Experiences of deprivation in the world of work and perceptions of general politics in East Germany

This paper is based on a project investigating four local labor conflicts in Saxony and seeking for a better understanding of how local political culture is formed. While our previous research has shown that democratic experiences at the workplace foster democratic attitudes, here we are interested in how deprivation and negative experiences in the world of work – lack of recognition, low pay, struggles with supervisors, alienation in the work process – are connected to perceptions of politics. We argue that deprivation in the world of work should be considered one – and probably the most basic – facete of general deprivation strongly connected to experiences of social and political deprivation. In fact, in their daily experiences, workers’ struggles are mostly connected to the world of work while during strike actions they experience huge gaps between their own Lebenswelt and politics and even politicians sympathetic to their cause. Low pay is experienced as a constant threat to having a "normal life". In this lies an important source for fatalism that spills over to perceptions of politics and democracy in general.