As a newspaper correspondent in Germany last summer, I had an opportunity to examine at close hand one of these ‘red’ symptoms. Sitting with a German workman in a deserted café, I listened to the varied complaints of a man who handled a shovel day in and day out on the construction of the great auto roads outside Berlin. He bewailed his low pay (about 23 marks a week), the short life of his ersatz clothing, and his inability to afford a KDF1 ticket. He even showed reluctance to rejoice over the fact that he had work to-day whereas he was jobless before Hitler entered into power. But he was triumphant on one point.
‘One thing Hitler has done — he’s made the foremen treat us better. Years ago they could call me a swine and get away with it. Now it’s different. Let me tell you a story. Two months ago we had a tough foreman. He used us roughly. One day I was standing resting on the job when he yelled at me, “Trees don’t work!” I said I was tired and wasn’t a tree. Then he called me a swine for talking back and said he’d get me fired. I went to the Labor Front office and filed a complaint against him. A week later the Labor Front fired the foreman. Yes, the bosses speak softly and kindly to us. They ask us to do this or that, rather than order us.’
Any observer in Germany can multiply such stories a hundredfold. Moreover, the fact that the foreman was disciplined without recourse to one of the famous labor courts illustrates that the courts merely bring to the surface a few episodes of a constant ‘social justice’ process. The trend of figures on laborcourt cases certainly commands attention. In 1936, employees won 189 out of 251 (75.2 per cent) cases tried.
Reading reports on these cases, one gets a pretty good picture of how the Nazi revolution is affecting labor relations. A banker in the town of Lüneburg in lower Saxony received a fine of $125 and costs from a labor court because he paid salaries below the official rates, refused to pay overtime to which his employees were entitled, and had ‘shown himself hostile to his social duties in general.’ A Berlin court fined the daughter of a factory owner because she had ‘maliciously wounded the sense of honor’ of the ‘followers’ in her father’s plant. (Note the word ‘follower’ used instead of ‘worker.’) The girl had addressed them as ‘filthy workmen.’ A wholesale news dealer in Berlin was deprived of control of his business; he had, it appears, persistently paid wages and salaries below the officially fixed rates, had grossly insulted his workmen and employees, and had forced minors to work fifty-nine hours a week without overtime pay. Out of my own experience I have found cases which fit in with this leveling process — such as that of a small factory owner who told me how he had to attend a Schulungslager (camp of social education) where his bunkmate was one of his ‘followers.’
Source:
www.theatlantic.com
‘One thing Hitler has done — he’s made the foremen treat us better. Years ago they could call me a swine and get away with it. Now it’s different. Let me tell you a story. Two months ago we had a tough foreman. He used us roughly. One day I was standing resting on the job when he yelled at me, “Trees don’t work!” I said I was tired and wasn’t a tree. Then he called me a swine for talking back and said he’d get me fired. I went to the Labor Front office and filed a complaint against him. A week later the Labor Front fired the foreman. Yes, the bosses speak softly and kindly to us. They ask us to do this or that, rather than order us.’
Any observer in Germany can multiply such stories a hundredfold. Moreover, the fact that the foreman was disciplined without recourse to one of the famous labor courts illustrates that the courts merely bring to the surface a few episodes of a constant ‘social justice’ process. The trend of figures on laborcourt cases certainly commands attention. In 1936, employees won 189 out of 251 (75.2 per cent) cases tried.
Reading reports on these cases, one gets a pretty good picture of how the Nazi revolution is affecting labor relations. A banker in the town of Lüneburg in lower Saxony received a fine of $125 and costs from a labor court because he paid salaries below the official rates, refused to pay overtime to which his employees were entitled, and had ‘shown himself hostile to his social duties in general.’ A Berlin court fined the daughter of a factory owner because she had ‘maliciously wounded the sense of honor’ of the ‘followers’ in her father’s plant. (Note the word ‘follower’ used instead of ‘worker.’) The girl had addressed them as ‘filthy workmen.’ A wholesale news dealer in Berlin was deprived of control of his business; he had, it appears, persistently paid wages and salaries below the officially fixed rates, had grossly insulted his workmen and employees, and had forced minors to work fifty-nine hours a week without overtime pay. Out of my own experience I have found cases which fit in with this leveling process — such as that of a small factory owner who told me how he had to attend a Schulungslager (camp of social education) where his bunkmate was one of his ‘followers.’
Source:
Brown Bolshevism
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