Things like this is so sweet:
Another hindrance to the ‘positive’ reception of Order 234 in the factories was the unique culture of work that had developed in the factories after the war. The widespread hunger and deprivation – the same things that made increasing industrial production so imperative – had produced a kind of ‘Notgemeinschaft’, a heightened sense of solidarity and mutual assistance on the shopfloor. This ‘Gleichmacherei’, as frustrated economic officials called it, was not so much a romantic holdover of self-defensive egalitarianism under capitalism as it was a logical response to the challenges of survival after the war. The idea of individual workers being singled out of the ranks for extra pay, food and other benefits offended this cooperative ethic.
Order 234 was a thorough-going measure to increase workplace productivity in the Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany. Enacted in 1947, the order was a response to slow productivity and high absenteeism during the first years after the war. These things were both in large part caused by workers not having enough to eat, making them exhausted and frequently ill. Lack of available goods also meant money was of little use as incentive, and some preferred to forage in the countryside rather than going to work.
It called for a range of social measures to address the most immediate needs of workers, such as improved housing, better wages for women, factory clinics and industrial safety. But the principle aim of Order 234 was to get workers to produce more, and towards this end it established a set of incentives to improve productivity in key enterprises (especially coal, steel and machine building) such as differential wages, promises of clothing, shoes and a hot lunch above and beyond one’s rations, accompanied by various sanctions aimed to punish unexcused absenteeism and so-called ‘slackers’ such as the withdrawal of ration cards or deployment for rubble-clearing at bomb sites.
Successful implementation was halted not only by reluctant workers, but factory managers too frequently sided with workers in circumventing rules, for example in giving out wage bonuses they weren't mandated to. Ongoing war reparations payments also meant most production increase was siphoned off to the Soviet Union anyway, thus unlike what the SED promised, for the population there was little relationship between increases in production output and increases in living standards. The demand to work harder under such conditions was understandably not well met.
The party attempted to respond to this with the astroturfed Hennecke movement, modeled on the Soviet Stakhanov movement. The idea was to encourage competition among workers by giving out rewards, material and symbolic, for exceptional performances, putting forth the highest achievers as examples to be followed, the archetype in this case being a miner named Adolf Hennecke. This campaign too found little tangible success, in part because workers recognized that official reports were likely skewed, that the impressive production feats claimed wouldn't be possible, due to lack of available materials as well as natural limitations:
As one retired worker put it:
I’ve worked in factories and know what one can manage to do. But the idea that a worker nowadays triples his performance or even increases it sixfold seems impossible to me as long as everything happens in a normal way. In my opinion the Henneckes prepare everything hours in advance, pick out the best tools for
themselves and get provided with the necessary materials. In short, it's actually just a big song and dance (ein Theater) that is being performed. I know what it’s all about. We’re supposed to produce more, the workers are supposed to work more, but one cannot do this like the Hennecke movement is doing it. That way you won’t find any sympathy among the really honest workers.
The campaign had the further effect of introducing enmity between workers, as the original namesake of the movement discovered:
Despite their occasional successes, the Henneckists gained little influence over their fellow workers. In fact, their efforts won them more anger and hostility than admiration, as Hennecke himself had feared and quickly found out: ‘When I came to the shaft the next day the mates did not look at me anymore. That’s anything but a nice feeling when you look them in the eyes and say “Glückauf” and they nod, yes, but you don’t hear anything anymore. I used to be just Adolf, a miner like any other. But now there was a wall between us’.
... activists were often derided as ‘norm breakers’, ‘slave drivers’, ‘wage cutters’ and ‘traitors to workers’.
From
Constructing Socialism at the Grass Roots: The Transformation of East Germany (Corey Ross, 2000).