Strike wave shakes
GERMANY strike, with all the inconveniences it entails, is rarely popular, he hoped to strike a preliminary blow at the engineering workers, whose collective negotiations are next in line. This would have been a big help for German industrialists who are beginning to fret about international com-
THE German public sector unions agreed to suspend their pay strike on May 7, and their members are currently voting on the deal. Whatever they decide, it is already clear that the Christian Democrat/Liberal coalition government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl has suffered a defeat; Germany is facing a new political situation.
petitiveness. Hundreds of thousands of layoffs are planned by many big firms and an offensive to introduce "Japanese" working practices has been launched. And in the background lurks the enormous budget deficit resulting from German unification.
Who is going to pay for all this? As the International Herald Tribune put it on
FRANCOIS VERCAMMEN — May 14, 1992.
T REMAINS to be seen whether this defeat for the government is a victory for the workers. The preliminary agreement accepted by the National Commission of the public sector union, the OTV, by 98 votes to 25, involves a wage rise of 5.4% to come into effect on May 1 for those on lower wage rates and on June 1 for the better paid. There is also to be a one-off bonus of 750 DM for the lowest paid and of 650 DM for those in the middle bracket. There is also a special holiday bonus of 200 D. The deal will be up for renegotiation again in 1993.
The union leaders are talking of a great victory for two reasons: first of all, the whole package of rises — which they estimate as being worth 6.2% (though the bosses claim it amounts to only 5.1%) is above Kohl's 4.8% "absolute barrier". Furthermore, they are underlining its "social justice" component, with the worse off getting the most.
However, some of the workers involved clearly feel that the outcome does not measure up either to the original 9.5% claim, their combativity, or the sharply rising cost of living. To accurately assess the latter one must add rises in tax and social security contributions on to inflation running at around 5%. An institute close to the German DGB union confederation has estimated that a rise in 7% would have been needed to truly compensate for the decline in purchasing power in 1992.
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Whichever way one looks at the figures, however, every percentage point gained above the 4.8% expresses a wave of class struggle unprecedented in postwar Germany. The serious press, both in Germany and worldwide, have had no doubts about this, regularly carrying the strikes on their front pages, and adopting a hostile tone, implying that German workers have become layabouts defending their privileges, lacking in solidarity with their compatriots in the East and, furthermore, threatening world wide economic recovery by forcing the German government to keep interest rates high.
The international union movement, meanwhile has been struck dumb by this sudden display of militancy by the West German unions, which have been constantly held up as an example of moderation and wisdom. In fact the German union movement, after the terrible defeat without a fight in the former GDR after 1989, has had to wake up to the danger presented to its position by the massive deterioration of the situation on the labour market resulting from mass unemployment and low wages
The main engineering union, the IGMetall, has struggled for and won a collective contract to run from now until April 1,1994, which aims at equal wages East and West by the end of 1995. The printworkers are currently demanding an allGerman wage rise of 11%.
East German passivity
The real task of the international union movement is to explain that the root of the West German "problem" is not the egoism of the West German workers but the passivity of their colleagues in East Germany, where the German ruling class, assisted by the social democracy, has been able to impose separate collective agreements which prevent them from joining the current struggle (apart from the terrible pressure of an unemployment rate of more than 30%). Even so, there have been strikes in municipal transport in East Berlin.
It also needs to be explained that a victory for these strikes strengthens the position of workers throughout Europe.
It is no accident that Kohl has decided to fight now and with such intransigence. By noisily rejecting the public employees' wage demands, he tried to show the "international community" the strength and resolution of the German bourgeoisie. Banking on the fact that a public sector
May 8, 1992, the strike was being portrayed as "an early skirmish in the longer-term battle among government, industry, and labor to share the soaring bill for reunification". The fact that the strongest and most integrated union bureaucracy in the developed capitalist world has found itself behaving in such an unaccustomed manner was not the result of pressure from below so much as a sign that it has understood that a page of German history has been turned.
In November 1989, the Wall fell and capitalism took the initiative. In December 1990, Kohl won the parliamentary elections. In 1991, the German economic miracle was the locomotive of the world economy. Then at the end of 1991, the recession took hold and at the start of 1992 Kohl has suffered a defeat — and it is possible that his government may shortly fall.
The record of workers' struggles in Germany this year is unprecedented, the previous postwar record for days lost through strikes - 5.6 million in 1984 — is going to be surpassed. Behind the public sector workers come workers in engineering, shops, print and construction, confronting employers spoiling for a fight.
After the steelworkers, banks and public sector strikes, we may be on the verge of a third and even more powerful wave of industrial conflict that will send shockwaves through Germany and the whole of Europe. *
STOP PRESS THE deal agreed by the public sector union leaders was rejected by the members of the largest union involved, the OTV, with only 44.1% in favour, on May 14. Post, rail and office workers involved in the dispute accepted the deal.
The government and employers have refused further negotiation, while the
OTV leadership is meeting on
May 25 to consider the posi- 3 tion. * May 25, 1992 • # 229 International Viewpoint
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Germany
Striking at the heart of the German the strike and its unprecedented scale and duration (the ÖTV's last strike was in 1974 when it lasted three days).
The social policies and above all the unification policy of the Kohl government, which has been in power for more than a decade, have led to slowly mounting fury among the unions. The first chance to get rid of him by electoral means is not until the end of 1993.
His reign has seen a worsening of social
AT the present time one of the biggest strike waves in West
German history is taking place. The strikes have been restricted within the boundaries of the pre-unification
Federal Republic and the union leaders are not planning to extend them to the East.
On May 7 the employers involved in the first round of these strikes, in the public sector, accepted an arbitration award of 5.4% that they had previously refused, to end the strike.