Page View
Military government weekly information bulletin
Number 97 (June 1947)
Lapp, Theodore
Reopening labor courts, pp. 7-8
PDF (1.3 MB)
Page 7
REOPENING LABOR COURTS OF WUERTTEMBERG - BADEN Free and independent labor courts, competent to hear and try employ- ment disputes, are again in operation in the US Zone of Germany. Born under the Weimar Republic, emas- culated and rendered impotent under Nazi domination, these courts re- ceived a new birth of freedom under Control Council Law No. 21, "Ger- man Labor Courts," approved by the Control Council on 30 March 1946. Labor courts, even though retained beyond Weimar days, became quite superfluous after the smashing of trade unionism in May 1933 and the abolition of the Works Councils Law by the Nazis. During the Weimar Republic labor relations were based upon collaboration between capital and labor, with a considerable degree of state intervention. An agreement reached between various important employer associations and trade unions on 15 November 1918 deter- mined to a considerable extent the course of labor legislation until 1931. By this agreement, employers re- cognized trade unions, restrictions upon the Tight to organize were de- clared illegal, company unions were outlawed, wages and labor condi- tions were to be regulated by collec- tive bargaining agreements, and works councils elected by the work- ers were to supervise the execution of these collective agreements. Sub- sequent labor legislation was but an attempt to implement the principles formulated in the 1918 agreement. These principles were also em- bodied in the Weimar Constitution of 11 August 1919 (Articles 157-165). The numerous labor laws and regu- lations issued during this period re- quired a vast amount of interpretation in -terms of specific social and eco- nomic situations. The answer to this need was found in the creation of a separate labor judiciary by the Ger- man Labor Courts Act of December 1926. The removal of the whole body of labor law from the competence of the ordinary courts, and the vesting of exclusive jurisdiction in a separate system of courts constituted a re- By Theodore Lapp markable experiment in judical evo- lution. There is no American counterpart. In the United States decisions of the National Labor Relations Board, a quasi-judicial agency administering a law which is in many respects si- milar to the aforementioned Novem- ber agreement of 1918, are subject to review by courts within the regular federal judiciary system. Control Council Law No. 21, with a few important exceptions, reenacts the German Labor Courts Act of 1926. The law established, under the Min- istry of Justice, a system of local and regional (appellate) labor courts. The local courts (Arbeitsgerichte) were courts of the first instance, the jurisdictional area of which usually coincided with that of the ordinary local courts (Amtsgerichte). In districts where certain industries pre- dominated and the volume of disputes warranted, special vocational cham- bers were set up with exclusive juris- diction over litigation within parti- cular industries. The bench was com- posed of one regular member of the judiciary as chairman, and two lay assessors representing employers and employees respectively. The Regional Labor Courts (Landes- arbeitsgerichte) were courts of second instance and were attached to ordi- nary regional courts (Landesgerichte). Appeals could be brought to the Re- gional Labor Court from the Local Labor Court in cases where the ob- ject of litigation. exceeded RM 300, and in cases involving disputes of a fundamental legal nature. The Labor Courts were competent to hear and try disputes between parties to wage contracts; disputes between employers and employees arising out of their common work; and disputes between employers and employees arising out of the applica- tion of the Works Council Law. Jurisdiction could be totally ex- cluded by insertion in collective agreements of a clause referring all disputes to a conciliation committee whose composition was specified in the Labor Court Act itself. Jurisdic- tion could be partially excluded by voluntary conciliation or by an agree- ment to submit all points of fact in- volved to extra-judicial arbitration, leaving only decisions on points of law to the labor court. No profession- al attorneys were permitted to plead before courts of the first instance. During the Nazi regime these tri- bunals had been gradually deprived of much of their jurisdiction and of their democratic composition. With the suppression of trade unions and genuine works councils, court juris- diction was restricted to individual disputes. The panels of court mem- bers previously nominated by trade unions, were designated by the Ger- man Labor Front (DAF). Upon the outbreak of war in 1939, the courts were turned into one-man tribunals. The operation of these Nazi do- minated tribunals was suspended by Military Government Law No. 77. Or- dinary local courts (Amtsgerichte) were permitted to reopen in Wuert- temberg-Baden as early as July 1945. Soon special chambers were attached to the ordinary courts, competent to handle those labor disputes which had proved incapable of resolution by the conciliation departments attached to the labor offices (Arbeits- amter). Prior to the reopening of se- parate labor courts, these special chambers attached to the local courts had processed a total of 316 out of the 575 cases referred to them. Control Council Law No. 21 re-estab- lished Labor Courts as the only com- petent adjudicators of civil disputes arising from collective and individual labor agreements and from appren- ticeship contracts, and restored the panel system of selecting court mem- bers from among nominees proposed by the unions and employers or employers' associations. A noteworthy departure from the 1926 law, was the removal of labor courts from the supervision of the Ministry of Justice, and the placing WEEKLY INFORMATION BULLETIN 16 JUNE 1947 7
As a work of the United States government, this material is in the public domain.| For information on re-use see: http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/Copyright