TRANSFORMATIONS IN WORK 243
for Occupational Safety and Health and its corresponding local supervi-
sory offi ces (Gewerbeaufsicht).
But, the fact that the collective bargaining agreements for the diff erent
sectors have become less binding over time has torn away at the fabric of
Germany’s social constitution since the 1990s. The number of employers
who have abandoned existing collective bargaining agreements or who
seek to worm their way out of having to uphold minimum wage standards
has been increasing at a considerable rate since 1989/90; this appeared
fi rst in the new federal states in particular, but it has now spread all over
the country. In 2006, the percentage of German companies who were
contractually obligated to follow collective bargaining agreements that
applied to either the whole sector or their individual companies was only
around 60 percent. Germany therefore lagged far behind countries such
as Estonia and Italy (80 percent), as well as the Scandinavian and Ben-
elux countries (over 80 percent).^5 Moreover, the number of loopholes
and escape clauses built into these agreements continued to climb, while
internal company “alliances for work” ate away at their core premises.
The federal German labor laws, however, set up the framework for a
corrective to these trends, which was designed to cushion the impact of
social confl icts, namely separate courts for labor issues that were rees-
tablished after the collapse of the Nazi regime in West Germany. In the
GDR, however, the municipal and district labor courts were dissolved
in April 1961; in their place, “chambers for labor matters” were estab-
lished within the municipal and district courts. The fact that only a small
number of cases actually made their way to the labor courts before these
changes took eff ect indicates that the internal “confl ict resolution com-
missions” that had existed since April 1953 took care of most the issues
that cropped up within individual companies. The declining importance
of labor courts and the priority given to out-of-court arbitration and me-
diation authorities can be attributed to the fact that the SED generally
denied the existence of social diff erences for ideological reasons. In the
preamble of the procedural code for labor courts (Arbeitsgerichtsordnung)
in the GDR from 29 June 1961, labor disputes were denounced as the
“remnants of bourgeois ways of thinking and living habits.”
Nonetheless, the place of work was a more important part of the lives
of individual employees in the GDR compared to the FRG, especially since
childcare options, vacation terms, and recreational activities were often
dictated by the individual workplaces. Admittedly, the expansion of this
infrastructure was not only politically and ideologically desirable, but also
was fostered by the high percentage of female employment, which was
considerably above that of the West. As of 1973, the Offi ces for Work and
Wages (Ämter für Arbeit und Löhne) were responsible for the manage-