Draft:Working Group for Labor

The Working Group for Labor (AfA, until 2022 known as the Working Group for Workers' Questions) is one of the largest working groups within the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).

The initiative for its founding came from Herbert Wehner, the then-chairman of the SPD parliamentary group, in 1973. The goal was to give a sharper profile to the interests of workers within the big tent party SPD, continuing the work of the SPD factory groups with their factory newspapers and factory trust representatives, which had existed since 1920. Wehner is credited with the quote that the Working Group for Labor is the "lifeblood of the SPD, simultaneously the eye, ear, and heart chamber of the party." The founding of the AfA also aimed to create a counterbalance to the leftist youth organization Jusos, who were heavily involved in socialist theory.

Today, the AfA is part of the left wing of the party and is particularly close to the unions. It sees itself as a "hinge" between unions and the SPD, striving to assert its standpoint through discussions both within and outside the party. Politically interested workers, active trade unionists, works councils, youth and trainee representatives, union representatives, and representatives of social policy interest groups, as well as non-SPD members, are involved in the AfA. Their common goal is to create jobs that provide a living wage and are socially secure, to safeguard the achievements of the welfare state, and to face the challenges in the economy and labor market.

Further goals are work and social justice, including reducing mass unemployment, creating new, innovative, socially secure, and environmentally sustainable jobs and training positions, maintaining job protection, solidarity-financed social security, securing initial vocational training, safeguarding collective bargaining autonomy, introducing minimum wages, preventing low wages, stopping illegal employment, quickly aligning living conditions between East and West, and creating a Europe for workers.

The organizational structure consists of district associations (or subdistricts), state associations, and the federal association. There are also occasional groups in companies or entire sectors, such as in the postal and railway services, the chemical and metal industries, or the service sector. According to the SPD's statute, corresponding delegate conferences with board elections are held every two years. The last regular federal conference took place from May 4 to 5, 2024, in Berlin.

The chair of the federal board elected at the 2022 federal conference is Cansel Kiziltepe. Her deputies are Ronja Endres, Michael Jung, Erik von Malottki, and Matthias Diesterheft.

From 1973 to 1984, Helmut Rohde was the federal chairman, from 1984 to 2000 Rudolf Dreßler, from 2000 to 2012 Ottmar Schreiner, from 2012 to 2022 Klaus Barthel, and since 2022, it has been Cansel Kiziltepe.