242 RÜDIGER HACHTMANN
Correspondingly, there was a tight surveillance network at work in GDR
factories, as well as sociopolitical early warning systems in place, such as
the company union committees (Betriebsgewerkschaftsleitung, or BGL),
etc. Admittedly, however, this state apparatus of control and repression
always had to keep in mind that the legitimacy of the SED state rested on
the “working people.” Nonetheless, those “who shied from work by stub-
bornly refusing to take a regular job despite being able to work” were stig-
matized. In keeping with paragraph 249 of the GDR criminal code, they
could also be sentenced to “remedial work education” and even “impris-
onment for up to two years” in ostensibly severe cases. Yet this weapon
was rather ineff ective when it came to those who were disinclined to
work, faked illnesses in order to call off work, or were just slackers in
general. As the head of one of the largest GDR combines (factories) aptly
lamented, “Of course [!] we had some slackers who didn’t even bother to
show up to the factory for two years, but we weren’t allowed to fi re them.”^4
Such cases would never have been tolerated in West Germany, although
employees did have more leeway and room to negotiate for quite a while
during the phase of full employment. By the end of the 1970s, however,
growing unemployment put a damper on this more open climate.
The structures of collective bargaining also diff ered at a basic level in
the two Germanys. In the SED state, collective framework agreements
were negotiated between the central committees of the individual unions
organized within the Free German Trade Union Federation (Freier Deut-
scher Gewerkschaftsbund, or FDGB) and the respective state functionar-
ies; these agreements were then supplemented by collective agreements
for individual plants. More so than in Poland or Hungary, for example,
self-employed people were a marginal group in the GDR, and politics
played directly into collective bargaining. In the West, on the other hand,
employers, who were themselves organized within umbrella organiza-
tions, exerted considerable infl uence over the collective wage agree-
ments that were negotiated with the respective trade unions and regularly
renewed or revised. Accordingly, these agreements were fl exible, and
they could be adapted to changing economic and political constellations.
Moreover, they relieved the state of the responsibility for further sociopo-
litical demands and expectations in terms of wages, benefi ts, or contract
negotiations. The state was not forced to intervene in order to achieve
a settlement or another solution of some sort to resolve interest diff er-
ences between employers and employees. However, an elaborate system
of state social policy absorbed some of the tensions that resulted from the
antagonism between capital and work. The federal government as well as
the states exerted considerable infl uence over working conditions by es-
tablishing legal frameworks and institutions such as the Federal Institute