulle had taken “a big step in that direction,”Footnote ³⁶ but that advance was now jeopardized by miners “forgetful of their duties [in] refusing to work.” If miners wanted to play “a predominant role in the direction of public affairs tomorrow,” admonished the manifest, “they must play the same role in the economic reconstruction of our country today.” It was for that reason that miners should “ignore the insidious propaganda” spread by the “fifth column” and “all turn up […] to make up the second and third shifts.”Footnote ³⁷

In the wake of the first make-up shift, this putative “fifth column” was increasingly constructed as being of Polish descent. Gossip was rife that it was predominantly Polish miners, who had settled in Nord-Pas-de-Calais during the 1920s, who were absent on January 7. This was taken as an affront, especially as these miners, many of whom had worked in the Ruhr prior to coming to France and were known locally as Westphaliens, had purportedly been more willing than their French counterparts to work on Sundays during the occupation.Footnote ³⁸ To ensure better turnout among Polish miners for the second make-up shift, the Polish Committee of National Liberation in France, the communist-led organization with links to the provisional Polish government in Lublin, was enlisted in the campaign. In an appeal published in one of the main regional newspapers, the organization warned that it was imperative that “not one Pole will be absent from work” during the second make-up shift. “By fulfilling this duty to our Motherland and to France, we will contribute to defeating the Hitlerist beast, so as to end the war as quickly as possible and to promptly rebuild Poland and France.”Footnote ³⁹

If the aim of this intervention was to connect the fates of France and Poland, the efforts to single out Poles as idlers also served the opposite purpose. By linking absenteeism to foreigners and foreignness, and to Polishness in particular, the point was also to mobilize French miners behind the make-up shifts. Such attempts to divide mining communities along national lines appeared to find fertile ground in post-liberation northern France. The shop-floor purge had caused conflicts between French and Polish miners at several pits, with French miners refusing to work under accused Polish foremen and vice-versa. There was also widespread anti-Polish sentiment in the non-mining population. Local outrage over the refusal of miners, who received higher rations than other groups, to work the January 7 shift was directed primarily at Poles. “When will we finally get rid of these rotten apples [sale graine]?” was the “most-heard expression,” with calls for measures to be taken against “bad Frenchmen” and “foreign delinquents.”Footnote ⁴⁰

Yet, the efforts to redefine the make-up shifts as a litmus test of Frenchness or indeed Polishness failed to secure a better turnout for the second Sunday shift. Originally scheduled for January 21, this shift was postponed to February 4 to allow trade unionists more time to win over miners to Sunday work. In the intervening weeks, trade union leaders launched a wide-ranging campaign in favor of the make-up shifts: the secretaries of the mining union had placards posted at all pits, toured the basin to address meetings, and wrote various articles in the local press. Their message, however, remained narrowly framed around the nation and the war effort. The “German offensive” (i.e., the ongoing Battle of the Bulge), noted one tract written by a communist trade union leader, “has proven that we were right when we told miners that all have to produce to end the war.” It called on miners to “think carefully” whether “one day of make-up work can be called a sacrifice compared to the sacrifices made by those who have lived in illegality for four years, not knowing what the next day will bring, compared to the immense effort that Soviet workers are making every day to bring forward the end of the war, [and] while Allied soldiers are weathering the elements and machine gun fire to defend our territory.” For that reason, miners were urged not to listen to the “bad shepherds” who were “doing the work […] of the fifth column,” forget about their “little everyday concerns,” and “all work towards the same goal: to produce, for to produce is to fight.”Footnote ⁴¹

If trade union leaders were confident that miners were “responding favorably” to their appeals and that there would be “only a few rare abstentions” on February 4,Footnote ⁴² the experience of shop-floor trade unionists charged with making sure their squads would turn up for the Sunday shift was rather different. When a shop steward at the Sainte-Marie pits in Auberchicourt tried to convince miners to come in on February 4, he was shouted down as a “collaborator” and a “sell-out.”Footnote ⁴³

To make matters worse, the February 4 shift had to be postponed at the eleventh hour, this time to February 18, after the French Railways communicated that there would not be sufficient capacity on the day to transport the coal. In fact, transport problems were the cause of coal stacking at the pitheads for weeks, causing much anger among miners as winter coal had still not been distributed to the population.Footnote ⁴⁴ It was perhaps in response to such grievances that the trade unions changed tune in their efforts to convince miners to work on February 18. In the notice that appeared in the regional socialist newspaper on February 17, grand themes like ending the war or nationalizing the mines were eschewed. Instead, the notice called on miners to “work an extra shift so as to provide the population of our region with coal.” There were to be “no defections” on the day, it pleaded, as miners would be “keen to demonstrate that they are sympathetic to the sad plight of our population.”Footnote ⁴⁵ By the same token, the trade unions tried to deliver on some of the bread-and-butter demands of miners that they had so haughtily dismissed in the weeks before. After miners complained that the terrible quality of rationed soap exposed them to “all sorts of epidermal diseases,” a delegation of the mining union intervened with the American command center in Valenciennes on February 16 to secure an additional distribution of soap from military stock.Footnote ⁴⁶

It was too little, too late; the February 18 shift was marred by significant absenteeism once more. Local communists again explained their failure to convince miners to work on Sundays in national terms. The communist press singled out a miner-delegate from Béthune, the major agglomeration for Polish migrants to Pas-de-Calais whose mining colonies were known as “little Poland,” who had called on his comrades not to work. It demanded that “this saboteur of work and production be removed from our site and forceful action be taken against this bad Frenchman.”Footnote ⁴⁷ Yet, police reports noted that non-attendance had been pronounced not only among Polish miners but also among younger miners, who preferred “to go the movies or play sports” on their free Sunday.Footnote ⁴⁸ There were important overlaps between these two groups, as the children of interwar Polish migrants made up a considerable part of the new recruits for the mining sector in northern France.Footnote ⁴⁹ Yet, it was their youth rather than their provenance that transformed this group into a disruptive force in the pits. Already before the first make-up shift, observers had noted that mounting absenteeism among young miners, “irrespective of whether they are foreign or French,” was reflective of an “untoward state of mind” within this group.Footnote ⁵⁰ This went back to the liberation days, when young miners had called established pit hierarchies into question: taking the lead in the purge of foremen and managers, shouting down bosses and trade union delegates, and staging sit-in strikes even when their more senior colleagues wanted to work. The mining companies complained bitterly about their youngest employees, citing the “violence,” “fickleness,” and “herd mentality” of young miners.Footnote ⁵¹ Such views were increasingly shared by trade unionists and older miners.

The absenteeism of their younger colleagues added insult to injury for the older miners who did report for work on February 18. Not that their presence was the product of productivist enthusiasm or patriotic zest, but for these miners “trade union discipline” and the concomitant “fear of being blacklisted by their delegates” still meant something.Footnote ⁵² In fact, older miners used the February 18 shift to send trade unionists the message that they needed to get their house in order if they wanted to count on their continued support. During an impromptu shop-floor meeting prior to the morning shift at the Sainte-Marie pits, which “epitomized the state of mind and desires of miners at all pits,” miners made it very clear that “this would be the last time that they would agree to make up [a shift] in such a fashion.”Footnote ⁵³

In these circumstances, the third shift to be made up, originally scheduled for March 18, was a non-starter. A mid-March survey of the mines that fell under the Valenciennes Group, showed that none of its more than one hundred pits was planning a shift on March 18. Miners had “clearly spoken out against” work on this day. With the weather finally improving, many wanted to work in their gardens; the potatoes and vegetables grown in which were a lifeline for hungry families. If the shift was to go ahead, warned the employers, “we must certainly count on a very strong irregularity.” In the light of “the experiences to date” and the “state of mind among miners,” they were most reluctant to exert pressure on miners to come in on March 18.Footnote ⁵⁴

Where the mining companies had given up on extra shifts for the duration of the war, the communist majority in the CGT was determined to give the idea one more go. After the effective cancelation of the March 18 shift, the mining union launched a fresh campaign encouraging miners to work on May 1. Speaking at a trade union meeting at the Crespin pits, the president of the Regional Committee of the Mining Union and communist MP for Douai Henri Martel ordered miners to work on the holiest of days for the French labor movement.Footnote ⁵⁵ This “gesture” on their part could shorten the war “by perhaps an hour or half a day,” thereby “saving a few thousands lives.” He reminded those present that May 1 had “never been a holiday, but a day of struggle and demands.” As production equaled (class) struggle in the post-liberation communist lexicon, that meant “we have to work on that day and meet in the wash room to discuss our demands.” If miners felt that their meager rations did not justify an extra effort, they should just think of their “comrades in Southern Africa [i.e., in the Sub-Saharan French colonies that had pledged allegiance to the government in exile of Charles de Gaulle], who operated mines and factories at full capacity and received only six kilograms of grain per month to feed themselves.” It was by such sacrifices that the war was being won, argued Martel. For “in London, Washington, and Russia, everyone always works on May 1 and it is for that reason that Hitler has never conquered the mines in the Urals.”Footnote ⁵⁶

In their focus on a faraway battlefield and dismissal of the everyday concerns of miners, such appeals replicated all the mistakes that had also doomed trade union efforts to win over miners to the make-up shifts. It is small wonder that the CGT had to abandon its campaign for a shift on May 1. After the government had declared Easter Monday (April 2) a legal holiday that would not have to be made up, the idea that miners would have to work on May Day became untenable. If some in the trade union movement still hoped to make-up the lost hours on a later date, it was clear that “nothing would come” of these plans and the trade unions had little choice but to celebrate May 1 in the traditional way as “a day of demands.”Footnote ⁵⁷

The Allied victory in Europe on May 8 made further make-up shifts to prop up the war effort moot. It is tempting to view the entire struggle over Sunday shifts in liberated France as an ultimately irrelevant prelude to the more successful “battle for coal” that was launched after the end of the war. In this narrative, PCF Secretary General Maurice Thorez appears as a deus ex machina in the summer of 1945 to finally reconcile miners to productivism. His famous July 1945 speech to miners in Waziers, in which he described production as “the highest form of class duty, of your duty as Frenchmen,” has often been credited with laying the groundwork for two years of relative industrial calm.Footnote ⁵⁸

Yet, the Waziers speech cannot be seen in isolation from the failed communist approach towards rank-and-file miners that had been on display during the campaign for the make-up shifts. Thorez’s address was not simply a more convincing iteration of the patriotic-productivist argument that communist trade unionists had been making since the liberation, but a conscious attempt to take sides in the conflicts that had been souring the mood in the pits and make amends with older miners. In fact, the choice for the small mining settlement of Waziers to deliver this seminal speech was linked to its status as a reliable communist stronghold, whose miners had more obligingly followed the party line than their counterparts elsewhere in the basin.Footnote ⁵⁹ Thorez had warm words for such older stalwarts of the labor movement. “Old miners love their profession,” he told his audience, “like seamen love theirs.” The same could hardly be said for younger miners, who were notable mainly for their absence from work. “People are absent for no good reason,” he scolded, “and the miner who loves his work knows very well that so many absences cause a complete disorganization of work.” It had to be “over and done with such methods, because these amount to anarchy and the encouragement of laziness.”

The real significance of the Waziers speech, therefore, lies in its success in bringing older miners to the “battle for coal” by holding out the prospect of a restoration of generational hierarchies on the shop floor. To be sure, absenteeism did not disappear overnight, but there was a palpable sense of a return to normality, capped off by a much-publicized and highly symbolic visit of Thorez to apprentice miners at the very Escarpelle pits that had been the object of his derision in Waziers.Footnote ⁶¹

The privileged position of older miners also found its expression in the housing question. The Miner’s Statute (Statut du Mineur), which bore the signature of communist ministers Ambroise Croizat and Auguste Lecoeur and was adopted in June 1946, codified the right of free lifelong lodging for “heads of or providers for families” in company housing.Footnote ⁶² While young miners were compensated with a monthly housing indemnity, this meant little in an inflationary economy in which adequate housing was extremely scarce. They were often left languishing in barracks that had hastily been constructed for unaccompanied new recruits from other regions. As one miner who moved into such accommodations with twenty-three others recalled: “The streets were not done, there was no running water, plenty of mud, we did not even have a chimney.”Footnote ⁶³

In these circumstances, young miners jumped at the opportunity to express their discontent during the communist-led “insurrectionary strikes” of 1947 and 1948. Much like in 1944/1945, young miners were often the first to go on strike and were at the forefront of skirmishes with strikebreakers and the riot police.Footnote ⁶⁴ The communist reliance on such young miners in controversial strike votes, in which underage miners were allowed to vote for strikes by show of hand, opened the field for the socialist leaders of the breakaway Force Ouvrière (FO) union to associate communism with the radicalism of youth. To be sure, their claims that the strikes were the product of the communist manipulation of young and foreign miners were spurious; where secret votes were held, strike ballots still passed (albeit by a smaller margin) and severe curbs on the voting rights of young miners could not prevent a decisive CGT victory over the FO in the delegate elections of 1949.Footnote ⁶⁵ It was clear, though, that it was now the socialists leading the charge against young miners, as the draconian measures against absenteeism in the 1948 amendments to the Miner’s Statute by socialist minister Robert Lacoste attest.

If the concomitant identification of communism with young miners was due in part to the dynamics of the insurrectionary strikes, the virulence of which took even communist leaders by surprise, it was also the consequence of a conscious decision to embrace younger activists in the polarized landscape of the early Cold War. In the debate within the CGT leadership after the defeat of the insurrectionary strikes, the older trade unionists who had led the way in the wake of the war came under attack for their supposed “bureaucratism” and hesitancy in the face of the “combativity of the masses.” At the same time, it was argued that more militant young trade unionists, frequently hailing from the PCF youth organization, had won “the confidence of workers” and should be given the opportunity to lead now that post-war cooperation was giving way to Cold War confrontation.Footnote ⁶⁶ This round of self-criticism must be seen in the context of the new course within the international communist movement, which saw the Soviets and eastern European communists heap opprobrium on the “parliamentary illusions” that had guided the PCF in the post-war era.Footnote ⁶⁷ The abandonment of the politics of national compromise associated with older communists for the militant dynamism offered by their younger comrades also found its reflection in the adulation of young workers who were “building socialism” behind the Iron Curtain. A glowing report of a trip to Czechoslovakia in the PCF newspaper quoted a proud mother from Kladno, whose son had “already donated 400 hours of labor to the Republic. And he is only 14 years old.”Footnote ⁶⁸ It is to the generational tensions unleashed by the deployment of such youngsters to the Czechoslovak mines that we will now turn our attention.

The Eight-Hour Saturday in Czechoslovakia

The desperate need for coal to put the economy back on its feet had seen the Czechoslovak government steadily increase demands on miners. Following the exodus of forced laborers from the Ostrava-Karviná basin in the wake of the liberation, extraction in the main coalfield of the country had fallen well below wartime levels.Footnote ⁶⁹ By August 1945, therefore, the Ministry of Industry began pressing the nationalized mines that had been coalesced under the newly-established Ostrava-Karviná Coal Mines corporation (OKD) to mandate overtime. Although the ministry projected extraction would rise in September, it was clear that this “would suffice neither for the needs of the railways, nor for the sugar refineries, nor for the threshing machines, nor for the bakeries, and not for domestic heating either.” To make up for the shortfall, it urged the OKD to organize extra shifts on every second Sunday in the months of September, October, and November. Failing that, it wanted the mines to extend the regular Saturday shift from six to eight hours.Footnote ⁷⁰

It seems that miners initially responded to these calls to contribute to the reconstruction of Czechoslovakia. The campaign for pits to “donate” the first ton of coal produced after the liberation “to the Republic,” in other words for miners to effectively extract that ton for free, was a success and the Sunday shifts in the autumn of 1945 were likewise well-attended.Footnote ⁷¹ Yet, in a situation of enduring hardship, miners’ willingness to put in an extra effort was beginning to wear thin by mid-1946. When the OKD ordered extra shifts on Ascension Day and Whit Monday as well as on various Sundays to provide coal for the struggling textile industry, the works council at the Jan Karel pits in Karviná pointed to increasing discontent among its workforce. Miners were protesting the fact that they had to work on “holidays recognized by the state.” Similarly, they refused to sacrifice their free Sunday for the textile sector, as “workers do not have enough money to purchase basic necessities.” For that reason, the works council called for “such decisions always to be discussed and approved in advance” by the Regional Committee of the Mining Union in order for them to be “properly sanctioned.”Footnote ⁷²

It was the imposition of another change to the schedule in the mines that was to unleash a far more substantial protest movement at the turn of the year. That these protests and strikes, running from early December 1946 to late January 1947, have not received the scholarly attention that their length and impact warrant is perhaps because of their seemingly trivial cause.Footnote ⁷³ The spirit of the forty-six-hour working week was left untouched, but part of the Two Year Plan (1947–48), announced by the communist-led coalition government in the autumn of 1946, replaced the six-hour Saturday shift in the mines with three eight-hour shifts followed by a free Saturday. Yet, miners had good reason to be suspicious of the free Saturday, officially earmarked for repairs to equipment and machinery. The claims that the state had laid on their free days since the liberation did not inspire confidence that the fourth Saturday would remain free for long. Moreover, the scheme to extend the Saturday shift from six to eight hours brought back memories of a similar gambit on the part of the coal barons in 1923 (albeit without the offer of a free Saturday), which miners had successfully seen off with a strike.Footnote ⁷⁴

The immediate trigger for the protests was a decision to bring the new schedule, which had been scheduled to take effect in January 1947, forward by one month. When miners learned that the first eight-hour Saturday shift would already take place on December 7, their reaction was fierce: “that is not democracy, you have to ask miners first.”Footnote ⁷⁵ The trade union functionaries who had to defend the new schedule during protest meetings across the basin were overwhelmed by a groundswell of miner opposition. At the Nová Jáma pits in Vítkovice, the local secretary of the mining union and communist deputy for Ostrava Jan Buchvaldek was unable to win miners over to the eight-hour Saturday, as a resolution was adopted to work only six hours on December 7. Similarly, the chairman of the company trade union chapter at the Evžen pits in Petřvald ruled during a protest meeting that miners would finish after six hours of extraction. In fact, to simply concede that December 7 would be a six-hour shift might well have been the best way for trade unionists to conduct damage control, as some miners wanted to express their discontent with strikes. At the Doubrava pits in Orlová, management issued a placard, backed by the works council and the company trade union chapter, that basically pleaded with miners to convey their dissatisfaction with the new schedule by clocking out after six hours. Despite this, the bulk of the workforce refused to work at all on December 7.Footnote ⁷⁶

Where management insisted that miners would complete the eight-hour shift, the backlash was greater. At the Gottwald pits in Horní Suchá, where miners had also agreed among themselves to work only six hours on December 7, the afternoon shift arrived at twelve noon to take over from the morning shift after six hours of extraction. When managers did not allow them to descend—under the new schedule, after all, the eight-hour afternoon shift would only start at 2pm—miners threatened to return home and forsake the shift. After a frantic back-and-forth with the OKD, management gave in and agreed to end the morning shift after six hours.Footnote ⁷⁷ At the Ida pits in Ostrava-Hrušov, things did not even get that far, as the morning shift sought assurances regarding the six-hour shift before descending. When these were not given, a strike broke out that resulted in a shortfall of 480 tons of coal. In a resolution sent to the OKD, miners refused to accept responsibility for this loss. Miners had been willing to work a six-hour shift; it was “the unconditional insistence on an eight-hour shift that caused the strike.” For that reason, they demanded not only that their wages for the strike shift would be paid in full, but also that “a thorough investigation of the case and the punishment of those responsible [for the strike]” would follow suit.Footnote ⁷⁸

This strike was particularly embarrassing for the authorities, since the Ida pits were due to become the Stalin pits in a festive ceremony the following day—as part of the campaign to replace capitalist company names.Footnote ⁷⁹ In fact, the pits that were awarded the most “prestigious” names, often in recognition of the struggles that their miners had fought against capitalist exploitation, were at the heart of the protest movement against the eight-hour Saturday shift.Footnote ⁸⁰ In the face of strong resistance from these battle-hardened miners, some concessions were made following the failure of the December 7 shift. The introduction of the new schedule was pushed back again to January 1947 again and the Czechoslovak government issued a statement stressing that these “temporary measures” would by no means bring into question the forty-six-hour working week. While that fulfilled a key demand raised during the protest meetings in the first week of December, the dispute had moved on since then. At fresh trade union meetings devoted to the new schedule, some miners demanded a personal commitment to the forty-six-hour week on the part of Prime Minister Gottwald or President Beneš. For others, not even that would suffice: “We do not believe anyone anymore; neither the trade unions, nor Gottwald, nor the government, let alone the President.” These miners called instead for the forty-six-hour week to be enshrined in law.Footnote ⁸¹

Much like their French counterparts, Czechoslovak trade unionists were quick to frame the resistance they encountered among miners around questions of political reliability and national identity. In his account of the ongoing protests, Buchvaldek made much of the stirrings of “reactionaries,” linked to the center-right parties in the governmental coalition, who were hoping to stoke distrust towards the communist-led Revolutionary Trade Union Movement (ROH) in the run-up to the works council elections.Footnote ⁸² These putative opponents of constructing a “people’s democracy” in post-war Czechoslovakia were given a foreign face. Buchvaldek singled out the Polish minority in the Karviná district as particularly ungrateful for refusing to accept the new schedule. Having been annexed by Poland in 1938 and subsequently incorporated into the Third Reich in 1939, many of the district’s inhabitants had been pressured to register for the Deutsche Volksliste during the war.Footnote ⁸³ As Karviná became Czechoslovak again in 1945, these volkslistari became the target of popular retribution, forced to wear armbands emblazoned with the letter N (for “Němec,” i.e. “German”) and threatened with expulsion.Footnote ⁸⁴ Buchvaldek reminded miners of Polish descent how it had been the labor movement which had made sure that former volkslistari eventually “landed on their feet” in post-war Czechoslovakia, while also developing a series of initiatives to “have sons return to their parents from prisoner [of war] camps.”Footnote ⁸⁵ These efforts obliged “those people to fulfill their duties towards the [Czechoslovak] Republic.” Yet, “their attitude, as manifested in [the dispute over] the Saturday shifts, shows that they are a long way from understanding their status.”Footnote ⁸⁶

These attempts to paint resistance against the eight-hour Saturday as an anti-national position, and the concomitant clampdown on miners of Polish origin,Footnote ⁸⁷ failed to prevent a fresh wave of strikes as the new schedule was implemented once more in January 1947. These strikes spread unevenly across the basin. In the mixed urban environment of Ostrava, most miners had made their peace with the new schedule and strikers were clearly in the minority on the first eight-hour Saturdays of the new year. In the close-knit semi-rural mining villages of the Karviná district, by contrast, the protest movement encompassed up to two-thirds of the workforce at some pits. Communist claims that this was due to a lack of “trade union consciousness” in the Karviná district rang hollow in the light of its miners’ proud traditions of industrial struggle and their steadfast support for communism in elections.Footnote ⁸⁸ In fact, the protests and strikes against the eight-hour Saturday in many ways represented a proxy struggle between the older stalwarts of the labor movement and the younger workers upon which the communists increasingly came to rely in their efforts to emulate the Soviet model.

These younger workers mostly came to the basin as part of the “brigade” movement. To address the desperate shortage of manpower in the coal sector, the government had launched a nationwide campaign to sign up youngsters for brigades that were sent to work in coal regions for a couple of months. The aim in doing so was not just to gain permanent recruits for mining but also to use these newcomers to introduce Soviet-inspired production methods like shock work and labor competition to the mines.Footnote ⁸⁹ If participation in state-sponsored production campaigns offered brigade members manifold opportunities to climb the social ladder, older miners quickly came to resent their new colleagues. First of all, they accused the fresh recruits of an improper attitude towards life as a miner, with their propensity to “arguments, drunkenness, and thoughtless visits to women of ill-repute.”Footnote ⁹⁰ Second, the fact that brigade members immediately got access to the generous pensions of the mining sector left them with the feeling that the newcomers had “not come to help, but to devour their bread.”Footnote ⁹¹ Third, they feared that the work methods pioneered by brigade members, which also allowed them to disregard the traditional apprenticeship, served as a precursor to the Sovietization of the shop floor.Footnote ⁹² At those pits where the labor movement was well-entrenched, older miners worked hand in glove with the works council (responsible for implementing the new production programs at company level) to neutralize the threat to working conditions and resist the attempt to overturn generational hierarchies.Footnote ⁹³

The dispute over the eight-hour Saturday was an opportunity for ambitious youngsters, and the communist trade union elite, to vent their frustrations about the stubbornness of older miners. In a letter published by the official organ of the Ostrava branch of the ROH Mining Union, tellingly titled Ostravský Úderník (Ostravian Shock Worker), one brigade member railed against those miners who were “moaning about the eight-hour Saturday.” Although these miners were in good physical condition, they were “eschewing their work [and] complaining that they are materially dissatisfied,” thereby “demoralizing others.” His chagrin went beyond the mere question of the Saturday shift, though. As a brigade member who intended to remain in the mines once his brigade had been dissolved, he felt the promise of upward mobility had not been lived up to. Where all the talk had been of promotion by competence, the reality down the pits was that “the most important tasks are assigned to older workers only because they have put in the years.” At the same time, “energetic and truly capable individuals of a younger age are overlooked.” In the interest of the Two Year Plan, he concluded, it was imperative that “we bite this bullet.”Footnote ⁹⁴

Older miners had different misgivings about the production drive entailed in the Two Year Plan. During a shop-floor meeting devoted to the eight-hour Saturday at the Gabriel pits in Karviná, managers had pointed to the benefits of the scheme from the perspective not only of the firm but also “of the Republic as coal output needs to rise in accordance with the Plan.” To the laughter of his colleagues, one miner had responded that “Hitler also did everything according to a plan but lost the war.” On a more serious note, another miner followed up to explain that his brother-in-law at the Hlubina pits in Ostrava was already working eight-hour Saturdays as the pithead frame was being repaired, but that the fourth Saturday had not been paid.Footnote ⁹⁵

For miners with (family) roots in the region, the introduction of eight-hour Saturdays brought back memories of wartime and interwar measures to boost production. When the new schedule was first discussed at the František pits in Horní Suchá, trade union representatives warned that, if miners would not conduct eight-hour shifts willingly, the scheme would be introduced by force. Miners had reminded them that that would be “just like the German era” and collectively clocked out after six hours on December 7. It was not just the recollection of Nazi brutality, but also a deep-seated distrust of management that inspired resistance against the eight-hour Saturday among older miners. When a placard announcing that January 11 would be an eight-hour shift was affixed to the František pits, miners called their shop stewards to account once more. After a trade unionist had explained that the order came “from above” and “nothing can be done,” one miner asked why the placard had not been signed by the government but only by pit management. For managers “always go it alone and never ask us anything.” Miners had been “willing to conduct Sunday shifts without [a] 50% [premium],” he went on, “but [the six-hour] Saturday is a social achievement of miners and if we work [eight hours] this Saturday, we do not trust that the eight-hour Saturday will not return [indefinitely].”Footnote ⁹⁶

In the testimonies that the security services exacted from miners who had refused to work eight hours on January 11, miners were at pains to downplay their personal opposition to the new schedule and highlight their post-liberation participation in “national shifts” on Sundays and public holidays. Yet, their testimonies also reveal the pressure of the social milieu in which older miners had grown up. Many miners hinted at fear of repercussions if they associated with the newcomers who did descend for an eight-hour shift. A miner at the Gottwald pits recalled that, after he was not allowed to descend for a six-hour shift, “I saw that it was only soldiers [i.e. members of the military brigades, made up of young conscripts who were ordered to spend their service years down the pits] who descended, so I returned home.”Footnote ⁹⁷ A miner at the Barbora pits in Karviná argued that he did not want to be “beaten up for working eight hours,” as there had been much talk down the pits about miners “beating up one Wanecki last year” and even “plotting to kill a Stakhanovite.”Footnote ⁹⁸ The message that it was only outsiders to the settled mining community who abided by the new schedule becomes clear from the testimony of another miner at the Barbora pits. Slated for the afternoon shift on January 11, he had met with colleagues at a tavern in the mining colony, where he was told that “only some individuals and former SA members [i.e. German forced laborers] had descended for the morning shift.”Footnote ⁹⁹

The setting is important here, as the mining colonies that had been constructed by the coal barons at the turn of the century had long served as sites of miner sociability and community cohesion. After the Second World War, they increasingly fell into disrepair, as the communists preferred to accommodate newcomers in high rises, especially in the mineworkers’ town of Havírov that was constructed in the backlands between Ostrava and Karviná. Yet, Havírov was only finished by 1955 and, in the meantime, young miners were often housed in hostels, where thirty to forty youngsters shared one room without adequate sanitary facilities. The attendant social problems like illegal gambling or shady dealings with ration cards,Footnote ¹⁰⁰ further added to the resentments that older miners felt towards their younger colleagues. As a former inhabitant of the mining colony of the Alexander pits in Ostrava later recounted, “the centralization of the mines and construction of housing also led to major changes in social life and culture.” He depicted the mining colony as a sanctuary of proper generational hierarchies, where “[y]oung people were taught to be modest, resilient, and honest […] to have respect for work, for property, for their parents and grandparents.”Footnote ¹⁰¹ It was all the qualities that older miners found so sorely lacking among the youngsters who had been flocking to the basin since 1945.

That the conflict over the Saturday shift became enmeshed with generational struggle does not mean that younger miners did not participate in the strike movement. The lack of promised housing was “demotivating” for young miners,Footnote ¹⁰² who were at the forefront of the protests in some pits. Yet, where French labor leaders had blamed the failure of the make-up shifts on the lamentable morale of young miners, Czechoslovak trade unionists pointed to the pernicious influence that older miners exerted on young strikers. This becomes very clear in their account of events at the President Beneš pits in Karviná, where on Saturday January 11, 1947, the largest single strike against the eight-hour Saturday had taken place.Footnote ¹⁰³ In an open letter from “a member” of its works council to “divisive elements” printed by Ostravský Úderník (apparently the chair of the works council was not willing to pen this), miners with a long track record of industrial activism were singled out for criticism. With their “attacks on management and the government” during pit meetings, these “self-professed leading lights” were “setting a bad example for adolescent miners, who always tend to follow rotten apples.” The author took particular issue with efforts on the part of the strike leaders to appropriate the celebrated tradition of industrial struggle in the basin: “Are you perhaps hoping to become great social leaders, that your views will win the day and spread from the eastern [Karviná] to the western [Ostrava] part of the basin? Well, your significance is far from that of the old veterans who secured the eight-hour workday for the entire basin.”Footnote ¹⁰⁴

Much as communist trade unionists described the protests over the eight-hour Saturday as “a stain on the reputation of the Ostrava-Karviná miner,”Footnote ¹⁰⁵ the post-war struggles for the 46-hour working week were a key plank of the rank-and-file, often also of the communist, identity. Even if the protests over the new schedule eventually petered out, the enduring strength of that identity was on display when the Stalinist regime scrapped the free Saturday and reintroduced the 48-hour working week in the mines in 1951. A trade union meeting devoted to the measure at the Generál Svoboda pits in Ostrava-Přívoz quickly descended into chaos. The trade union and party officials who had been summoned to defend the new schedule were shouted down within one minute of starting their speeches. A report of the meeting noted that “miners, among them [communist] party members, argued that they had fought for the Saturday shift and would not work on [free] Saturdays.” One member of the party militia had even come forward to say that “he would defend the people’s democratic regime with a gun in his hand, but would not work on a free Saturday.”Footnote ¹⁰⁶

Extra Shifts for Winter Coal in the Ruhr

Where the Ruhr coal industry experienced many of the problems also plaguing other basins in post-war Europe, the legacy of Nazism and the Allied occupation added two additional layers of complexity. In their efforts to fight rampant absenteeism, draw fresh recruits to the pits, and convince miners to work longer hours, trade unionists in the Ruhr were constrained not only by their twelve-year absence from the shop floor but also by the fact that they were often reduced to the role of messenger for the military authorities in the British Zone of Occupation. It was in response to British pressure that trade union leaders first raised the prospect of extra shifts in the autumn of 1945. Shifts on public holidays and Sundays had been common during the war, known as Panzerschichten at the time (as the coal that was extracted during these shifts would produce Panzer tanks for the Wehrmacht, so the slogan went). Yet, that was when German miners had still been reasonably well provided for and working on free days offered some tangible benefits like higher hourly wages or additional rations.Footnote ¹⁰⁷

In the ruins of the post-war Ruhr, none of this was on offer. When the possibility of mandating extra shifts to provide coal for other industries was discussed at a trade union conference in October 1945, pit delegates listed a long series of objections: miners lacked even the most basic gear and equipment, wanted former Nazis to be removed from leading positions and ordered to work in the pits, and demanded that the food and coal supply would be sorted first. After pointing out that miners were under no obligation to work extra hours as long as peasants kept selling all their produce on the black market, one delegate pleaded with the trade union leadership to “show the British a little more backbone, so that they come to understand the predicament in which miners find themselves.”Footnote ¹⁰⁸

If miners had eventually agreed to conduct extra shifts in November 1945, this was only on the strict condition that the coal produced during these shifts would be distributed among local households.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ A more serious conflict would erupt the following autumn when the military authorities went over the heads of miners in decreeing production-boosting measures. In September 1946, radio and newspaper reports suddenly announced that miners had agreed to work on one Sunday in each of the next three months to provide the population with winter coal. The way these extra shifts were announced offended miners. As one Oberhausen trade unionist recalled, miners were “puzzled” about the news and immediately questioned the voluntary nature of the extra shifts. For nobody could tell them who had agreed to these shifts in their name: “They asked their works council representatives, local trade unionists, and finally the trade union leadership. Here too, however, the response was a shrug.” To be sure, trade union leaders acknowledged that the military government had once inquired with them whether miners would be prepared in principle to work extra shifts, but no negotiations had taken place.Footnote ¹¹⁰ When the military authorities pressed ahead regardless and, on October 3, 1946, issued a placard that the pits would be in operation on Sunday, October 6, miners in the Ruhr stayed home en masse and the extra shift had to be canceled.

In their refusal to work an extra shift that had not been properly sanctioned, miners in the Ruhr stood out, as their counterparts in the brown coal basin around Cologne had responded to the call to work on October 6. To save their embarrassment, the social democratic leaders of the mining union were quick to blame the entire affair on a misunderstanding. They claimed there had been a translation error on the placard that had been nailed to Ruhr pits, which inadvertently made it sound as though the British were handing down a command (Befehl).Footnote ¹¹¹

Such claims could not defuse the situation, however. For miners’ grievances went beyond the wording on the placard and also concerned the terrible food situation and woeful housing conditions.Footnote ¹¹² These privations did not affect miners in equal measure. The primary concern of older miners, who often had a family to feed, was the food crisis. Among these miners, there was much anger over the fact that meals were increasingly offered at the pits—not only the butter sandwiches that could still be taken home and shared with their wives and children, but also (on British orders) a warm meal prepared by the canteen.Footnote ¹¹³ Ever since their introduction, fathers had been calling for the abolition of these canteens and for the food thus saved to be distributed to miners, claiming that their wives could make more nutritious meals with the same ingredients.Footnote ¹¹⁴ That this was not just about raw caloric intake, but also about maintaining traditional values becomes very clear from a resolution against the extra shifts from the workforce of the Mathias Stinnes pits in Gladbeck. Demanding that the canteens would “finally disappear,” they insisted that “the miner is not a boarder [Kostgänger] and attaches great importance to an orderly family life.”Footnote ¹¹⁵ Younger miners, who had mostly come to the region without a family to support them and did not suffer from malnutrition nearly as often as their older colleagues, were in many ways boarders.Footnote ¹¹⁶ These miners had often been lured to the Ruhr from other provinces with promises of a better life, only to end up living in barracks or camps because no proper housing was available. The only way to improve their lot in these circumstances was to participate in the flourishing black market around these encampments. This was reflected in a cavalier attitude towards their job, with new recruits going from one pit to the next, only to disappear after a few days with valuable brand-new work clothing and goods stolen from their colleagues.Footnote ¹¹⁷

The resultant tensions between older and younger miners had been brewing for months, but trade union leaders and pit-level activists chose to ignore these for the time being. Instead, the dispute over the special shifts was framed in the language of trade union loyalty. This became very clear during the delegate conference that the mining union called to resolve the matter and in which some 500 representatives from more than 200 Ruhr pits participated. In his opening address, August Schmidt, the social democratic chairman of the mining union, tabled a resolution supporting the extra shifts. He acknowledged that this was a lot to ask of miners. “But can we allow our colleagues in other sectors, who are also trade union comrades, to freeze this winter?” Despite such appeals to miner solidarity, an overwhelming majority against the extra shifts quickly took shape. A delegate from the Jacobi pits in Oberhausen explained that the miner was “already giving more than he is able to give” and was “just as entitled to his Sunday rest as every other worker.” Other delegates pointed to the poor health of underfed miners and the resultant gloom among them.Footnote ¹¹⁸ Such laments were linked to the situation on the shop floor, where, despite the massive recruitment effort that had seen thousands of young newcomers in the pits, reliable labor was still in short supply. Shop-floor representatives were thus desperate to attract the right sort of manpower to the Ruhr. One delegate even went so far as to reduce the entire problem of stagnant production to the fact that “our prisoners of war [i.e. the miner’s sons who had been conscripted for the Wehrmacht] are not being released.”Footnote ¹¹⁹ Conversely, those (supposedly) willing to accept more shifts were regarded as outsiders by the local community. Reproducing old tropes about newcomers undercutting conditions, a works councilor at the Emscher-Lippe pits in Datteln warned miners about “refugees [i.e., Germans expelled from Silesia and the Sudetenland] who want to work a double shift every day” and still “have to be taught about comradery and solidarity.”Footnote ¹²⁰

In these circumstances, calls to work the extra shifts also to help refugees through the winter fell on deaf ears among the delegates and Schmidt’s resolution went down to a spectacular defeat—with only eight delegates voting for it. As the British threatened to stop distributions of winter coal altogether, the leaders of the mining union were quickly ordered back to the negotiating table. Within days of the conference, the overarching trade union committee for the North Rhine province released a declaration lamenting that the refusal to undertake extra shifts “utterly failed to appreciate the situation” in which the country found itself. With their no vote, the delegates had “ignored an urgent need of the working masses” and “flouted basic trade union rules.”Footnote ¹²¹ The mining union heeded the instruction to quickly revisit the matter and, after brief negotiations at the Allied Coal Control Commission in Essen, an agreement was reached whereby miners would work on the religious holidays of Reformation Day (October 31) and the Day of Prayer and Repentance (November 20) as well as on Sunday, December 29, to provide household coal. In return, the daily rations for miners would be increased from 3,500 to 4,000 calories and miners would receive ten cigarettes for each completed extra shift.Footnote ¹²²

Despite these concessions, much skepticism remained among miners.Footnote ¹²³ In a radio roundtable with miners, speakers roundly rejected newspaper reports accusing miners of selfishness for refusing to conduct extra shifts. Both in terms of the historical examples referenced and the grievances formulated, their arguments were framed around the experience of the older core workforce. “The truth of the matter,” argued one interviewed works councilor, was that “the impossible has already been demanded [of miners] in the past in the shape of Sunday and extra shifts.” In combination with the ongoing subsistence crisis, this had “exhausted the labor force of the miner” and had seen sick leave rise from 7 to 10 per cent. Miners sometimes also missed a shift, he went on, to carry out home repairs or to obtain work clothing. “Time and again, miners come to me because they have no work shoes or mining equipment.” For these reasons, explained another speaker, miners were in “the worst conceivable psychological state” to work the extra shifts. For “there is a lot of talk about the benefits accorded to miners, but very little is actually done.” The mandatory canteen meals had “a very negative impact” too, with miners demanding voluntary participation.Footnote ¹²⁴

As a consequence, the extra shift on October 31, despite being scheduled to guarantee maximum turnout, had mixed results at best.Footnote ¹²⁵ To make matters worse for trade union leaders, the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD)—which had emerged weakened politically from the war, but strengthened on the shop floor—now also threw its weight behind the campaign against the extra shifts.Footnote ¹²⁶ In the run-up to the crunch delegate conference on November 13, the communist press ran a constant invective against the extra shifts and the social democratic trade union leaders who had put the proposals back on the table after delegates had decisively rejected them in October. At the conference, social democratic trade unionists hit back and accused the communists of abusing the dispute for party-political gain, with Schmidt warning that the next meeting of the mining union executive would take a stand against “attempts to break trade union unity with political motives.”Footnote ¹²⁷

In many ways, however, the struggles between social democrats and communists were but a sideshow to the real issue. For the delegates raised almost the same objections to the extra shifts as they had done in October. Once again, they insisted that miners were in no physical or mental condition to work longer hours. The broader problem for trade union leaders was that, after eighteen months of disappointments, miners no longer trusted their promises. The delegate of the Carl Friedrich pits in Bochum lamented that miners were still waiting for their winter potatoes. Since the last conference, he continued, “the entire situation has only gotten worse” and for that reason he would vote against the extra shifts once more.Footnote ¹²⁸ In these circumstances, the concessions that trade union leaders had secured in their negotiations with the British made little impression on the delegates. It was repeatedly pointed out that, if only the rations that miners had been promised on paper had materialized, regular coal production would soar and there would be no need for extra shifts to supply the population with winter coal. Or, as one delegate put it: “Miners do not want calories, they want bacon.”Footnote ¹²⁹

As it became clear which way the wind was blowing among the conference delegates, trade union leaders changed tack. Rather than having the delegates vote on the extra shifts, Schmidt proposed balloting Ruhr miners on the question. This was accepted by the conference and the ballot was scheduled for November 16. By the narrowest of margins (226 for, 224 against), the trade union leadership also won a vote stipulating that non-unionized miners, who were supposedly less susceptible to communist pressure on the shop floor, would also get a ballot. As a final boon to miners, the text on the ballot offered a Sunday premium of 50 per cent for each of the two shifts.Footnote ¹³⁰

The following days, both sides went into campaign mode. In a placard issued by the Trade Union Executive in the British Zone, miners were urged to back the extra shifts. The coal produced during these shifts would “exclusively come to the benefit of the poorest among us,” it promised. The vote had to demonstrate, therefore, that “in times of desperate need, the poor have the back of poor” and trade unionists in other sectors expected miners to take the “self-evident decision.” In a clear reference to the communists, the placard called on miners not to be influenced by “the many who have suddenly become [your] friends.” Instead, they should listen to “those who have always had your best interests at heart, your trade union comrades.” And “their counsel […] comes down to this: ‘Stay true to your miner traditions!’”Footnote ¹³¹

The KPD, for its part, distributed more than 100,000 leaflets calling for a no vote among miners. The leaflet called to mind how pit delegates had already rejected extra shifts in October and how miners had spoken out against these shifts during countless pit meetings. The renewed efforts to get miners to accept the extra shifts, therefore, represented an attempt to “break your unified resistance.” The leaflet went on to list the reasons why the extra shifts threatened to “completely destroy the already badly compromised condition” of miners. “Your nutrition does not suffice. Your wives and children are starving […]. The housing conditions of many miners, especially of the new recruits, are inhumane. The most basic household items, warm clothing, and shoes are not available to you and especially to your family. As a consequence of exhaustion, the number of accidents is rising to an alarming degree.” To be sure, the leaflet insisted that the population should be provided with coal, “but from the regular production—not through additional burdens on the miner.”Footnote ¹³²

For all the words that were wasted on the question, the ballot was not even close. Of the 235.347 miners who participated in the ballot, 205.304 or some 87 per cent voted against the extra shifts.Footnote ¹³³ In response, the British immediately stopped distributions of winter coal; worker families outside the mining sector would have to do with wood or briquettes in the winter. Even though this caused widespread animosity towards miners among the broader population, most miners were unrepentant. One no-voter explained that, while he was sorry to let people down, miners could do no more. “If you are a family father, you will understand,” he explained, for even with the 4,000 calories now on offer he would struggle to feed his family of six. “This not only embitters us, but also the young people that the coal sector needs,” he went on. “Where are the twelve thousand miners from the Sudetenland [i.e., German expellees who had worked as coal miners in Czechoslovakia, whose imminent arrival had been rumored for months]? They will also be gone quickly when they must live in corrugated iron houses.”Footnote ¹³⁴

This statement is telling of the attitudes of older miners for two reasons. First, it shows that they not so much wanted to keep outsiders out of the local community as to rejuvenate the sector with proper pitmen who would show their profession the commensurate respect. Second, and more importantly, while it resonates with the us (food) vs. them (housing) divide between old and young miners that we have seen in France and Czechoslovakia, old miners projected housing woes on future miners rather than on the young newcomers who were already living in atrocious conditions. Even if trade unionists had paid lip service to the plight of young miners during the controversy over the extra shifts, these conditions would remain largely unchanged for the time being. In fact, funds earmarked for the repair and improvement of existing miner accommodations were repeatedly siphoned off, because building materials and manpower had to be made available for the construction of new makeshift housing for fresh recruits.Footnote ¹³⁵ As late as September 1948, 150 young miners at the Prosper pits in Bottrop threatened to walk out if long-promised repairs to their residential camp did not start within the next month.Footnote ¹³⁶ The indifference of old miners and trade unions to the housing conditions of young miners was linked to the fact that the newcomers were mostly considered transient workers with little interest in embracing mining culture. This especially concerned their reluctance to adopt the semi-rural lifestyle associated with coal mining or, as young miners questioned about their housing preferences put it, to “play-act the peasant.”Footnote ¹³⁷ Much like in Czechoslovakia, the decline of traditional miner living arrangements sparked wider concerns about the fading of cultural norms that had been handed down for generations, as “only old people keep livestock and use a larger garden, the younger miner already thinks very differently.”Footnote ¹³⁸

In sharp contrast to Czechoslovakia, though, trade unionists in the Ruhr set out to reassure old miners that their concerns took precedence over those of their younger colleagues. The introduction of the points system in the coal sector in January 1947, under which miners earned “miner’s points” that could be traded for specifically earmarked goods if they had not been absent for the whole of the month, undercut the business model of younger job-hoppers. This went hand in hand with a narrative of disciplining youth. Trade union leaders now committed to “admonish the young [miners] to better observe order and discipline on the shop floor than they have been doing thus far.”Footnote ¹³⁹ For their part, “old and dutiful miners” were called upon to “stop and tell those who are only interested in obtaining ration card A [awarded to the most experienced miners under the points system] to also fulfil their duties.”Footnote ¹⁴⁰ Even if the grievances of older miners did not disappear overnight, the introduction of the points system represented the first step towards the restoration of generational hierarchies on the shop floor. The currency reform of June 1948, which spelled the end for the black market and the attendant opportunities for young miners to make their job more profitable, further consolidated their position. With the value of money stabilized, older miners were especially eager to do overtime and conduct extra shifts to finally provide their families with a proper meal once more.Footnote ¹⁴¹

In their rearguard action against these extra shifts, especially the fresh round of union-mandated Sunday shifts to help meet the worldwide surge in coal demand during the Korean War, communist trade unionists invoked the spirit of the previous generation. “If our old trade unionists could still hear that,” lamented one communist works councilor at the Emscher-Lippe pits about union-backed plans to conduct Sunday shifts in early 1952, “they would shake their heads [and say] ‘what are you doing today?’”Footnote ¹⁴² Much as the communists tried to cast themselves as the guardians of trade union traditions, they made limited inroads with older miners this time around. Like in Cold War France, it was activists from the KPD youth organization who played a prominent role in picketing against what the communists called new Panzerschichten. Apart from some minor successes at communist strongholds like the Nordstern pits in Gelsenkirchen or the Zollverein pits in Essen, Sunday work was now mostly “tolerated” by miners and turnout for these double-pay shifts was fine.Footnote ¹⁴³ With the “economic miracle” taking off, it was this round of extra shifts rather than the rejected shifts to provide the population with winter coal that German miners came to invoke as the coal industry entered a crisis from the late 1950s onward.Footnote ¹⁴⁴