TRANSFORMATIONS IN WORK 259
the mercy of these processes, the great autonomy that they had once
enjoyed eroded over the course of the 1970s, although they still retained
a measure of freedom. Simultaneously, the expansion of ICT increased
the fl ood of information pouring over their desks, as well as the volume
of documentation requirements. This was accompanied by the feeling
among those aff ected that their jobs were no longer secure given the on-
going rationalization process and the constant demand to reduce costs.^46
Yet the ramifi cations of the digital revolution have not only been neg-
ative. The transformation of engineering jobs and, to an even greater
extent, the new demands placed on skilled workers, for instance, has
not necessarily led to standardized tasks and a loss of independence or
deskilling. Sometimes they have also broadened the scope of many pro-
fessions, transforming what were once just cutting machine operators into
“pseudo-programmers.” Similarly, this has fostered the development of
new professional fi elds, such as mechatronic engineering, which became
a separate trade.
Although the digital revolution and the dynamics that it unleashed shook
up the industrial workplace in the West, little changed in the GDR, despite
the East’s myriad eff orts to jump on the digital bandwagon. Leading East
German economists were well aware of the fact that the GDR could not
isolate itself from the global economy and that it had to keep up with the
newest production systems in order to remain competitive internation-
ally. Yet their abstract recognition of this point clashed with the political
and mental infl exibility that prevailed in the East. When economic experts
returned home from Western Europe or Japan completely fascinated by
the modernization of “production workfl ows and workforce discipline”
that was taking place abroad, their enthusiasm was crushed at home. As
Christa Bertag, the director of the Berlin cosmetics factory noted, these
ideas were rejected along the lines of “we didn’t send you over there so
that you can start a revolution at home.” As there was little willingness
to change the way that things were being done, Bertag, and presumably
others who had been part of these travel groups, “never again” tried to
make suggestions for optimizing production workfl ows within factories.^47
Furthermore, external factors also contributed to the disappointing
failure of the attempts by the SED leadership to promote the advancement
of microelectronic computing, storage, and management technologies
in industrial production along Western lines. These included the limited
implementation of microelectronic systems in military technology in the
COMECON countries at fi rst, the lack of foreign currency, the technology
embargo that had been put up by the West, and the poor quality of the
processors that were being made in the Czechoslovak Socialist Repub-
lic in particular (which was part of the division of work between mem-