Unions in China and Germany - Essay Example

The essay "Unions in China and Germany" talks about the time when Hitler ruled in Germany and the union between Germany and China. Under the rule of Hitler, Germany saw a transformation into a dictatorship from a republic through the coordination process. After 1934 August, it became a totalitarian state.The ACFTU is the only legal organization of trade unions. It is structured to suit the requirements of a socialist power economy. With the start of liberalization in China in 1978, the ACFTU experienced a turning point as it was fed by the peasant economy’s surplus labor.

On the other hand, in Germany, Hitler realized that unions exercised more power than he could over the workers. Although he needed the workers to back him, he did not wish the unions to have so much power and, therefore, all unions were banned and the state assumed their roles. The German Labor Force deliberately masked in patriotism, replaced all unions. To gain the workers’ support, they were offered improved lifestyles and subsidized holidays, but the right to strike was taken away. Strikes became illegal.

Leadership was from top to down, with the working class having no power of say. In China, the trade unions’ National Congress is the highest level of decision making, together with the ensuing ACFTU Executive Committee. It is worth noting that although only the ACFTU is legal, power is transferred to it from the top and distributed among other democratically elected offices. The unions at the grassroots allow dual leadership.; from the national level and at the local level. The National Congress holds a meeting after every five years and when it goes into recess, its powers are exercised by the Executive Committee, which takes charge of the unions.

Through the Executive Committee, elections are conducted to choose a chairman, several vice chairmen and members of a Presidium, who form the Presidium that convenes the Executive Committee’s plenary session annually. When the Executive Committee goes into recess, the Presidium takes over power and holds plenary sessions quarterly. A Secretariat is created under the Presidium and it consists of a first secretary and a number of other secretaries who attend to the daily business of the ACFTU.

Headquartered at the ACFTU is an auditing commission together with 12 other functioning departments ranging from finance to technical and legal. In the Federal Republic of Germany, associations for employers were reestablished with the founding of the republic, but did not achieve their status of power before the 1950s economic boom. Unlike China, several unions exist in Germany. Presently, there are a few hundred associations for employers and they are grouped under the Confederation of German Employers' Associations (BDA), Federation of German Industries (BDI) and German Industrial and Trade Conference (DIHT).

The BDA is the labor unions’ negotiating counterpart in collective bargaining situations, while the BDI and DIHT influence the economic policy of the government. Labor in Federal Germany is further organized in three key centralized associations. They are the German Federation of Civil Servants, the German Union of Salaried Workers and the German Confederation of Trade Unions. The German Confederation of Trade Unions (DGB) is the largest by far. It represents the interests of its eight individual trade union members which, in turn, represent over six million workers.

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