246 RÜDIGER HACHTMANN
aspects already mentioned, others, such as the emergence of new service
sectors just as the importance of traditional economic branches and voca-
tional groups that had been highly organized in the past began to shrink,
also factored into the shifts. Yet other types of factors also played a key
role in this process. These included the increasing depoliticization of so-
cial life and the diffi culties the unions faced in attracting younger people
in particular. Similarly, the growing percentage of female workers within
the working population who did not believe that their interests were well
represented in the traditionally male-dominated unions also contributed
to this decline.
Furthermore, the fundamentally varying labor laws and the substan-
tially diff erent position of the unions in both German states indicate a
diff erence in the respective structures of confl ict. The constitution of the
GDR from 1949, for example, guaranteed the right to strike. Yet from the
outset, the FDGB, which was dominated by the Communist parties (KPD
and SED), refrained from engaging in any labor disputes in the state-
owned companies and factories, which “belonged to the people” at least
in name. It made no sense, the argument was made, for workers to strike
against themselves, as they were supposedly the owners in the fi rst place.
This political and legal fi ction was then debunked entirely in the wake
of the events of 17 June 1953. Neither the Labor Code (Gesetzbuch der
Arbeit) from 1961 and 1978, nor the constitution from 1968 recognized
the right to strike. As a result, strikes were akin to a direct political attack
against the SED in East Germany. Nonetheless, other lines of confl ict still
developed within the GDR. Plant managers and workers, including plant
union leaders, often made an eff ort to combat excessive demands and
expectations as well as other unreasonable requests from “above” with
informal pacts from “below.”^8
In the Federal Republic, on the other hand, the right to strike and the
right of association is guaranteed. However, the number of legal labor
disputes remained relatively low in comparison to other West European
states. This was due, in part, to the strong hold of neocorporatism, which
encompassed a well-functioning mechanism for regulating confl icts
within plants in the form of the work councils (Betriebsräte) that were
introduced in 1952; this was augmented by the resulting relatively high
share of employees who benefi ted from the growth in productivity.^9 Since
the 1990s, moreover, the elevated level of structural unemployment has
also mitigated the desire to strike.
In addition to this high unemployment, the lasting decline of the trade
unions, as well as the increasing tendency of employers to ignore the
wages set out in collective bargaining agreements, has shaped income
and wage development since 1990. Nominal wages were not as decisive