The development of labor process policies in the Federal Republic of Germany

In the years following the Second World War, the West German market economy was to distinguish itself as a social alternative, superior to the real socialism as it existed in East Germany with all its economic weaknesses and democratic deficits. Within the context of this social competition, the crisis of Fordist mass production led to increasing attempts to humanize the workplace. The result in 1974 was that the social/liberal coalition government instigated labor policies that the subsequent Christian Democrat/liberal government continued. As the policies were translated into reality, a reform constellation was to crystallize — a network which, in the 1980s, was able to develop innovative concepts for the labor process. Over the next decade, it promoted extended concepts for production, service and employment which, however, eventually stagnated against the background of increasingly neoliberal strategies of rationalization and deregulation. These resulted in problems for employment and employment policy, the solution of which demands wide-ranging labor policies.