Her Fight is Your Fight: “Guest Worker” Labor Activism in the Early 1970s West Germany

2013 ◽  
Vol 84 ◽  
pp. 226-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Miller
Keyword(s):  
West Germany ◽  
Foreign Workers ◽  
Economic Downturn ◽  
Guest Workers ◽  
Guest Worker ◽  
Female Workers ◽  
Labor Activism ◽  
High Inflation ◽  
Foreign Guest ◽  
Economic Boom

AbstractWhen the postwar economic boom came to a crashing halt in early 1970s West Germany, foreign “guest workers,” often the first to be laid off, bore the brunt of high inflation, rising prices, declining growth rates, widespread unemployment, and social discontent. Following the economic downturn and the ensuing crisis of stagflation, workers' uprisings became increasingly common in West Germany. The summer of 1973 saw a sharp increase in workers' activism broadly, including a wave of “women's strikes.” However, historical attention to the role of foreign workers, especially of foreign female workers, within these strikes has been limited. This article presents a case study of wildcat strikes spearheaded by foreign, female workers in the early 1970s, focusing specifically on the strikes at the Pierburg Autoparts Factory in Neuss, West Germany. For these foreign women, activism in the early 1970s had a larger significance than just securing better working conditions. Indeed, striking foreign workers were no longer negotiating temporary problems; they were signaling that they were there to stay. Foreign workers' sustained and successful activism challenged the imposed category of “guest worker,” switching the emphasis from guest to worker. Ultimately, the Pierburg strikes' outcomes benefited all workers—foreign and German, male and female—and had grave implications for wage discrimination across West Germany as well.

scholarly journals When Can Liberal States Avoid Unwanted Immigration? Self-Limited Sovereignty and Guest Worker Recruitment in Switzerland and Germany

2013 ◽  
Vol 65 (3) ◽  
pp. 491-538 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antje Ellermann
Keyword(s):  
Policy Design ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Guest Workers ◽  
Guest Worker ◽  
Economic Liberalism ◽  
Popular Pressure ◽  
Path Dependent ◽  
Recruitment System

Advanced democracies, it is commonly argued, are unable to prevent unwanted immigration because their sovereignty is “self-limited” by virtue of their normative, legal, and economic liberalism. This article challenges this claim by examining a critical test case that is at the heart of self-limited sovereignty arguments: guest worker recruitment in postwar Switzerland and West Germany. The author shows that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the unintended settlement of guest workers was not a universal given but instead was far less extensive in Switzerland than in West Germany. This difference in exposure to unwanted immigration, she argues, was the result of path-dependent processes that can be traced back to the inception of each country’s recruitment program. Whereas West German officials made no concerted effort to control settlement until the program’s termination, Swiss policy from its beginning was marked by state-enforced worker rotation and the prevention of family unification. To account for these critical differences in policy design, the article argues that each guest worker system was fundamentally shaped by two sets of factors. First, program design varied depending on whether or not political elites could draw policy lessons from past experience with temporary worker programs. Where past recruitment had resulted in unwanted settlement, as had been the case in Switzerland, political elites sought to adopt policy provisions designed to prevent the past from repeating itself. Where past policy failure was absent, as was the case in West Germany, policymakers were less concerned with preempting settlement. Second, recruitment policy reflected the degree to which policymakers were able to operate autonomously from cross-cutting interests. Whereas the West German government could pursue recruitment relatively insulated from both business and popular pressure, Swiss policymakers had to repeatedly accommodate both sets of actors, in the process devising a recruitment system firmly premised on the principle of worker rotation.

The social desirability of offshoring: a Swiss consensus (1945–1975)

2019 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-273
Author(s):  
Sabine Pitteloud
Keyword(s):  
Social Desirability ◽  
Foreign Workers ◽  
Economic Downturn ◽  
Housing Shortage ◽  
Labour Unions ◽  
Narrative Perspective ◽  
The Social ◽  
Industrial Crisis ◽  
Post War ◽  
Economic Boom

AbstractThis article focuses on the evolution of the rhetoric and practice of corporate offshoring in Switzerland from the post-war economic boom to the industrial crisis in the mid-seventies. The virtue of a historical perspective on the issue of offshoring is to show how recent controversies have their roots in previous decades, suggesting the need to reassess recent debates about structural change in light of earlier experiences. Relying on the cultural and narrative perspective in business history, the article shows the emergence of an unexpected consensus about the legitimacy of corporate offshoring between employers, Swiss authorities and even Swiss labour unions after 1945. The explanation for that counter-intuitive alliance is found in the actors’ representations and discourse about what they considered to be excessive economic circumstances. Indeed, during this golden age of considerable economic expansion, demand exceeded supply and the Swiss firms constantly complained of labour shortages. Offshoring was therefore seen as a cure for the lack of workers within Switzerland and allowed multinational companies to focus on the most lucrative production activities. Swiss workers and unions shared this view, preferring some low-skill activities to be done outside the country rather than seeing the arrival of more foreign workers, who tended to be less unionised and who were accused of aggravating the housing shortage. In response, the Swiss authorities supported the offshoring process by providing some tariff favours to allow textile firms in particular to relocate their production abroad and to reimport it to Switzerland without paying taxes. Finally, the article shows how the consensus broke down after the economic downturn of the mid-70 s and how changing historical circumstances induced new diverging narratives about the social desirability of the offshoring phenomenon.

Guest Workers, Social Order, and West German Municipalities, 1960–7

2018 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 619-639
Author(s):  
Mark E. Spicka
Keyword(s):  
Federal Government ◽  
Social Order ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Southern Europe ◽  
Pressure Group ◽  
Guest Workers ◽  
Political Pressure ◽  
Guest Worker ◽  
Almost All ◽  
German Cities

This article examines the response of West German cities and their main political pressure group, the Deutsche Städtetag (DST, The German Council of Municipalities) to the arrival of guest workers between 1960–7. It argues that unlike the federal government, almost all city authorities quickly understood that a portion of the guest workers would remain permanently in West Germany. As a result, the DST and most cities called for some form of guest worker integration already by the early 1960s. Although often expressing humanitarian concern for the guest workers, the cities framed guest worker integration in terms of limiting costs, preserving social order, and maintaining control over the guest workers. In their discussions on guest worker integration, West German cities racialized the guest workers from southern Europe by maintaining a hierarchy of difference with an assumption that the guest workers would never become fully German.

Aufenthaltsdauer und Integration ausländischer Arbeiter / Duration of Residence and Integration of Foreign Workers

1977 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Detlev Ipsen
Keyword(s):  
Control Sample ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Work Conditions ◽  
Interview Study ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Foreign Workers ◽  
Duration Of Residence ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Material Conditions

AbstractUsing data from an interview study of 600 Greek, Italian, and Turkish workers and a control sample of 200 Germans that has been conducted in Mannheim in 1975, it is investigated whether the duration of foreign workers’ residence in West Germany correlates with (a) an improvement of their living and work conditions (‚material integration’) and (b) the adoption of bourgeois ideologies (‚ideological integration’) or, rather, the development of class-conscious attitudes. The findings demonstrate that even long-term residence in West Germany does not lead to a notable material or ideological integration of foreign workers: their material conditions remain worse than those of the German lower class; poor material conditions lead to apathetic adaption.

The Political Economy of the Profitability Crisis in Britain

2021 ◽  
pp. 45-68
Author(s):  
Jack Copley
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Currency Crises ◽  
Financial Liberalization ◽  
The Political ◽  
Historical Overview ◽  
Global Competitiveness ◽  
High Inflation ◽  
Current Account Imbalances ◽  
Economic Boom ◽  
Acute Crisis

This chapter provides a historical overview of the profitability crisis that undermined the postwar economic boom, gave rise to the phenomenon of stagflation, and ultimately drove the financial liberalizations explored in this book. This chapter puts forward a novel historical categorization of British stagflation, by identifying two distinct phases within Britain’s experience of the global profitability crisis. The first, from 1967 to 1977, was characterized by low rates of profit, rising inflation, and repeated current account imbalances that resulted in currency crises. The second, from 1977 to 1983, still saw low profitability and high inflation, but the rising price of sterling ensured that there were no sterling crises. The chapter then details how governments combined governing strategies of depoliticized discipline and palliation in different ways during these two periods of acute crisis in order to navigate the contradictory imperatives of global competitiveness and domestic legitimacy. Policies of financial liberalization constituted attempts to support these strategies.

‘An Invasion of Guest Worker Children’: Welfare Reform and the Stigmatisation of Family Migration in West Germany

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 372-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Stokes
Keyword(s):  
Welfare Reform ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Family Migration ◽  
Guest Worker ◽  
Popular Narrative ◽  
Financial Gain ◽  
Tiered System ◽  
Child Allowances ◽  
Children Welfare

AbstractThis article examines the effects of the 1974 child allowance reform on guest worker families in West Germany. As part of a wider reform, West Germany implemented a two-tiered system of child allowances whereby migrant parents received more money for children who lived in the European Economic Community (EEC) than for children who lived outside the EEC. Migrants protested the reform and with it the assumptions of the guest worker programme. However, these parents had to contend with a popular narrative whereby foreign parents who brought their children to West Germany after the reform were in fact irresponsible ‘welfare migrants’ who placed their desire for financial gain over their children's need for a stable environment. The idea that this specific welfare reform had been the trigger for large-scale family migration not only discouraged further investigation of the causes of family migration but was also used to support new restrictions on that migration.

scholarly journals Monopsony Power and Guest Worker Programs

2019 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 540-565 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric M. Gibbons ◽  
Allie Greenman ◽  
Peter Norlander ◽  
Todd Sørensen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Labor Market ◽  
Labor Markets ◽  
Market Competition ◽  
The United States ◽  
Guest Workers ◽  
Guest Worker ◽  
Full Extent ◽  
Monopsony Power ◽  
Program Data

Guest workers on visas in the United States may be unable to quit bad employers due to barriers to mobility and a lack of labor market competition. Using H-1B, H-2A, and H-2B program data, we calculate the concentration of employers in geographically defined labor markets within occupations. We find that many guest workers face moderately or highly concentrated labor markets, based on federal merger scrutiny guidelines, and that concentration generally decreases wages. For example, moving from a market with a Herfindahl-Hirschman Index of zero to a market comprised of two employers lowers H-1B worker wages approximately 10%, and a pure monopsony (one employer) reduces wages by 13%. A simulation shows that wages under pure monopsony could be 47% lower, suggesting that employers do not use the full extent of their monopsony power. Enforcing wage regulations and decreasing barriers to mobility may better address issues of exploitation than antitrust scrutiny alone.

The Guest-Worker in Western Europe — An Obituary

1986 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 761-778 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Castles
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Minorities ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Family Reunification ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Guest Workers ◽  
Labor Migrants ◽  
Guest Worker ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Permanent Migration ◽  
Migratory Process

Most West European countries recruited guest-workers (temporary labor migrants) to fuel the postwar boom. The significance of this flexible and mobile labor source is examined for six countries. The dynamics of the migratory process led to family reunification and settlement, against the original intentions of the workers, employers and states concerned. The recruitment of guest-workers stopped after 1974, but many migrants stayed on, becoming permanent ethnic minorities, in a situation of economic and social crisis. It is argued that guest-worker systems inevitably lead to permanent migration in the long run, and that it is better to plan for orderly settlement through appropriate policies.

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