Rising unemployment and workers' protests
Among the most affected sectors are:
• Agriculture. Out of the 880,000 agricultural workers at the start of 1990, about 200,000 have already left their jobs. GIven the EEC's permanent agricultural crisis and the political influence of the West German farming lobby in Brussels, it is likely that the East German "process of reduction" will continue.
• Mining. Copper and potash mining
CONTRARY to general predictions it was not the Social Democrats, but the conservative-liberal (CDU-FDP) alliance which won the last parliamentary elections in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). Most of the CDU-FDP votes were from workers. The conservatives made clear that West German capital was behind them, and insisted that if East Germans wanted to enjoy West German living standards they must vote for them. Many believed that in the short-or-medium term, after a period of hard work, such promises would be fulfilled.
are especially affected. Already half of the former 30,000 workers in the potash mines have been fired. The German govemment plans to use some of the pits, once they are no longer needed for mining, to store poisonous waste which would be difficult to store in West Germany because of the protest by the local population.
• Shipyards. Out of the former 55,000 Shipyard workers in the MecklenburgVorpommern region in the north, some 47,000 are still employed. But except for the production of a few special types of
RAUL SCHMIDT AND BJÖRN KRÜGER
UT meanwhile people mass unemployment, social security is more endangered, and there is no light at the end of the tunnel.!
After one year of accepting the West German bourgeoisic's austerity attacks, people are beginning to raise their heads once
Their anger is intensified by the fact that the government has spent 17 billion Deutschmarks to restore the Kuwaiti monarchy, but at the same time denies money promised for support and invest-
What as late as 1988 was the tenth largest industrial economy in the world is now in agony. Already after only three cient economic system", 760,000 out of a months of the introduction of an "effitotal of nine million workers are registered as unemployed. Some 1.9 million people are "part-time workers with a zero working week", that is, de facto they are also unemployed. So every third citizen of the ex-GDR is afflicted by this?
But there is still more to come. While before last December's elections there was no public fuss from the mainly progovernment think tanks about the possible negative economic consequences of 20 that at the end of this year there will be unification, now most of them say openly International Viewpoint #202 • March 18, 1991 between three and four million unem-
- that is, an unemployment rate of some 50%. Kurt Biedenkopf, conservative prime minister of Saxonia, comdevelopment dramatic than in the 1920s in the midst of a world economic crisis" — even if today there is a much better social security net.
Total industrial production in the exGDR in 1990 was 50% down on 1989. While in 1975, during the most severe recession seen in West Germany, GNP dropped by 1.4%, GNP in East Germany fell by 20% between 1989 and 1990. At the same time the hopes for big West German investments in the East have not been fulfilled. Some 70.3% of the money invested last year went into the creation of a network for the distribution of West invested in production.
It is generally believed that by the end of June the situation will be critical. The safeguards against lay-offs in the highly vulnerable engineering sector, negotiated last year, will be abolished. At the same times plans for a halving of the workforce in mining will be implemented. Furthermore, most of the 700,000 low-paid public employees, now "resting", will be formally fired. None of these people will be adequately compensated and ship, it is unlikely that the ship building industry will survive.
• Other strongly affected sectors are airplanes, textiles and electronics.
Factory occupations and demonstrations
This development has left its marks on the population. There have been a lot of
* On February 19, the management told the workers of the Elektro-Physikalische Apparate Werke at Neuruppin that more than 2,000 of the 2,480 employees would be fired at the end of June. The workers immediately occupied this sixth biggest European producer of circuits.
* When the workers of the Erfurt-based electronics factory Ermic learned on February 27 that 4,000 of the 7,000 strong workforce were soon to be occupied the factory. Because they were dissatisfied with their local trade union branch they formed an independent organizing committee.
* On the same day, 50,000 people took to the streets in Erfurt. Actions took place against lay-offs, rent rises and the lack of in many other cities as well to protest adequate social security protection. In East Berlin, Schwerin and Halle some thousands of workers blocked streets, in Magdeburg some 10,000 people occupied the city centre. In Rostock there were some 5,000 demonstrators and 10,000 in
Die DM ist da!
Die DM ist da! Die DM ist da! ("Get your Deutschmarks here") Leipzig. Many of the 70,000 engineering
Mecklenburg-Vorpommer took part in warning strikes. According to Saxonia's economy minister Kajo Schommer: "After the anti-socialist revolution, there could be a social revolution, controllable by nobody." The crushing of the East German economy is obviously a deliberate policy. The Treuhand Trust Fund Agency, the biggest holding company in the world, with 8,000 factories and six million workers, controls the bulk of East German industry. It is not itself controlled by any democratic institution, not even formally by the parliament. It acts in the interests of West German capitalists who want to strangle the East German economy, both to liquidate likely competitors and so as to be able to buy bankrupted firms at the lowest possible price.4
Since the Treuhand's role in destroying the East German economy is becoming increasingly clear, popular anger is directed more and more at this institution. Some of its regional offices have already been occupied by workers.
International Monetary Fund (IMF) experts put the amount needed to bring East Germany up to the same economic level as the West at somewhere above 2,000 billion Deutschmarks. The West
German bourgeoisie has enough money to do this. But it is hesitant to invest such an enormous sum in such a risky enterprise former "workers and peasants' state", which has neither a reliable infrastructure nor a consolidated political and state machine nor a docile population.
Instead, the West German capitalists prefer to invest their fortunes in the international money and capital markets.
There is enough spare capacity in West
German factories to largely satisfy the
East German market in consumer goods.
There is, therefore, little incentive to build new factories in the East. Thus, so far the reintroduction of capitalism has had much the same effect in East Germany as in
Hungary and Poland - deindustrializa-
The trade union and political structures are not capable of responding to the growing social unrest.
Under forty years of Stalinist rule it was impossible for workers to organize collective resistance. So, after the collapse of the state/party it turned out that no independent workers' activists existed. In
Deutsche Bank
Die AM ist da!
October/ November numerous independent trade union initiatives have surfaced, but there is virtually no reservoir of experience in how to fight for workers' interests.
Due to the growing disenchantment and passivity of workers all independent union initiatives became totally marginalized. Also the former official trade union movement, the FDGB, was dissolved in favour of its counterpart, the DGB, which wanted to take over the high level of organization (90% union membership) but not the old structures and functionar-
As a result it was impossible for the workers in a factory to go over collectively to a DGB trade union: they had to do this one by one. If you add on the massive plant closures, you get the explanation for the rather low level of trade union organization in East Germany.
Most of the trade union and factory council leaders were elected on the ideological basis of social compromise with the management. Meanwhile reality is Arbeitsamt
1. A recent opinion poll by the Wickert Institut
Tübingen showed that 81.3% of all East German voters are discontented with the CDU/FDP govemment.
Two months ago only 37.6% had been discontented.
This is the most dramatic turnaround in public opinion
2. In mid-February, 500 mayors demonstrated in Leip- during the 40 years of the Institut's existence.
zig under the slogan: "Money for kindergartens — not
3. Klaus Gehn, president of the East German Unemployment Federation, estimates that all in all 3.7 million people are affected by unemployment, reduced
4. The Treuhand was empowered to sell the sole East accident it became known that the agency, contrary to their instructions, frightened off capitalists interested in taking over
Interflug by deliberately giving them untrue negative information on the state of the airline's affairs.
5. The widespread mood at the time of the December election was to support and vote for political parties
GERMANY making it more and more obvious that a fight to defend workers' interests is needed and that social compromise is not stopping the factory owners from getting rid of non-profitable employees. Out of this empirical experience a radicalization is developing, which expresses itself through actions such as occupying streets, town centres and factories.
But so far this radicalization has not been carried through to the overall ideological or organizational level. Compromise with capital is challenged only by those directly affected by lay-offs and only from the point of view of their particular enterprise. There is as yet no widespread questioning of the principles of capitalist economy. After four decades of "planned Socialist misery" the lack of an alternative to capitalism, which can guarantee not only social justice but also efficiency, is evident.
protest actions have in most cases remained isolated from each due to the DGB unions which are not interested in widening strike actions, which might lead to too much militancy. So the sponsoring of an yet non-existent East-German structure of critical unionists remains an urgent task.
Consistent Marxist thought remains a marginalized and non-organized force in the East German left. Hence revolutionary socialist positions play no direct role in the current struggles. It remains to be seen if, because of their experience in the coming clashes, a section of the working class will lose its illusions in the capitalist economic model in East Germany. *
(Arbeitsamt = unemployment office)
with the closest connections to big capital, because, as it was correctly feared, to fight for good working conditions would frighten capital away and block the financial means necessary for an economic upswing.
Remarks to the effect that: "In the first elections we will vote Christian Democrat because they will bring us capitalism as soon as possible. But in subsequent elections we will vote Social Democrat because they will defend us from the bad effects of capitalism" were widely heard.
6. However, the trade unions are interested to a certain extent in widening and deepening the protest actions in order to improve their position vis-à-vis the capitalists and attract new members.
So for instance the DGB public sector trade union, the
ÖTV, and the engineering union IG Metall have organized regional protest meetings. On the other hand trade unions like IG Chemie have hesitated to do even this. It is characteristic that the latter union also denies posts in the union to members of the PDS (the fonner
Communist Party). March 18, 1991 • #202 International Viewpoint
New attacks on
International Viewpoint #202 • March 18, 1991
BRITAIN and Gay Rights and a demonstration of some 8,000 people organized by the newly established umbrella grouping the Les-
Coalition on bian and Gay Rights
February 16. This multifaceted approach sexual choice THE fall of Thatcher has brought no respite for lesbians and gay men in Britain. Close on the heels of Clause 28 (see IV141), the Embryology Act and a diverse assortment of ideological and economic measures aimed at bolstering the nuclear family and denying sexual choice, the government and judiciary have launched a new series of attacks on the lesbian and gay community. REBECCA FLEMMING
LAUSE 25 of the Criminal Justice Bill, currently on its way through parliament, proposes to classify consensual homosexual activities as "serious sexual offences", alongside such crimes as rape, indecent assault and child sex abuse, and to enable the courts to pass more severe sentences upon those convicted of them. The three most important consensual homosexual offences covered by the Bill are all contained in the Sexual Offences Act of 1956 and clearly contrast with the heterosexual offences of the same name, which, needless to say, are not in the new Bill.
They are — "soliciting" which includes a man cruising, chatting up or even just winking at another man; "procuring", which includes anyone who introduces two men who go on to have a sexual relationship, anyone who allows a room in their house to be used by two men for sex and so on, and, most significantly, "indecency between men", which covers any sexual act between men in public — kissing at a busstop, cuddling on the bus.... Three additional homosexual offences which were in the first draft of the bill - living on the earnings of a male prostitute, homosexual acts on merchant navy ships and "procuring" an act of buggery — have now been withdrawn by the government in response to the "genuine concerns which have been expressed."
This comes in the context of a systemat22 ties ald gay se napoliciour combines. ic escalation of the policing of public leswith a clear hardening of the attitudes of much of the legal establishment towards such matters. The state now relentlessly prosecutes homosexual offences rather than dismissing such relatively minor infringements with a caution, and the courts treat these cases increasingly severely.
In 1989 (the latest year for which full figures are available) 2311 men were convicted for homosexual "soliciting", "procuring" and "indecency" in England and Wales. This figure represents a 51% increase since 1985 which is mainly attributable to the massive rise in convictions for "indecency", where the figures have more than doubled from 729 in 1985 to 1503 four years later. A recent example of this toughening of police and judicial policy towards consenting homosexual offences is the judgement given in the celebrated "Sadomasochism case" at London's Old Bailey last November. As a result of a major police operation in 1987, codenamed "Operation Spanner", eight men were sentenced to up to four and a half years in prison for consenting homosexual sadomasochist The judge ruled that "consent was no defence" in such a case.
Consensual sex equated