In the numerous analyses of the economic failings of the German Democratic Republic, considerable attention and blame have attached to the extensive social policy program of Erich Honecker, leader of the ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) after 1971.Footnote ² The “unity of economic and social policy” encompassed the GDR's entire political economy under Honecker. It was an attempt—a last-ditch attempt, as it transpired—to incentivize higher production, but also to fulfill the party's promise of higher living standards. In sum, the intention was to secure both the GDR's long-term economic viability and popular support via (modest) consumerism and an extensive program of social welfare measures.Footnote ³ In so doing, the SED would prove the economic, social, and political theories that underpinned the whole ideology of “real existing socialism.”

This article explores in detail a single policy—working hours—that brought economic and social policy into the closest contact and fully revealed the ideological contradictions inherent in the system and the differing agendas of the more idealist social policy functionaries in contrast to the hard-nosed practicality and increasing desperation of the party's senior economic strategists. The article argues that the decision to reduce working hours, implemented in 1977, was a litmus test for both the ideological and economic viability of Honecker's “real existing socialism,” which attempted to bring both agendas into equilibrium.

The reduction of weekly working hours and the extension of holiday entitlement were closely linked to the expansion of leisure time and opportunities for personal development and additional societal engagement. This was at the core of the SED's credibility as a workers' party and reflected ambitions dating from the origins of the working-class movement.Footnote ⁴ An additional political consideration was that West Germans worked notably fewer hours than their GDR counterparts.Footnote ⁵ Further, the SED's reduction of women's working hours was intended to boost a birthrate that, without rapid growth, would prove incapable of providing the future workforce envisaged as essential in planning projections. But the overriding imperative was to secure urgently needed economic growth to counteract the damaging impact of rising costs for fuel and raw materials imports on world markets as the value of GDR exports fell. The party believed that workers benefiting from such manifest benefits of a socialist program in the present would be incentivized to increase productivity and workplace discipline, while reducing waste and inefficiency, so that not only the program itself would be financed, but also additional growth and prosperity.Footnote ⁶ In summary, the SED invested in the working hours policy much of its belief in the ability and willingness of the working class to take responsibility for the economic growth and productivity increases that were, as central planners already understood, of existential importance to the GDR's viability by the mid-1970s.

The implementation of the package of work-time reductions decided in 1976 required concrete measures, not least to ensure that output did not fall alongside the hours worked, and so tested the effectiveness of the central planning authorities; the management of every corner of the socialist economy, from large industrial combines to public services; and, crucially, core socialist theories, including those centered on the development of the “socialist personality” that presumed that “the better off GDR citizens were, the more socialist they would become.”Footnote ⁷ The central planners' warnings of the unaffordable costs to the economy of the social policy program are well documented.Footnote ⁸ In analyzing an exemplary case of how the GDR command economy operated in practice, this article explores the difficulties planners faced in attempting nonetheless to implement the policy after the party leadership ignored their warnings, and the ineffectiveness of the GDR's governance structures. It also considers popular reactions to the move, highlighting widespread disbelief in the logic or practicality of party policy, so that the population enjoyed the benefits of the new policy without allowing the SED to take the full political credit for it.

In socialism, as in other polities, social policy and economic growth were inextricably linked: neither one could occur without the other.Footnote ⁹ In practice, the economy stagnated and the social welfare measures were financed by increasing foreign debt.Footnote ¹⁰ Though improved living standards facilitated a certain social consensus and stability during the 1970s and into the earlier 1980s, the increasingly apparent shortcomings in the GDR's economy, which resulted in large part from this overextension of the state's resources, fueled dissatisfaction in the years before SED rule collapsed in 1989.Footnote ¹¹ By the mid-1980s at the latest, the SED was acutely aware of the economic failure of the work-time reduction, but found itself with no politically viable means of retreat. The history of this measure is, therefore, also a contribution to understanding the SED's loss of credibility long before the Wende of 1989.

The 1977 Social Policy Measures and Their Genesis

On May 27, 1976, shortly after the SED's Ninth Party Congress, the SED, the Freier Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (FDGB, Free German Trade Union Confederation) trade union, and the GDR government published a “Joint Resolution on the Further Planned Improvement of Working and Living Conditions of the GDR's Working People in the Period 1976 to 1980.”Footnote ¹² Besides wage and pension increases (not discussed in this article), the work week would be shortened beginning May 1, 1977, without loss of pay for shift workers and for some mothers.Footnote ¹³ Compared to the standard work week of 43.75 hours (introduced in 1967), mothers of two or more children under sixteen, or of any seriously handicapped child, would work a forty-hour week, as would workers on a three-shift pattern. Those on a two-shift pattern would work forty-two hours a week. Vacation entitlement would increase by three days for around 1.5 million shift workers beginning January 1, 1977.Footnote ¹⁴ Three additional days of annual vacation were promised for all workers by 1979. Paid maternity leave was also extended, from eighteen to twenty-six weeks, and further leave of up to a year at the sick pay rate following the birth of a second and each successive child. Finally, the monthly “housework day” (paid leave for mothers to undertake household chores) would be extended to women older than forty in full-time employment even if they had no children at home. There would also be a small reduction in the number of weekly classroom hours expected of teachers, including instructors in kindergartens and children's homes.

These improvements significantly extended measures introduced following the party's Eighth Congress of 1971, at which Honecker, the SED's newly installed first secretary, had prioritized social and consumer policy. The party's new program, formally approved at the Ninth Congress, planned steady progress toward a forty-hour work week within the five-day week established in 1967, and further increases to paid vacation allowances.Footnote ¹⁵ Since the relevant section of Honecker's speech to the 1976 Congress was entitled “Steps to Improve Living and Working Standards in the Years to 1980,” the incautious might have expected rapid progress. Honecker emphasized, however, that considerable efforts remained necessary:

Though improving social standards was clearly an aim in its own right, economic planners hoped principally that the new social policy measures would spur managers and workers to far greater efficiencies.Footnote ¹⁷ In particular, a shorter work week for shift workers would ideally encourage more people to work shift patterns, enabling more intensive use of industrial assets.Footnote ¹⁸ The rolling production cycles would, it was believed, more than compensate for the overall loss of working hours and increase productivity overall, especially if workers achieved efficiency gains throughout each sector and if expensive imported machinery in particular were operated around the clock.Footnote ¹⁹ Where greater efficiency saved jobs altogether, staff could be redeployed into sectors where production workers were sorely needed.Footnote ²⁰ In any event, planners believed that earlier experience of reducing work hours demonstrated that the losses were cancelled out by higher productivity. Further, work time lost through unpaid leave, leave to undertake social obligations (e.g., attend meetings during work time), and part-time work would be reduced.Footnote ²¹ The SED's department for trade unions and social policy optimistically noted that experiences since 1971 showed that “measures to improve living and working conditions that are seen as essential by the majority of workers lead many workers to take new initiatives, even if they have no direct personal advantage from them.”Footnote ²²

Increasing productivity was the GDR's principal economic objective throughout its existence. During the 1970s, economists held frequent colloquia to discuss intensification methods, scientific working organization, pay measures, greater economy with work time and material resources, technological innovation, and other means of raising output.Footnote ²³ Although much of this discussion made little or no mention of social factors (a 1974 conference on “Key Questions in Increasing Productivity” was typical in not considering work hours at all), the reproduction of the capacity for human labor was recognized in Marxist-Leninist theory as fundamental to all economic activity.Footnote ²⁴ Karl Marx believed that societies free of exploitation should “reduce work time to a decreasing minimum throughout society to release time for all to pursue their own development.”Footnote ²⁵

The “unity of economic and social policy” prompted renewed efforts to overcome contradictions between the economic demands placed on workers and the regime's goal of creating a society in which citizens would develop as rounded socialist individuals able to enjoy the high material and social living standards enabled by their labor: “The shaping of developed socialist society is characterized not least in that social development is increasingly the result of and simultaneously the prerequisite for further economic development.”Footnote ²⁶ Nonetheless, there remained potential for conflict between economic and social imperatives. From the perspective of social-policy makers:

Marxist theory held that in socialist society, where the workers owned the means of production and benefited from the results of their own labor, work and nonwork time were not opposites.Footnote ²⁸ For GDR social-policy theorists, therefore, the solution was to balance work and free time:

But planners emphasized harder economic rationales:

Hitherto, differential pay rates had been used as the principal stimulus to persuade workers to move to multishift patterns, besides the reduction to a forty-two-hour week for three-shift workers introduced in the 1960s. The SED, however, recognized during the early 1970s that these measures had not yet achieved the full desired result.Footnote ³¹ Indeed, women shift workers in particular typically attempted to move to standard working hours, not least because of the difficulty of securing child care during night shifts. Here, the economic imperative tended to dominate the party's thinking. Although shift workers' children tended to perform less well in school and were more likely to commit crimes, the objective remained increasing the proportion of shift workers.Footnote ³²

Planners recognized that rising living standards, rising pay, and large numbers of vacancies throughout industry meant workers were ever less willing to undertake shift work, which tended to reduce their perceived quality of life in socialism, and could change jobs relatively easily if necessary to avoid it. Therefore a range of measures was deemed necessary to achieve the overall objective of increasing shift work. These would include a shorter work week, but also improved availability of social and cultural resources and a range of further pay measures (additional bonuses for workers on three-shift patterns and weekend shifts, etc.).Footnote ³³ After all, “socialist society has to draw not only on people's ideological aspirations, but also on their material motives to produce as efficiently as possible.”Footnote ³⁴

The 1976 measures to reduce work hours arose from discussions in the SED's Central Committee (ZK) departments during 1974, and a Politburo initiative of March 1975 within the broader framework of preparations for the 1976–80 Five-Year Plan. A working group was established to examine three principal variants, which had already been considered by the deputy head of the state office for work and pay, Heinz Ramuta, and approved by Günter Mittag, the senior Politburo member responsible for the economy.Footnote ³⁵ Ramuta argued that the introduction of the eight-hour day would bring an “exceptionally positive political effect” since it would benefit the vast majority of workers. But even at this early stage he noted the considerable economic burden of the move and recognized that workers would need to respond with economic initiatives. “Productivity must be increased through intensification measures to such an extent that the loss of work time can be compensated and the goals of the economic plan fulfilled.” Since growth in the number of shift workers to increase output per machine was a fundamental economic objective, however, Ramuta also favored a differentiated scheme, because a blanket forty-hour week would not incentivize workers to move to shift patterns. Ramuta's original proposal was amended but proved influential in foreseeing different models for workers on different types of shift pattern.Footnote ³⁶ Given the imperative of increasing overall output, no further attention was paid to a 1974 proposal from the SED's trade union department that had suggested a basic forty-hour week by 1990, but with reductions to 38.75- or 37.5-hour weeks for shift workers.Footnote ³⁷ Other ZK departments concluded that while a forty-hour week for all workers was unaffordable (representing a loss of 6.6 percent of all available work time), increased vacation entitlement would improve working conditions and living standards effectively, and help to maintain workers' health, at considerably lower cost.Footnote ³⁸

The Politburo's working group, chaired by Schürer, agreed that a general forty-hour week would be politically effective, but felt this could only be introduced for all workers over two five-year plan periods—an ambition the GDR never fulfilled.Footnote ³⁹ One functionary cautioned that announcing an extension of the forty-hour week to all workers at an unspecified point some ten years hence would have little political effect, not least because people remembered other unfulfilled long-term promises.Footnote ⁴⁰ Nonetheless, the committee's ambitions to extend the forty-hour week to all workers indicate an expectation that the GDR's economy would be so strong, or workers so willing to cooperate, ten years later that the additional stimuli to encourage shift work would no longer be necessary. In the meantime, various models were examined. A proposal to introduce a general forty-hour week to industrial workers was rejected lest other workers object and be tempted to industry from sectors with poor staff retention, such as transport, construction, and the health service.Footnote ⁴¹ Alternative models foresaw a forty-hour week just for shift workers, or a 41.25-hour week for those on two-shift patterns while retaining a forty-hour week for those on three shifts. All models sought to overcome two highly irksome aspects of shift work: second shifts that finished after midnight and produced 9.5-hour work days (including breaks) to achieve a forty-two-hour week within five days, a considerable disincentive for working mothers; and three-shift patterns based on daily eight-hour shifts, which necessitated an additional shift (Füllschicht) one Saturday in four to achieve a forty-two-hour week averaged over the four weeks.Footnote ⁴² Some firms that worked on two shifts shortened the work day to allow working mothers an earlier finish, but thereby also necessitated the compensating Füllschicht, reducing the number of work-free days.Footnote ⁴³ Ultimately, the differentiated scheme outlined above was introduced, with greatest time reductions for those working the most demanding shift patterns and for mothers, but no further reductions as yet for other groups.

The working group also considered extending workers' vacation entitlement. This would prove a particularly knotty problem because there was already considerable variation according to types of work, length of service, family circumstances, and local agreements, and poor understanding by many workers (and some officials) of the technical difference between Werktage (days in the calendar year that might be worked, i.e., hitherto including Saturdays, so that Saturdays not worked counted as annual leave) and Arbeitstage (the number of days an individual was actually expected to work).Footnote ⁴⁴ At an early point, the working group proposed standardizing basic vacation entitlement at eighteen days a year for those younger than forty-five, increasing to twenty-one days for forty-five- to fifty-five-year-olds, and twenty-four days for those older than fifty-five. To encourage greater shift work, there would be three additional days a year for workers on two-shift patterns, and six for those on three-shift patterns.Footnote ⁴⁵

Complications quickly arose when the May 1976 Joint Resolution granted additional days for shift workers in addition to existing vacation entitlement. The intention had been to standardize basic vacation entitlement and introduce a common set of rules governing bonus days for shift workers to supersede existing local arrangements. To encourage shift working, however, some firms had already established more generous vacation entitlements than the law normally allowed. Given the phrasing of the Joint Resolution, workers who had benefited from these additional days were dismayed when it was announced that they would not also receive the three extra days they had been led to expect.Footnote ⁴⁶ This ambiguity occasioned considerable arguments within the ZK apparatus before the new vacation rulings took effect in January 1979. Ultimately, Erich Honecker, not known for his economic prowess, determined that the political impact of the extended vacation should not be undermined.Footnote ⁴⁷ Existing additional advantages for workers would remain while they remained with their firm, effectively consolidating an unequal system of vacation entitlement. Thus, some 250,000 workers retained their previous additional vacation entitlement, as agreed in individual firms, and added a further three days.Footnote ⁴⁸

While the party hoped for greater productivity from reduced work hours, no such advantages would accrue from reducing the retirement age, despite widespread calls for this, particularly from men who regarded the lower retirement age for women (sixty rather than sixty-five for men) as discriminatory.Footnote ⁴⁹ By contrast, the monthly “housework day” needed attention, since firms applied it variously, and some had already (illegally) extended it to women without children at home, prompting ill feeling among staff at other companies.Footnote ⁵⁰ Women without a regular housework day often compensated by going part-time or by taking sick leave. A proposal to abolish the housework day altogether and instead shorten the working week for all women to give them more time for housework was not adopted, but the day was made standard for all women older than forty as well as younger women with children.Footnote ⁵¹

The SED's challenge was to compensate the productivity losses from the lost work time, while also growing the economy overall at a faster rate. Effective planning, however, was undoubtedly hindered by contradictory estimates of the total impact of these measures, ranging from a 4.7-percent reduction in available work time calculated in 1976 before the resolution was published (including an estimated 1 percent from extended maternity leaves arising in part from the expected higher birthrate), to 1.5 percent in a report to the Politburo in 1977.Footnote ⁵² Planned growth rates and additional pay and financial benefits would result in a planned annual 4-percent rise in household income, to about 120–122 percent of 1975 levels by 1980. This additional spending power would necessitate the additional production of suitable consumer goods to the value of some 3.8 billion Marks over this period, even as the available work time was reduced.Footnote ⁵³ Given that long-term economic growth would have to be achieved almost entirely through higher individual productivity, reducing the overall available work time in the absence of demographic growth was a gamble.Footnote ⁵⁴

Reception and Implementation

Before the SED's Ninth Congress, calls to shorten the work week and lower the retirement age were widespread, particularly among women.Footnote ⁵⁵ Announcing the specific social-policy measures after the party congress meant they were not overshadowed by the bigger event, but the delay initially caused suspicion.Footnote ⁵⁶ Why, many people wondered immediately after the congress, had the SED not announced specific measures?Footnote ⁵⁷ But the news was greeted warmly when it broke, and even occasioned pride in the GDR.Footnote ⁵⁸ Käte S. of Perleberg was so delighted that single women would get a housework day that she forgot to have her breakfast.Footnote ⁵⁹ Frau Sch., a Berlin supermarket worker, was now doubly excited about the child she was expecting, and others agreed that having children had become even more worthwhile. Indeed, one woman already in labor asked the maternity team to check whether the new child-support measures would count against her voluntary additional pension contributions. Assured they would not, she proceeded to give birth.Footnote ⁶⁰ Herr N., a metalworker, was only sorry he was not a woman himself, but welcomed the measures since women were more overburdened than men.Footnote ⁶¹ The women's organization, Demokratischer Frauenbund Deutschlands (DFD, the Democratic Women's Association of Germany), reported many women pledging to return to full-time work on the basis of the forty-hour week.Footnote ⁶² For those affected, the end of the Füllschicht meant thirteen additional free Saturdays during the year, and was particularly welcomed.Footnote ⁶³

Many citizens also wondered, however, whether the new social measures could be afforded and predicted considerable difficulties in health care and factories with high proportions of female workers.Footnote ⁶⁴ Single fathers who would not enjoy a housework day complained of discrimination. Some older women clearly felt life was too easy for their younger sisters, who now benefited from the pill, increased maternity leave, and shorter work weeks, while their older colleagues were expected to absorb the work left undone by new mothers.Footnote ⁶⁵ Other worries included the potential for price rises (the scourge of inflation never quite forgotten in Germany), and a disbelief among agricultural workers who had not yet achieved a forty-eight-hour week.Footnote ⁶⁶ Some saw an opportunity to express other grumbles, commenting that the changes would be far more affordable if the GDR were not so generous in its “solidarity” with other countries.Footnote ⁶⁷ When concrete details of the additional vacation entitlements from 1979 were published in October 1978, the welcome was mixed with widespread surprise that the SED still felt able to honor this pledge given the party's acknowledgment of the difficult economic situation.Footnote ⁶⁸

Equally, citizens who had expected more felt disappointed or aggrieved. There were calls to lower the retirement age, raise pensions further, and introduce still longer vacation entitlement soon.Footnote ⁶⁹ Staff in children's homes and day-care centers also felt aggrieved that they would not benefit from the additional workload reductions for teachers and kindergarten staff, because they considered themselves also a part of the education service.Footnote ⁷⁰ Officials worried that many people were thinking only of the positive effects for themselves, rather than the “main questions,” notably that social-policy measures required productivity growth.Footnote ⁷¹

While the Politburo working group spent considerable time on the macroeconomic implications of the various dispensations, faith in workers' initiatives to mitigate the immediate danger of reduced productivity meant far less attention was paid to the practicalities of implementation. Individual firms were to determine locally how to intensify productivity as work hours decreased.Footnote ⁷² Asked by a magazine for personnel managers what guidance could be given to firms, particularly those with large female workforces, Horst Rademacher, the State Secretary for Work and Wages, could only advise managers to consult their staff via trade unions and women's committees, and to tap all reserves. The party was convinced that workers in each firm knew where these reserves could be found and how to release them.Footnote ⁷³ Central planners believed problems might be mitigated by recruiting more staff, given that demographic changes would produce 900,000 additional workers between 1976 and 1985.Footnote ⁷⁴ But months after the measures were announced, the central government remained unclear precisely how many workers might be affected and how many mothers might take longer maternity leaves.Footnote ⁷⁵ It was clear, though, that stark differences existed between sectors. While the construction industry lost 1.1 percent of work time, the health service lost 2.7 percent.Footnote ⁷⁶ In sectors dependent on female workers, women were concerned that the new measures would mean more overtime and “special” shifts.Footnote ⁷⁷ In practical terms, the cumulative impact was great. The Halle region alone, for example, was losing the output of 10,179 full-time-equivalent staff across the economy.Footnote ⁷⁸

The Politburo placed its faith in measures ranging from rationalization, performance-related pay, and the implementation of “scientific work organization,” to workers' pledges and initiatives within campaigns entitled “40” and “Zeitgewinn” (“Time Gain”).Footnote ⁷⁹ There was no doubt that better organization could theoretically yield significant results. Ninety percent of production workers surveyed in April 1977 reported between fifteen minutes and an hour of daily lost production, which they attributed to raw materials supply problems, delayed machinery repairs, poor coordination between individual departments, and poor timekeeping by the workers themselves.Footnote ⁸⁰ Identifying opportunities for more efficient work to mitigate the overall losses of work time was one thing, but the SED had effectively set the workforce a dual goal of both compensating the losses in work time by these measures while also maintaining and exceeding the pace of economic growth foreseen in the Five-Year Plan. The implementation working group noted that chemical plants, light industry, and mining/metallurgy would be more heavily affected by work-time losses than average. Achieving the ambitious 1977 plan targets in these areas would require workers to increase productivity by twice the level required to compensate the lost hours alone.Footnote ⁸¹

From late 1976 onward, regular investigations checked the state of readiness for implementation on May 1, 1977. There was considerable concern that managers' claims rested on shaky foundations. For instance, an Eisleben clothing company intended to cover almost a third of the lost time (4,000 hours) by reducing sick time.Footnote ⁸² The Berlin-Lichtenberg parks and gardens department intended to save 240 hours annually by using more weedkiller.Footnote ⁸³ In practice, planning failures meant many workers initially did not work fewer hours. This fed disillusionment and doubts that the measures were realistic. Older workers regularly complained that they were now taking the burden from the young, and that the measures should not have been introduced when nobody knew how they would be managed—an indirect criticism of the central planning system.Footnote ⁸⁴ Though the situation varied considerably across the economy and some sectors implemented rational systems more easily than others, chaotic management and a failure to provide practical guidance or solutions from the top were common to most.

Industrial firms found it relatively easy to report that lost work hours had been compensated, though in some cases the process was delayed by the lack of technical investments that would have spurred productivity, and by poor management.Footnote ⁸⁵ Though senior industrial managers frequently called on department heads to “take measures to ensure” improved productivity and full exploitation of machines and work time, they offered few practical suggestions.Footnote ⁸⁶ Faced with reports predicting only forty-percent coverage of lost work hours in industry, at least one minister followed suit, simply demanding plans for 100-percent coverage by December 1976.Footnote ⁸⁷ Nonetheless, major plants such as the Mansfeld-Kombinat “Wilhelm Pieck” applied the “Science and Technology Plan” to save 1.1 million hours of work time during 1976, while other firms achieved (or reported) success with the “Initiative 40,” which was designed to produce as much in forty hours as previously in forty-two beginning January 1, 1977.Footnote ⁸⁸

Just as in productive industry, reducing real work hours represented both an operational challenge and an opportunity to increase efficiency for the service sectors. The post office hoped to cover sixty to seventy percent of its work-time reductions from “technical and organizational measures,” though central managers failed to advise individual offices on the specifics. Many such measures relied on altering the basis for calculating productivity rather than representing real efficiency gains. In achieving 92.3-percent coverage of the 4,638,000 lost work hours, local managers reported efficiencies from the reduction of nonworked, “idle,” and “backlog” hours, as well as less time spent on handovers at shift changes and “reflection.” In part this revealed considerable slackness in the system, yet also a tendency to report successful implementation even where problems remained. Assessors noted that despite theoretical coverage, many staff members were in practice building up compensatory time (372 days in Altenburg's post office in the first month alone) that would have to be taken later.Footnote ⁸⁹

Transport was a particular challenge: only 83.4 percent of lost work hours had been compensated by the end of May 1977, and progress was slow in the following months. Within the sector, the railways expected to cover at best 61.5 percent of lost time by May 1977, and still only 79 percent by December (in May managers had expected 88-percent coverage). The merchant navy managed no more than 63-percent coverage.Footnote ⁹⁰ Both GDR railways and Interflug, the GDR airline, implemented new working patterns to reduce waiting and rest times, and reorganized timetables. Railway management applied to the transport ministry to run more single operator train services. Despite recruiting former staff and diverting administrators into operations, managers could not always cover round-the-clock services, many of which were already understaffed compared to legal standards (by 30 percent in some cases) and relied on overtime. The initial impact was higher costs for wages. Given that the transport sector was acknowledged to be understaffed by some 13,300 workers in 1977, the work-time reductions exacerbated operational difficulties without freeing any excess staff for the wider economy.Footnote ⁹¹ In Leipzig, every fourth bus and tram was already operated by a driver on overtime. Some bus drivers were working 1,600 hours of overtime a year, amounting to a seventy- or eighty-hour week.Footnote ⁹² In the merchant navy, sailors each accrued 5.2 days of compensatory time during May and June 1977 alone, and were owed more than 500,000 days overall by November 1977.Footnote ⁹³

Besides coping with its own staffing needs, public transport was also expected to facilitate the altered work hours of the rest of the population. The railways had received 220 requests for timetable changes by December 1976 and intended to implement 180 of these. In some cases, however, neighboring firms submitted incompatible requests.Footnote ⁹⁴

Trade and retail also had particular problems, since opening hours had to be covered. With pregnancy rates rising, some firms found twenty-five percent of their staff was expectant mothers, of whom half might take a paid year's leave after giving birth. The only solutions were to find additional staff or increase the overtime bill. Forty percent of lost work time in the tourist cafes on the Baltic coast was covered this way.Footnote ⁹⁵ Considerable goodwill enabled imaginative solutions, and shop workers changed shift patterns to cover opening hours; but where a salesperson worked alone, additional entitlements were typically bundled, and shops closed for a day or two half-days each month, inevitably creating new shopping challenges, not least for working mothers, and longer lines.Footnote ⁹⁶ In bakeries where shift work was common, additional overtime proved essential.Footnote ⁹⁷

Some sectors had still greater problems. Health and social services had 240,000 staff entitled to shorter work hours or longer vacations.Footnote ⁹⁸ Despite rationalization measures, however, nurses had to be present in wards and aides on duty in rest homes. The Health Ministry publicized a “Saving Time Initiative” from 1976 onward but, beyond exhorting local managers to find local solutions, largely concentrated on gathering statistical information about preparations. By mid-April 1977 the ministry predicted that only eighty-five to ninety percent of lost time could be compensated, but this analysis relied on data often believed to be false. Managers in the Bischofswerda district claimed to have entirely solved the challenge, but gave no evidence of how any of the 18,800 lost working hours would be covered. Local officialdom varied greatly in its ingenuity. The Schleiz district reported ninety-percent coverage of the shortfall, but in the nearby Jena district, managers predicted only twelve-percent coverage.Footnote ⁹⁹ By November 1977, just eighty percent of the lost work hours in the health service had been covered; long-term understaffing was blamed.Footnote ¹⁰⁰

Only limited time could be saved by measures such as shortening overlap times at shift changes and employing more triage doctors.Footnote ¹⁰¹ The health service had difficulties recruiting additional staff and relied on nonmedical personnel, students, and Red Cross volunteers. By 1978, even these measures could not stabilize the staffing crisis that the social-policy measures had aggravated. Overtime work and staff stress levels increased. Inspections revealed absent staff, thousands of closed beds, closed wards, and lengthening waiting times for operations. Patients in the Magdeburg region had to wait a year for orthopedic operations and longer still for pediatric surgery. Maternity wards were particularly affected by staff shortages, particularly as the new measures also prompted a rising birthrate. The situation was worse in old people's homes, where many aides were unqualified and frequently of pensionable age themselves. At one retirement home in the Plauen district, the 150 residents lacked any qualified aides between 4 and 8 p.m.Footnote ¹⁰² The medical staff was reluctant to enter inpatient care, since this involved shift work and in some cases lower pay, disadvantages not inflicted on those working in clinics and as district nurses.Footnote ¹⁰³ Members of the ministry were no more able than local officials to find solutions. A Council of Ministers resolution of November 3, 1977, almost six months after the new systems began, aimed at mitigating lost work time in the health service. The Health Ministry followed up on December 28 and then merely demanded that regional officials take further action and report back.Footnote ¹⁰⁴

Education also faced challenges, since eighty percent of the workforce was female. Twenty-eight percent of female teachers (and rising) were mothers eligible for reduced work hours, causing problems covering many schools' timetables; 14,500 kindergarten workers were also affected. When the 1977–78 school year began, only fifty-four percent of eligible teachers were able to work a forty-hour week in practice, while the remainder agreed to teach additional hours. Heads made increasing use of their right to require teachers to add one or two “variable hours” to their standard contracted teaching hours. Early in the 1977–78 school year, Berlin schools were using more than sixty percent of the available “variable hours” to cover scheduled classes.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ Despite redeploying youth group leaders and persuading some part-time teachers to work full time, some schools had to pay overtime to cover all teaching commitments.Footnote ¹⁰⁶

Planners were sometimes surprised and concerned by the practical implementation of the new arrangements for shift workers. The Joint Commission of the government and FDGB formed to oversee the new system had set out that each work day should be shortened, though in exceptions the time could be accumulated and taken in a single weekly lump if necessitated by child-care facilities or public transport considerations.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Planners hoped that workers on two-shift patterns reducing to a forty-two-hour week would take most of the time daily, since they calculated that productivity lessened in proportion to the length of the shift.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ Many women, however, preferred to take the entire week's entitlement on a single day each week rather than reducing their work time by twenty-four minutes a day. In many cases, this avoided wasting the additional free time in waiting for buses home that still ran in accordance with the established shift patterns. Where public transport arrangements were altered, the changes initially meant some workers arrived home later or had to leave home earlier than before, lengthening the work day overall. Saving time to take in a weekly lump made a more tangible difference for many women, who now finished work on a Friday at lunchtime and completed shopping and household chores before the weekend proper began. Equally, a number of staff, women in particular, were allowed a variety of arrangements to suit individual circumstances. Yet the planners worried that this essentially created a four-and-a-half-day week by the back door, at a time when six-day weeks were still common in most socialist countries, and thus industrial assets would operate at still lower capacity.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Nonetheless, where company or party functionaries had not consulted workers on their preferences for new working hours and attempted to implement the planners' rationale, inspections by higher authorities or letters of complaint from workforces to Erich Honecker prompted changes and, on occasion, rebukes for inadequate “work with the people.”Footnote ¹¹⁰ As so often, the SED was caught between the conflicting objectives of achieving optimal work patterns to boost output and securing maximal popular support for its policies.

A further challenge for mothers was that kindergartens and child day-care facilities also changed their opening hours to just Mondays to Fridays, 6 a.m. to 7 p.m., with Saturday opening in exceptional circumstances only. This followed a 1976 directive designed to avoid children being left in care for lengthy periods to accommodate their parents' unsociable shift patterns, or cases where parents worked far from home and might leave their children for days at a time. The new arrangements created considerable practical difficulties for working mothers, however.Footnote ¹¹¹ This, combined with the overall shortage of kindergarten places, meant that some mothers preferred not to take maternity leave for fear that they would find no child-care places when they returned to work.Footnote ¹¹² The difficulties that the combination of the contradictory child-care and work-time directives would create had been noted by central planners the previous autumn, but no solution had been found.Footnote ¹¹³ The trade-union college could only suggest that parents work alternate shifts or that children be looked after by relatives, recognizing that neither of these solutions was ideal.Footnote ¹¹⁴ Here, too, different branches of the SED found themselves pursuing irreconcilable differences.Footnote ¹¹⁵

Outcomes

Measured against the SED's social and macroeconomic ambitions, the 1977 social policy measures achieved some successes. By November 1977, some 1.2 million GDR citizens, fifteen percent of the workforce, were working a forty-hour week.Footnote ¹¹⁶ From 1979, some 8.7 million workers enjoyed longer vacations. More than a million were shift workers with differentiated additional time off of three to six days a year.Footnote ¹¹⁷

Numerous part-time female workers transferred into full-time work, though the gain was frequently only two to four hours a week per worker, since women already working thirty-five hours part time were more likely to go full time than those working thirty hours or fewer.Footnote ¹¹⁸ Overall, the reduction of work hours for women by the various measures through the 1970s was almost compensated by the numbers of women moving from part-time to full-time work (up from 67.6 percent in 1970 to 69.5 percent in 1978) and because part-time women were also working longer weekly hours on average (27 hours in 1970, 28.48 hours in 1978).Footnote ¹¹⁹ The absence of holistic planning, however, also meant that some women who attempted to return to full-time work were refused by managers whose wage budget would not permit the additional expenditure.Footnote ¹²⁰ Regional and local planning authorities also intervened to insist that staffing (and budget) quotas not be exceeded, leading to frustrations in the health service where the slight increase in full-time employment was particularly necessary to ensure service provision against the background of shorter work hours overall.Footnote ¹²¹

The improved maternity leave entitlements also contributed to rising pregnancy rates. Though important for the GDR's long-term future, this exacerbated problems for firms in the short term. Halle officials reported in July 1977 that many firms already had more staff on maternity leave than had been planned for the entire year. In one district the pregnancy rate among teachers doubled in twelve months.Footnote ¹²² Household incomes also rose: the full basket of social policy measures during the 1970s, including pension increases introduced in 1979, raised incomes to 155 percent of 1970 levels by 1980. Within this, families with children were the principal beneficiaries, followed by workers. The proportion of working mothers rose from eighty-three percent to ninety-three percent during the decade, giving more women a significant influence over household income.Footnote ¹²³

Given the huge efforts made to increase shift work, the SED could only be disappointed at the net impact of the social-policy measures on economic output. Though some two-shift workers (mainly men) were prepared to move to three-shift patterns, industrial firms were operating on average at 1.348 shifts per day in May 1977, a negligible increase on the average of 1.346 a year earlier.Footnote ¹²⁴ Hopes that the social-policy measures would heighten workers' commitment were clearly misplaced. The shift coefficient for production workers in industry increased by a mere 0.003 percent from 1975 to 1980.Footnote ¹²⁵ A 1978 survey of 1,100 firms showed that valuable industrial assets, including those purchased for hard currency, remained underutilized on average for 6.3 hours a day, in large part because shift patterns did not allow for their usage. Indeed, this equipment was used for slightly less of the available time in 1977 and 1978 than had been the case in the previous two years.Footnote ¹²⁶ The 14.9 average daily hours achieved per machine by 1978 had still risen to only 15.6 daily hours (the original 1978 target) by 1983, despite some increases in the number of shift workers.Footnote ¹²⁷ Bonus payments for shift work still proved more attractive than reduced hours, even though these were welcomed by women in particular.Footnote ¹²⁸ Many workers also complained that there was little benefit from shorter work hours if the time saved was spent in line outside shops.Footnote ¹²⁹ The SED itself realized that shift work required considerable reorganization that covered the whole community, not just altered public transport and kindergarten hours, but also suitable hours at doctor's offices, peace and quiet during daytime hours while shift workers were sleeping, provision of overnight support in factories so that workers were not left idle because of breakdowns, and much more besides.Footnote ¹³⁰

By 1983, planners believed that more “ideological-political” work was required to persuade more workers to move to shift patterns, and noted that material incentives for shift workers had fallen relatively behind those for workers generally. But they also saw that shift patterns that guaranteed workers several consecutive free days were necessary, and that only a combination of stimuli would achieve the desired move to more shift work.Footnote ¹³¹ In other words, the party was back to the position of ten years earlier: since all workers had benefited from the general, and expensive, improvement in working conditions achieved by the social-policy measures of the mid-1970s and other measures to improve pay, the relative material benefits of shift work had been somewhat leveled out, but at considerable and lasting financial cost, not yet fully recouped by productivity gains.

Meanwhile, overtime increased by 1.6 million hours during 1977 to an average 63.3 annual hours per worker, but up to 162 hours per worker in parts of the construction industry, and 287 hours per transport worker, a rise of 9 hours over the year.Footnote ¹³² Besides the financial cost and workers' expectation that they could spend this additional income on additional goods or services that the economy would have to deliver, rising overtime negated the social ambition of increasing workers' leisure and recuperation time. In areas where working conditions deteriorated, staff turnover tended to increase, exacerbating the situation. In the health service, high turnover was attributed to long-standing excessive demands on employees and the expectation that most of the shift work would be undertaken by a small proportion of the staff, besides the more general difficulties of relatively low pay and poor housing availability.Footnote ¹³³

The hope of freeing more workers to enter industry by spurring productivity and achieving efficiencies also failed to materialize. Industrial sectors required 45,000 additional workers in 1978, the plan to move workers into industry having fallen short by 25–28,000 people during 1977.Footnote ¹³⁴ Where work time was saved, no effective mechanisms existed to transfer workers into other companies or multishift patterns. Rather, firms tended to “hoard” labor against potential future needs.Footnote ¹³⁵ Equally, some overstaffed firms were even allocated additional workers by the central planning apparatus.Footnote ¹³⁶

The prospect of further reductions of available work time once vacation entitlements increased beginning January 1, 1979, caused concern. Trade union officials noted in late 1978 that implementation of the mid-1977 measures was still necessitating overtime and special weekend shifts, particularly in the retail, transport, health, and education sectors. Leipzig firms in all sectors were reported to be struggling to identify means of covering increased vacation entitlements while also raising output in line with planned growth for 1979. Officials had to prevent managers from encouraging construction workers to “give a day back” from their additional leave entitlement to balance the plan.Footnote ¹³⁷

The 1977 measures failed to resolve the GDR's long-standing structural labor problems. Though overall output continued to rise, workers made ever less productive use of their nominal work hours as the 1970s ended, despite the hope that the measures would incentivize them.Footnote ¹³⁸ Indeed, industrial workers lost (through sick leave, machine stoppages, delivery delays, unexcused absence, etc.) an average of 3.2 hours more in 1977 than 1976, and a further 9.2 hours in 1978. In part, the failure to raise productivity as projected resulted from managers' failure to tackle the endemic problems of absenteeism from the workplace. The Leipzig FDGB reported that managers were unwilling to deal with unexcused absences, but quick to instigate overtime and special shifts.Footnote ¹³⁹ Despite the hopes placed in scientific measures to increase efficiency and reduce waste, stoppage and waiting times in industry also increased in 1978 by almost seven hours per construction worker. Sick leave remained high throughout this period, at some 169 annual hours per industrial worker in 1978. In all, only around 80 percent of planned work hours were actually used productively in 1978, against a planned 82.1 percent after expected sick leave, maternity leave, etc. The difference amounted to the expected output of 24,000 full-time workers. Unexcused leave also rose rapidly through industry and construction in 1978.Footnote ¹⁴⁰ Planners were well aware of these shortcomings and that the true extent of lost work time was not accurately reported, but hidden in extended breaks, late starts, early finishes, and the like. Outdated production quotas also permitted some workers to take a lax approach to work.Footnote ¹⁴¹

Yet officials should not have been surprised at the dismal results of their plans: similar hopes had been placed in the “science and technology plan” and “scientific organization of work” following a 1972 work-time reduction for some mothers. Only sixty-nine percent of the time thus lost had been compensated by such measures, while the new arrangements had mainly highlighted the already severe difficulties faced by the industries principally affected.Footnote ¹⁴² Indeed, similar experiences of poor management, significant rises in overtime, and a failure to tackle avoidable losses of production time had also followed the reduction to a forty-five-hour work week in 1957, suggesting patterns of worker attitudes to socialist rule that were consistent through most of the GDR's history.Footnote ¹⁴³

The failure to reap rewards from the 1977 measures by stimulating greater productivity was not just an initial trend, but a long-term feature of the GDR economy. By 1987, the GDR still had far longer working hours (1,984 hours a year) than its western neighbors but also far more hours (256 annually) of lost productivity per industrial worker.Footnote ¹⁴⁴ Even more hours of potential productive output were lost in 1988, and the losses in industry and construction alone represented the equivalent output of 242,000 workers.Footnote ¹⁴⁵ These figures were considerably higher even than at the start of the 1980s. The breakdown of absence causes also revealed the party's failure to stimulate greater commitment from the workforce: eighty-nine percent of nonattendance by workers under the industrial ministries was attributed to sickness or caring for sick children (at 163.7 hours per worker over the year, very comparable to the values of the late 1970s); unexcused or unexplained absences were still running at 4.6 hours annually per worker as the 1980s ended.Footnote ¹⁴⁶