318
MAGDEBURG.
1895, the largest numbers were found to be in the following occupation
groups :—
Occupation Group.
Building Trades
Metal and Engineering Trades
Clothing Trades
Food, &c., Preparation Trades
Wood-working Trades
Number of
Workpeople.
4,096
10,149
3,104
5,084
2,359
About one-half of the whole body of industrial workpeople therefore
belonged either to the metal and engineering group or to the food preparation
group of trades ; and this is probably still the case at the present time, for the
two dominant industries of Magdeburg, the manufacture of machinery of
various kinds, and sugar refining, fall within these two groups respectively.
A feature of some importance in the industrial life of Magdeburg is the
rapid growth of labour organisations in recent years. The main body of the
trade unions—the social-democratic Gewerkschaften—have formed a trades
council to which 50 unions with 18,500 members were affiliated at the end of
1905. Since then the membership has increased still further, but exact figures
for a more recent date are not available. According to the estimate of the trades
council about 33 per cent, of all male workpeople in Magdeburg are members of
one or other of the affiliated unions.
Outside the trades in which the employers are associated in guilds, and in
which the apprenticeship system is still in full operation, no success has so far
attended the efforts of organised labour to promote collective bargaining in
fixing the conditions of labour. Agreements fixing a minimum rate of wages
and a maximum working day are therefore Confined to what are recognised as
handicrafts, as for example the trades of mason and bricklayer, carpenter, joiner,
slater, painter, wood-carver, tanner and compositor. Copies of the agreements
in force in most of these trades, as also for the labourers in the building trade,
have been secured through the courtesy of the Magdeburg Trades Council and
have yielded material from which it has been possible to calculate rates of
weekly wages which may be accepted as those at which the majority of the men
in the trades concerned are paid. As regards the staple industries of
Magdeburg—engineering and metalworking and sugar refining—where payment
on the time-wage system is quite exceptional and only resorted to in the case of
the most inferior classes of labour, and where, moreover, the conditions of labour
are unaffected by wages agreements, the only means of ascertaining predominant
weekly wages was to seek returns from representative employers in those
industries based on the records of their pay sheets. Most of the employers
approached for this purpose readily acceded to the request, and in the case of
piece-workers showed for each occupation the amount most frequently earned in
October, 1905, in a full week, exclusive of overtime, as well as the number of
hours (exclusive of mealtimes) representing the regular working week.
Subject to such qualifications as would result from the methods of inquiry
just described, the following Table is given as representing the weekly wages
and hours of labour of adult workmen in the principal trades in Magdeburg in
October, 1905.
Wages and Hours of Labour in the Principal Occupations, October, 1905.
Weekly Wages.
Weekly Hours
of Labour.
Building Trades* —
Bricklayers and masons
Carpenters
Joiners ...
Stonemasons
Painters (skilled)
„ (unskilled)
Stonesetters
Slaters
Bricklayers’ labourers
29 s. 8d.
29s. 8c?.
25s. 6d.
27s. to 33s.
27s.
24s.
33s. Id.
27s. 4d. to 30s. 3c?.
22s. 10c?.
57
57
56
(Piecework)
60
60
57
57
57
* The wages and hours of labour stated for the building trades are for a full week in summer.
