Fighting the far right in German workplaces
On workplace democratization as a way to battle the extreme right in Germany
Posted by Thomas Klikauer
In many recent elections in Germany, the neo-fascist AfD has become a strong political force nationwide. Even more worrying, it has become “the” strongest political party in some East-German states. Seemingly, far right propaganda continues to work – just as it did in 1933, so too in 2025.
According to Infratest’s” recent public polling, the far right AfD is predicted to gain a monstrous 39% in the next election in the East-German state of Saxony-Anhalt – set for the 6th of September 2026.
Much of this has a deep historical root. In Saxony-Anhalt’s capital of Magdeburg, for example, a whopping 44% voted for Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party in 1932. There is still room for the AfD to move upwards.
If the AfD’s ascending trend continues, close to half of the state’s population is likely to vote for Germany’s new Nazi party: the AfD.
Even among those voters who see themselves as workers, the AfD has been very successful in gaining their support. To fight this kind of “fascistisation” of Germany’s working class, recent counterstrategies against the AfD have focused on understanding the composition of those who support the AfD. Key elements in this are:
- social stratification, i.e. a fizzling out of class;
- declassification, i.e. the devaluation of skills and professions;
- de-recognition, i.e. the non-recognition of status;
- the lack of political representation in society, i.e. the absence of a political party representing the interest of working; and
- at work, i.e. the continuous diminishing influence of trade unions in German politics.
These have created a vacuum in which AfD propaganda has been successful. Furthermore, in East Germany, with weaker trade union density compared to that of West-Germany, the world of work is defined by workers with feelings of being powerless and of alienation: life is determined by others.
On the other hand, experiences of democratic participation in companies through trade unions and Germany’s system of works councils have reduced the impact of right-wing extremist, anti-democratic attitudes that support the AfD.
However, the past few years have also been characterised by growing tensions in terms of labour relations because of wage stagnation, work intensification, and pro-business re-regulation of working hours – commonly sold as deregulation.
In the realm of politics, East-Germans more than West-Germans are experiencing a legitimacy crisis of liberal democracy that reaches deep into the middle of society. This impacts on, at least three workplace issues:
- Firstly, the current state of democratic participation in German companies.
- Secondly, the actual experience of workplace democracy – trade unions and works councils – can diminish extreme right-wing attitudes.
- Thirdly, both are different in East- and West-Germany.
Essential to much of this is the concept of industrial citizenship indicating potentials for empowerment through workplace democratisation.
These are set against current dynamics streaming from right-wing extremism which also differ in both East-Germany and West-Germany.
However, workplace democracy can have spill-over effects that prevent right-wing extremist propaganda in the workplace and in society to take hold.
Meanwhile, the capitalist world of work is, of course, characterised by a structural deficit of democracy. Meanwhile, workplace democracy, co-determination and trade union participation are not always a matter of course in Germany.
Still, collective protection and participation rights – won by trade unions in the past – have established a legal foundation for workplace participation in Germany’s world of work.
In addition to such formal rights, company-based arrangements [Betriebsvereinbarungenstruggles] between works councils and management often play a central role on whether and how workplace participation is experienced in everyday workplace life.
Accordingly, workplace democratization in Germany has two central elements: the expansion of workers’ control in the work process at the shop floor and an increase in workers’ influence on managerial decision-making processes in a company.
Both – struggles over control and influence – are experienced and exercised not only at the individual level (workers) but also collectively (trade unions and works councils).
Although this can be guaranteed by collective and employee rights, but they – more often than not – need to be secured by the collective power and strength of workers and their trade unions.
Based on this, the actual experience of democratic self-determination at work remains imperative. Much of this is about the extent to which workers feel that they can make decisions about the everyday work in the organization as well as to what level they can experience themselves as being able to determine everyday work.
Such individual control over work includes, for example, the definition of daily work tasks and decisions about working hours, work density, and working conditions.
Beyond that, collective control by trade unions often works in opposition to strictly managerial centralization. Workers’ self-determination extends to a certain degree of autonomy in daily work setting and beyond.
This can make successful and meaningful cooperation among workers possible. It also creates workplace relationships of collegiality aimed at mutual support and recognition.
Practices of collective control strengthen the confidence of workers in their own abilities for self-organization.
This can indeed be regarded as the basis for solidarity and action in favour of workers’ interests. The concept of democratic self-determination in companies includes the experience of individual influence.
This is the feeling of workers that they can indeed influence, shape, and co-determine company policies through their own participation. This reaches beyond everyday work and sets the authoritarianism of management as well as far right ideologies against the daily experience of individual participation and democracy at work.
Beyond that, Germany’s specific collective forms of democratic participation by trade unions and works councils plays an essential part in fighting the extreme right. These are already established institutional settings useful in fighting right-wing extremism at work.
In other words, Germany’s system of workplace co-determination based on trade unions and works councils has granted workers a privileged role in fostering a democratic consciousness capable of fighting the far right infiltration of workplaces.
However, membership in a trade union alone:
- does not automatically contribute to a stronger sense of democratic self-determination,
- it does not automatically lead to democratic attitudes among workers, and
- it does not automatically fight the far right and adjacent Neo-Nazi ideologies.
Beyond that, the experience of democratic self-determination and the fight against the far right are crucial to ascertaining how management responds to organized demands of workers to fight the far right within companies.
Following the “democratic spill-over” concept, one can safely assume that the experience of democratic self-determination in a workplace can have “trigger effects” not just for further democratization but for fighting right-wing extremism.
Since workers and this is despite the hype about working from home (WFH), most workers still spend considerable time at workplaces.
As a consequence, work and the workplace remain imperative for the social integration of workers. In contrast to the formal, hierarchical, and authoritarian integration fostered by management, such a workers-based “social integration” establishes collegiality among workers, mutual aid and solidarity. All of these are set against the far right.
In short, the world of work remains a central locale for socialization in adult life. Participation in workplaces empowers and encourages workers to get involved not just at the workplace level but also in the political arena as well. The actual experience of democracy remains crucial and indispensible in all this.
Thereby, it strengthens the belief in the legitimacy of democratic institutions and processes. It also encourages workers to fight right-wing extremism.
Such “spill-over” effects can also be described as an anti-authoritarian democratic learning process that trains participatory skills. In turn, these correspond with expectations of furthering participation and co-determination while, simultaneously, rejecting far right propaganda.
On the other hand, extreme right-wing attitudes and possible influences on the working world are still prevalent in Germany and beyond.
Yet, between 2020 and 2022, Germany saw a somewhat of a decline in right-wing extremist attitudes. This was described as a “coming together” during the COVID-19 pandemic.
It encouraged solidarity among people, testifying to the exact opposite of most apocalyptic “end of the world” movies, survivalists, preppers, and far right ideologues.
Unlike the far-right mythology of “a fight of all against all” in times of a crisis and the neoliberal fantasy of eternal competition, the exact opposite is the case. Mutual aid, altruism, assistance, help, reciprocal support, and solidarity prevail.
In the years after the pandemic, this has increased. Again, it did so in the eastern part more than in the western part of Germany.
Meanwhile, the authoritarian propaganda of right-wing extremists continues. The advocacy of authoritarianism, dictatorship, social Darwinism (only the strong survives) and the trivialization of German-Nazism are often seen as being stronger in East-Germany compared to West-Germany.
Surprisingly, approval of anti-Semitism is higher in the West, while in Germany’s East, chauvinism, aggressive nationalism, and xenophobia reach significantly higher levels.
Worse, there is not only a widespread prevalence of right-wing extremist attitudes in the so-called “middle” of society (read: the petty-bourgeois middle-class), but there is also an underlying “authoritarian dynamic”.
In much of this, one of the most important factors to be considered is the authoritarian personality often acquired during childhood socialization – the father as leader, the teacher as commander, the manager as boss, etc. – later updated and, worse, deepened during adult life.
The authoritarian personality can, subsequently, be even strengthened through economic and political deprivation – seen more in East-Germany compared to West-Germany.
Yet, there is a connection between work experiences and extreme right-wing orientations of workers. In general:
- a loss of control over work, which is relentlessly driven onward by the neoliberal restructuring of work processes aids the idea of being helpless and in need of a strong Führer;
- The aggressive move of Germany’s labour market towards creating the “precariat” can make workers vulnerable to the propaganda of a political party that puts all this right again;
- managerial demands for higher performance (read: increased profit-making);
- the intensification of work fostered by automation;
- challenges such as digitization; and
- changes aligned to the ecological transformation towards sustainability,
Many of the insecurities cranked up by neoliberal capitalism can easily constitute an opening for right-wing propaganda’s ideological propaganda – even in the world of work.
More so in East-Germany than in West-Germany, there are companies in what might be called “co-determination-free” areas with no or weak trade union representation and no or ineffective works councils.
This too contributes to a feeling of alienation and non-self-determination. Aligned to this is the experience of powerlessness made worse by neoliberal economic and labour market policies.
Left alone at the workplace and being exposed to the irks of management, workers might even shift onto external policy areas susceptible to the xenophobic right-wing propaganda that blames migrants and refugee for the pathologies of capitalism. Once xenophobia, racism and the fear of others overlays class, capitalism wins.
On the other hand, there are positive effects of workplace democratization. Workplace participation not only promotes political participation, but also creates trust among workers and trust into democratic institutions:
- internally: from team meetings to union meetings and works councils; and
- externally: democratic political parties, NGOs, voting, participation in democratic processes, and other democratic institutions.
Yet, differences between East Germany and West Germany – in terms of right-wing extremist attitudes – can also be seen in holding ambivalent attitudes in other areas. It appears that representative democracy and civil society are on less secure foundations in East-Germany.
Unlike in West-Germany, the world of work in East Germany was – and continues to be – shaped by the late arrival of democracy (1990) which, for many East-Germans, was accompanied by unemployment, the precariat, poverty, wage stagnation, consistently low wages and precarious work regimes (post-1990).
These factors have long played decisive roles in shaping work, attitudes and awareness of workers towards democracy in East-Germany.
In addition, East-German workers had to cope with the consequences of the post–1990 transformation to neoliberal capitalism.
In sharp contrast to Helmut Kohl’s promised blooming industrial landscapes, East-German workers were exposed to – the West-German elite-engineered – rapid and comprehensive deindustrialization, austerity policy, mass unemployment, and poverty never seen before in East-Germany.
Unsurprisingly, experiences of being powerless is, therefore, stronger in East-Germany compared to West-Germany – the same goes for democracy which, again, is more secured in West-Germany compared to East-Germany.
This has a corresponding impact on the spread of far-right attitudes in East-Germany and the, seemingly unstoppable, rise of the neo-fascist AfD.
All in all, management regimes and the absence of workplace democracy have consequences such as, for example, the feeling of being powerless, perceiving the workplace as places of alienation, and of being non-self-determination and “other directed”. This fosters an inability to exercise sovereignty over every day working life.
On the upswing, democratic self-determination at work, the experience of individual and collective control, influence, and participation in everyday work can counteract right-wing attitudes.
This can be achieved through political learning, empowerment, and trade union education. Yet, strategies against right-wing extremism need to focus on three areas:
- Shifting attitudes in the field of labour policy that strengthen the subjective experience in workplaces. These can counteract the impact of right-wing extremist ideologies.
- Workplace democratic self-determination challenges extreme right-wing attitudes in East-Germany and in West-Germany.
- Differences between East and West German workplaces need to be considered. Trade unions, for example, should avoid repeating the mistake of imposing western ideas onto East-German workers. And trade unions need to avoid creating the impression of a West German elite taking control.
In the classic West German social partnership model, trade unions and works councils have established structures on which a fight against the far right can be built on.
The beefing up of trade union membership is important for the East- as it is for the West. It supports the long-term development of democratic life at workplaces and beyond.
Only recently have the German trade unions been able to stabilize the previous downward development in union membership. This alone is, albeit a small, step towards fighting far right propaganda.
Yet far-right attitudes are also subject to different dynamics in East- and West-Germany. These considerations can lead to more targeted interventions against the extreme right-wing mobilization of workers.
In this regard, one must also emphasize that authoritarianism – especially the one established during early childhood – is levelling in East-Germany where the authoritarian regime ended 35 years ago.
Beyond all that, one might, finally realize that trade union strategies alone can never fully counteract far right propaganda, the right-wing extremist infiltration of workplaces, and the rise of the neo-fascist AfD.
In the end, what is also needed is that the grandiose announcements by many German business leaders, corporate lobbyists, the pro-business press, and German employer associations to fight the far right, right-wing extremism, and the neo-fascist AfD do not merely remain as Sunday speeches.
In the interests of German employers and business leaders who are serious about their fight against right-wing extremism and the AfD, they need to work cooperatively with trade unions and works councils to setup democratic structure at German workplaces.
After all, the neo-fascist AfD is a political party that advocates ultra-nationalism. Furthermore, in a Brexit-like move, the AfD advocates Germany to leave the EU. This would be followed by the elimination of the €-Euro currency in favour of a return to the Deutsch Mark.
Avoiding all this is in the economic interest of German capital. An AfD government would not only crank up xenophobia and right-wing extremism, but it would also put Germany on the path to economic suicide.
In other words, and this is a rather rare phenomenon, when it comes to right-wing plans for Germany as represented by the neo-fascist AfD, Germany’s capital and labour have the same goal – avoid the AfD’s plan to push Germany into the economic abyss.
An AfD-led government would seriously damage German companies – which exports 60% of their goods and services to the EU.
Photo: Strike in East-Germany (source: German public TV)
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