Im Morgengrauen der Digitalisierung / At the dawn of digitalization: IG Metall and the Second Industrialization (1950–1970)

In the 1950s and 1960s, the first computers and robots found their way into offices and factory floors in West Germany. Even then, the question arose as to how digitalization would affect the world of work and how trade unions would manage this transformation. In this book, Ralf Roth shows in detail how well-prepared IG Metall was at the beginning of the digital age for negotiations with employers regarding the consequences of automation and the expected significant increase in work efficiency, and how it fought for social and economic participation in the gains of modernization. Initially supported by the experiences of US trade unions, but also by analyses and forecasts from the still-emerging field of labor and industrial sociology, IG Metall achieved spectacular successes, including the conclusion of "rationalization protection agreements" and the reduction of working hours to a five-day, 40-hour week. The introduction of the "free Saturday" even achieved nothing less than the entry into a leisure society, combined with an immense strengthening of purchasing power through the reduction in the price of numerous consumer goods as a result of the computer-driven increase in the efficiency of work.