WEST GERMANY president of IG Metall, and other leaders publicly talked about the need for more flexibility. They touted alternative "models" to those of the bosses, which, they claimed, took more into account the needs of wage earners.
In the evening of April 21, all of a sudden, there was a screeching turn. There was no longer any question of a radical struggle, no question of a hard workweek THE FIGHT for a shorter workweek launched by the major West German union IG Metall in 1984 attracted wide international attention. In particular, it was the main example of an offensive struggle by a decisive union against the effects of the world economic crisis.
There was a head-on confrontation between the bosses, backed by the government, and the union for a prolonged period of rolling strikes. The bosses responded with the massive lockouts, in particular "cold" lockouts — locking out workers in plants and regions not on strike in order to increase the union's expenses. This tactic was backed up by the rightist Christian Democratic government through denial of unemployment benetits to locked-out workers.
When the IG Metall contract came up for renewal in April of this year, a major new test was expected. The first mobilizations carried out by the union seemed promising. And then suddenly a settlement was reached. This article takes a look at the results of the second round in IG Metall's fight for a shorter workweek. MANUEL KELLNER
M ILITANT trade-unionists and
revolutionary socialists were preparing for a sharp and decisive confrontation with the bosses. The IG Metall leaders had tal kicalized struggle and an allia talked and an alliance with the social movements to force the bosses to retreat and to counter their weapon of the "cold" lockout.
That weapon had become more dangerous because of the new legislation (Article 116) passed by the Conservative Liberal majority in parliament, which meant that the Labour Office would no longer reimburse lost wages, even for those locked out outside the strike-affected regions.
From the beginning of February until the second half of April, hundreds of thousands of workers were mobilized by IG Metall in warning strikes. This was not exactly what it seemed. In part, these actions were not really militant measures because the participants
"make up" their time." But even so, IG Metall demonstrated its capacity for mobilization.
### Bosses shift their
The demand for a shorter workweek after 1984 became so popular that the changed their strategy. In 1984, reduction of working time was taboo — not a minute less than 40 hours! And the Kohl government attacked that section of the trade-union movement demanding a 35-hour week head on as irresponsible, ridiculous and
In 1987, it was a different story. The
"a shorter workweek is OK. but don't go overboard." Above all, the bosses claimed, the rigid rules of the past had to be thrown out. Worktime had to be organized in a flexible way, in accordance with the needs of
On this question, IG Metall's reaction was ambivalent. The union's congress had adopted a fairly clear position against "flexibility," but the leadership did not wage an intransigent public campaign on this question.
On the contrary, Steinkühler, the fight. A compromise with the bosses was right around the corner, within reach. It was virtually decided. What had happened?
In the regional negotiations, it had been impossible to come to an agreement. Then, a "summit meeting"
was set up between Franz Steinkühler and Werner Stumpfe, president of the metal industry employers' association. And these two reached an agreement, which they "recommended" to their respective regional negotiating bodies, and set May 6 as the deadline for adopting it.
What were the points of this recomchanged by all the regional bodies, leaving those bodies the task of settling the important question of whether or not Saturday would be a workday? They included the following:
• No reduction in 1987.
• From April 1988 to April 1989, a workweek of 37.5 hours instead of
• From April 1989 to April 1990, a workweek of 37 hours.
• Apprentices, who were excluded from the reduction of the working time granted in 1984, were to get a workweek of 38.5 hours after April 1988.
• New negotiations and the possibility of a new agreement on worktime in April 1990. After that date, worktime would be the same for apprentices as
• Starting in April 1988, regular individual worktime could vary between 37 and 39.5 hours. (This principle was adopted in the 1984 contract, which provided for a variation between 37 and 40 hours.) Moreover, in individual cases, workweeks of more than 38.5 hours would be accepted up until 1990, if the companies reported these cases by the end of May. By and large, they did so.
Extra time over the regular worktime set by contract would have to be compensated for by hours or days off over a period of six months. (In the 1984 contract, the time for adjustment was two months). But such free time could not amount to more than five
• Regular worktime for workers ne- 1
cessary to keep the machines running would be 50 hours a week.
• Raises of 3.7% in 1987, 2% in
1988 and 2.5% in 1989. This is after 7
deductions of 2.7% and 1.4% respectively for the reduction in worktime of one hour per week in 1988 and half an June 15, 1987 • International Viewpoint
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Unions shorter
WEST GERMANY
The question of Saturday working was to be settled in regional negotiations. (The subsequent results differed so much from region to region that it is impossible to give the details.) In general, the door was opened for a whole section of metalworkers regularly working at least part of Saturday, while up until then Saturday work was almost always considered overtime.
The general tendency of the agreements on Saturday work was to assign responsibility to the Plant Councils. And everyone knows the sort of pressure these bodies are under when the bosses confront them with the company's "needs" - competition, of layoffs and so on. It will be the same regarding overtime. Everyone is against it in principle, but unless they are very conscious, very militant and strongly supported by a big majority of the ranks, they will accept it.
In a good number of West European and perhaps even in countries further away, a lot of union militants were probably impressed by the terms of the contract. To achieve such a result without struggles, without sacrifices, might seem enviable. A lot of workers have had to fight to get less in the way of wage increases and reductions in worktime.
Contract no help in fighting unemployment
The West German bosses were every happy about the way things went. Also the same Kohl government that atttacked IG Metall as "irresponsible" in 1984, which waged a head-on struggle against the demand for the 35-hour hailed the outcome this time, finding nothing but praise for the 1987
So, by class instinct already revolutionary socialists in Europe probably have doubts. What was plotted by a social democrat trade-union bureaucracy and praised by the great majority of the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois politicians could not be good for the work-
In fact, revolutionary socialists in West Germany, including in particular the United Socialist Party [VSP, to which the members of the Fourth International belong] have a very critical analysis of this contract. At the same time they do not deny that on this occasion - unlike 1984 — the bosses in their longer-term interests really did make a concession without a prior struggle. There was a compromise, and it was possible to win something without a real struggle.
There are many reasons for criticising the agreement. The demand for the 35hour week was supposed to be at least a International Viewpoint • June 15, 1987 partial response by the unions to the problem of mass unemployment, a demand unifying workers in work and the
IG Metall put forward the slogan, "shortening the workweek is fighting unemployment." Already, the 1984 agreement partially gave the lie to this
IG Metall claimed that this agreement created 10,000 jobs (while, according to the dubious official figures themselves, the jobless number more than 2 million). This is very hard because, in present condiwho can verify why someone hired or not laid off?
In any case, the claim that the union has at least a partial answer to unemployment no longer has any basis of credibility. In stages, the workweek will be reduced to 37 hours in 1989, and even then the possible effect on hiring will be largely wiped out by the effects of the rules for flexible working hours, which in practice will be graver than the letter of the contract.
Only a massive and immediate reduction in working hours and a reversal of the move toward flexibility of working hours accepted since 1984 would have a real and measurable effect on the labor market. And even then it would be necessary to introduce hiring proportional to the working hours lost, plus workers' control, or at least elements of it, over hiring and firing.
This question is a very serious one for the West German trade-union movement, for its capacity to fight back, for its power of attraction for social forces and, for its potential to unify aspirations, including those of the layers hardest hit by unemployment. There is no longer any trade-union answer or perspective for fighting the key evil of the capitalist crisis — massive unemployment.
It is absolutely wrong to think that criticism of the elements of flexible working hours is only sectarian hairsplitting. Once again, the first victims obviously are the more disadvantaged youth and women, and workers in the hardest-hit regions. But factors of division that can undermine the working class have now been introduced even in the traditional 'bastions."
The creation of different categories region by region, factory by factory -and even within enterprises — with increasingly varying work schedules, has been going on for years right under our eyes. Now it has now been clearly been endorsed and strengthened by this
In the medium-term, this will considerably undermine the strength and potential of the working class to fightback, since such capacity is largely bound up with the collective nature of the workers' position in society and
What is more, flexibility is totally counterproductive in terms of jobs, because its purpose is precisely to avoid as much as possible any "loss" of time from the standpoint of production and of surplus value for the bosses.
### Wage differentiations increased
Recent years have been marked by a loss of real wages for workers. The contract is far from compensating for these losses. It may serve to maintain the present standard of living for those in work, above all for the better paid, since the increases are calculated in percentages rather than absolute sums
So, once again social differentiatior among wage earners has been in-
Since wages are now fixed for the coming three years, the bosses are happy to have a stable base for their calcuand have no fear of more "radical" wage demands for the period of the contract. This was a handsome gift from Steinkühler and company! But there is more.
Everyone is talking about an approaching recession, foreseen already for the fall of 1987. Only After the January 1987 election, as might be expected, bourgeois economists acknowledged that it was coming. In these conditions, who can predict the behavior consumer prices? Certainly not
But even if prices remained stable, the Kohl-Bengemann government has a lot of anti-social projects designed to lower the living standards of the masses. And through fixing the new contracts for three years the IG Metall leadership has wiped out any possibility of a trade-union fightback by raising demands for compensatory increases! What a blank check for the bosses and their direct political representatives!
This contract also has to be compared with the demands agreed by the last congress of IG Metall. These decisions have obviously been pushed aside and without any struggle, without creating the relationship of forces necessary to achieve them. That goes for the 35hour week, which has now been buried; for opposition to flexible hours; and the demand for an intransigent defence of free Saturdays.
Furthermore, where the workers would let representatives of theirs deal behind closed doors with the bosses without any checkup on what they were doing by their comrades, by the ranks. But Steinkühler met alone with the chief of the metal industry bosses "at a summit." And no one did, or could, challenge the result, as long as there is no majority in IG Metall for another president.
IG Metall's weight in the trade-union movement as a whole is immense. It has 2.5 million members out of the 8 million in the German Confederation of Unions (DGB), which includes virtually all the unions in the country. It plays a correspondingly large role in determining the general relationship of forces
After the IG Metall small printers' union any chance to win a solution problems. For structural reasons, it had to present more advanced demands than IG Metall, for example in demanding a seven-hour day. In fact, it got a little less than IG Metall, and its perspectives for surviving over the long term were greatly reduced.
The union of bank, insurance and store workers, the HBV, for the first time had mobilized a large number of bank workers in warning strikes in a against bosses who have been hours. It was hardly encouraged, to say the least, by the contract in the metal industry. It just managed to avoid a cawhat about the active and conscious unionists in the public workers' union, who had been counting heavily on their union finally taking up the fight for a 35-hour week at the end of the year? That has been put in question
Furthermore, the steelworkers, also separated from the rest of the workers, will only renegotiate their contract at the end of the year. They have been hard hit by the crisis, by closures and by massive layoffs. Until
IG Metall has only organized symbolic fightbacks. It is characteristic of the IG Metall leadership that it did nothing to link the anger and radiin the regions hit by the steel crisis to the fight for the 35-hour week in the spring of 1987.
"Bosses and government can now breathe easy"
As for the effect of IG Metall's attitude on unions such as IG Chemie -which have always refused to participate in the fight for the 35-hour week - there is no need to state the obvi-
The bosses and the government can breathe easy: if only the IG Metall leadership maintains its control over its rank and file, and for the moment nothing indicates that it will not, there will be no struggles for three years. Three years that will further undermine the potential social power of the working class. Three years that will deepen the traditional divisions and create new ones. Three years for the capitalists' government to push its multifarious reactionary projects fear the most considerable power that stands in the way of its long-term objectives — the potential power of the great working-class bastions.
The seemingly prudent and intelligent IG Metall leadership is playing with fire. It is not sure that it can maintain the fighting capacity of such an organization for three years without permitting at least limited experiences
Once again the West German working class can fall victim to its legalism and its habit of obedience to the traditional leaderships. The present leadership risks finding that in 1990 no one will take it seriously, either among the ranks of the workers or in the bourgeoisie, if it starts waving the threat again of a "radical" struggle! actionary Article 116 combated effectively, either by immediate protests or by a consistent and united struggle. The weapon of the "cold" lockout is not going to be left in storage by the bosses, against the workers' movewithout the unions being able to op-
In West Germany, for some years we have become used - and correctly so - to talking about two wings of the union apparatus. There was the "Gang the unions that relied totally on social partnership, on social peace at any price and on open class collaboration even at the political level (they prefer a "great coalition" of the social democrats and Christian Democrats to collaboration between the social democrats and the Greens). This included IG Chemie and the right-wing social democratic deputy Hermann Rappe, as the
On the other hand, there were the union leaderships that pretended to have a more militant orientation, that talked about the need for organizing resistance to the plans and policy of the bosses and their government which are designed to "solve" the crisis at the expense of the workers. This wing was symbolized by IG Metall and IG DruPa the printers' union), and still more by
U
WEST GERMANY Steinkühler himself, leadership of IG Metall, traditionally the most advanced It is quite clear that, without sowing illusions, all serious militant unionists have had, and still do have, a duty to give the maximum support to the more "left" sections of the apparatus, in order to make the battle for a shorter workweek a real fight, for example. They cannot stay "neutral" between a Steinkühler and a
However, the practical experience of of 1987 has thrown a bit more light on the character of the differences in question, and has changed slightly the tactical position of the militant elements in the unions. Militant trade unionists face
It is very clear that the Steinkühler leadership did everything avoid a fight. It did everything possible to come to new terms of agreement with the bosses. This leadership deliberately paid the price of deepening divisions, of abandoning the weaker strata. It restricted itself to waving threat of a "radical" struggle and a link-up of its forces with those of the social movements (the peace, women's and ecology movements, youth and so on).
What was previously clear only to Marxists is now glaring. This leadership represents only a variant of the class-collaborationist conception — a more intelligent, more flexible variant - but still a variant. Its existencemakes the grouping of trade-union activists who hold a totally opposite conception, a class-struggle conception, no less necessary.
Today, such activists have less possibility for using arguments sions coming from the leadership as leadership for the coming years is days of action that do no harm to the bosses, demonstrations and deals. Any serious struggle, primarily today in steel, can only be launched from below, against the official policy of the
It is in the interest of such activists, moreover, to unite quickly and to link up with all demonstrations of discontent and of a will to resist among the ranks. Since the IG Metall leadership today has no need for militant activists, who are always the most loyal and active when it comes to struggles, its anxiety to isolate them, to marginalize them and, on occasion, to get rid of them, is growing. * June 15, 1987 • International Viewpoint