Page - 202 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

202 Adjusting to a Longer War of the status of the trade union leadership, which emerged so rarely that it was not even particularly respected by the workforce.475 An inner willingness to submit to the unavoidable allowed practically all measures of the Law on War Contributions to be implemented, although this meant far-reaching encroachments on the life of millions. Ultimately, with the help of this law, all men ineligible for military service up to the age of 50 could be recruited by force for work in industry. Similarly rigorous measures did not exist, for example, in the German Empire. Mobilisation also had an enormous impact on the labour market. Countless sala- ried employees lost their jobs, likewise numerous workers. The unemployment figures skyrocketed. There were mass redundancies in commercial businesses because export ceased almost overnight. In some branches of trade, but also temporarily in some areas of industry, the collapse of firms appeared inevitable. Although  – or perhaps because  – hundreds of thousands lost their jobs in order to join up, mass redundancies occurred. Whilst, however, the salaried employees frequently remained unemployed, it was a dif- ferent matter for the labourers. In July 1914, the unemployment rate was at almost 5 per cent, in August at 18.3 per cent, in September at 17.8 per cent and in December at 8.1 per cent. Then the unemployment rate in industry sank practically to zero and yielded to a permanent labour shortage in the war industry. The consumer industry, the textiles industry and the paper industry really had to struggle and were forced in part to switch to new products, not least those that were required by the army in the field. It was as clear as daylight, however, that the crisis of the food industry would only be brief. The field army consumed from the outset far more than the troops in their peacetime garrisons. In order to obtain the required manpower, the armaments manufacturers began to pay their workers higher wages. This had an almost instant impact on other businesses and firms, which could not compete with the wages of the armaments industry and were thus unable to find any workers. In the Wöllersdorf armaments factory, for example, the number of male workers increased five-fold from August to the end of December 1914, but a construction firm that was supposed to build new aircraft engine hangars had to appeal to the War Ministry because it could no longer find any workers.476 It was certainly a bad mistake, however, to call up so many qualified labourers at the beginning of the war. The number of workers in the metal industry shrank in some areas by more than a third. The ‘Alpine Montan-Gesellschaft’ reported that over 18 per cent of its workforce had been called up at the beginning of the war, whilst in Vienna alone 566 smaller manufacturing companies had to shut up shop due to bottlenecks caused by the war. Instead, however, of now giving more consideration when enlisting to those workers made redundant due to the closures and in their place exempting skilled workers in sectors vital to the war from military service, the approach applied so far was continued. A more selective approach would probably have been too time-con-