Function
In the East German system, the FDGB was in charge of ideological control and conformity in companies, as well as social tasks such as hospital visits, presenting awards, giving gifts on special anniversaries, even extending as far as organizing health spas and the hard-to-get holiday bookings. The FDGB’s own holiday service was responsible for the latter.
The single trade union was also very important as a source of new blood for the military. Using small benefits as an incentive, and if necessary gentle pressure, large numbers of workers and employees were recruited to what were known as "Combat Groups of the Working Class".
Read more about this topic: Free German Trade Union Federation
Famous quotes containing the word function:
“The fact remains that the human being in early childhood learns to consider one or the other aspect of bodily function as evil, shameful, or unsafe. There is not a culture which does not use a combination of these devils to develop, by way of counterpoint, its own style of faith, pride, certainty, and initiative.”
—Erik H. Erikson (1904–1994)
“The uses of travel are occasional, and short; but the best fruit it finds, when it finds it, is conversation; and this is a main function of life.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The mother’s and father’s attitudes toward the child correspond to the child’s own needs.... Mother has the function of making him secure in life, father has the function of teaching him, guiding him to cope with those problems with which the particular society the child has been born into confronts him.”
—Erich Fromm (1900–1980)