“Foreign Worker” Perspectives between German Trade Unions and Turkish Worker Organisations after the Recruitment Ban: Evidence from the Migrant Activism in Frankfurt

Abstract

With the foreign worker recruitment ban in Federal Germany on 23 November 1973, the public featured one of the most controversial debates on how long the former guest workers would stay, and whether Federal Germany was a country of immigration. Between German trade unions and foreign workers these questions also remained contested during the 1970s. This paper looks into these contestations and explores conceptions of the former “guest workers” represented by the German trade unions and migrant organisations from the recruitment stop (1973) until the decade’s end. It discusses activities by Turkish worker organisations in Frankfurt, which were led by union functionaries and had charters promoting unionism, and compares them with the programmatic positions of the German Trade Union Confederation from the same timeframe. Although the period featured disagreements on the above questions, migrant activism at the local level suggests growing cooperation between trade unions and migrant groups as well as emerging agreements on the common migration issues, most importantly the foreign workers’ return option, their family migration and voting rights in German local elections.