Starting in 1961, the salaries of the employees at the Th. Goldschmidt AG plant in Essen were paid for the first time as cashless bank transfers on the 27th of each month.

Long discussions had preceded this critical point: At first, many employees expressed skepticism because many did not yet have a checking account – and at some banks that didn’t want new customers, they couldn’t get one. The personnel department at Goldschmidt jumped in here and took care of setting up the required checking accounts.

Another similarly important innovation for the workers occurred just a little while later – starting on February 1, 1961, the wages for workers in Essen were only paid once a month on the 12th of the respective, subsequent month. Until then, the regular practice had been to receive wages either weekly or biweekly. Cashless bank transfers started later for wage workers, in 1964, only after a good experi-ence with the salaried employees.

At the Chemische Werke Hüls AG, both methods – monthly wages and cashless transfers – were introduced for wage earners at the beginning of 1964, after multiple years of negotiations.