The following article looks at the course of the first wave of industrial action and its political implications.
WINFRIED WOLF
HE strike affected some public
T services such as post, rail, public transport and cleaning services.
At the same time initial warning strikes took place in the engineering industry. There were also strikes at airports and in the television.
In the first week some hundred thousand workers took part in strikes. In many large cities, especially in Nordrein Westphalen, public transport was at a standstill, while in many towns the postal service was effectively brought to a halt.
Many long distance train services ceased to run and the flagship of the Bundesbahn, the high-speed Intercity Express
(ICE) was almost completely halted.
On the May 5, 1992, the eighth day of the strikes, the strikes were stepped up as planned to include rail freight and airports.
The strike was carried out with such
Teutonic thoroughness that in many places the municipal transport remained on strike on May 1, so that people could not get to the Mayday demos, affecting turnout.
The majority of the public expressed support for the strike despite the inconveniences it caused them. And even the bulk of the mass media have not adopted an openly hostile attitude. Der Bild, the country's no. 1 tabloid, made an effort on
May 4 with the headline The craziness doesn't end; ÖTV [the public sector union] makes Germany dirty" while underneath in the same size type we find
"The politicians are talking rubbish!"
4 Interestingly, the article opposed the
International Viewpoint # 229
May 25, 1992 various social austerity plans put forward that weekend by the FDP and CSU.
The main public sector union, the OTV, asked for a wage rise of around 10% in this wage round. The employers offered 4.8% and the matter went to arbitration. The "independent" arbitrators then offered 5.3%, which, despite overwhelming rejection by its members, was accepted by the union leadership. However, the employers, under massive pressure from Chancellor Kohl, rejected the deal.
Previously other sectors, such as the banks, had struck new wage deals which generally amounted to more than 6%. Thus after the negotiations and the employers' rejection of the deal, the situation was exceptionally favourable for the public sector unions (ÖTV, DPG/Post, GdED Bahn).
### Decline in wages
In the background of the strike lay the increasing downward pressure on real wages - even according to official figures real wages fell in 1991. In broad periods, between 1982 and 1984 wages rose vigorously, between 1985 and 1989 they advanced slowly and in 1990 and 1991 they stagnated or even fell. Overall real wages are now some 6 to 8% above their level at the start of the 80s. A clear fall is on the cards for 1992; inflation has already reached 4.8% and rises in social payments are threatened as well as schemes for shifting payment for health care towards individuals.
However this is not the only reason for security, and while wages have risen, so has unemployment, from about a million on average in the 1970s to two million between 1982 and 1991. The number of people on social security has more than doubled as has the number of homeless.
German unity has further undermined the position of the "small people". No one has forgotten that Kohl had promised there would be no bad side effects of unification or his repeated assurances that German unity would pay for itself. In fact, however, the West has already seen special taxes (the "Solidarity Taxes") and a rise in VAT (a fixed-rate tax on goods and services). Further "costs of unity" are on the way. And above all everyone knows in their bones that things are about to get much worse. Since the end of 1991 industrial production has been dropping in West Germany and most big firms have announced layoffs - 20,000 in Daimler-Benz alone.
### Planned anarchy
Meanwhile the economic situation in East Germany can reasonably be described as out of control. This anarchy is a conscious creation of capitalism which has created an institution, the Treuhandanstalt, entrusted with maintaining, "coordinating" and "organizing" the chaos. The material output of the industry of the former GDR is now about a third of its 1988 level and the number of jobs has halved between 1989 and 1992. The number of those leaving East for West Germany is almost as high as in the last year of Honecker's neo-Stalinist dictatorship
The number of those officially unemployed or on short time working in the East has gone over the two million mark giving an all-German unemployment total of some 4 million, without counting the further half million artificially kept out of the statistics by "work creation" schemes. East Germany is becoming the German Mezzogiorno [Southern Italy] with West German rulers — most East German top
If Kohl's government has, despite everything, retained a positive image this has been on account of its supposed economic competence. This was decisive for the last election victory in 1990 and for the defeat
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GERMANY miracle
The central committee of the capitalist class
SINCE the unity coup and the restructuring of the East by the of the SPD, whose candidate, Lafontaine, had made warnings about the immense costs of German unity his central plank. But it is now precisely this economic competence that is in question. These days all the opinion formers are using
GERMANY
Treuhandanstalt it has been impossible to overlook the existence words such as "catastrophic"
"irresponin Germany of a kind of secret central committee of the bourgeoisible" or "harakiri" to describe the econosie which sorts out the big political questions.
mic course of Kohl's regime.
Psychology played a role in this
This was clear at the start of the 1980s when the so-called Flick scandal led to revelations of how the 1969 SPD/FDP coalition had struggle that should not be under-estimated. The employers' argument that a stribeen planned by ruling class circles and indeed financially prepake over 30 or 60 marks is irresponsible"
red by the bribery of the FDP.
boomeranged. ÖTV chief Wulf-Mathies
It is of some interest that in the two weeks before the start of was able to argue convincingly that this is the strike Germany's highest circulation magazine, Stern, publicynical, given that in many parts of the shed a series of investigative reports on the death of the ministerpublic sector 30 to 60 marks would make president of Schleswig-Holstein, Barschel, who was found dead in a real difference. Furthermore, the fact
October 1987 in a Geneva hotel room — he was officially said to that it was the employers who rejected the have died of a drugs overdose.
arbitrated deal is rather shocking to the prevailing preference for orderliness
The report convincingly proved that (a) he was murdered and among Germans.
"big politics", and above all the Ger-
It is also the case that the ÖTV was man arms industries (starring: the CDU's Stoltenberg as defence minister, submarines for South Africa, the Rostock connection in facing trouble in selling the deal to its membership. Wulf-Mathies is up for rethe GDR, and the former privileged East German contact Schalck-
Golodkowski). The rest of the big press have kept quiet about this election at the forthcoming union story, or have continued to defend the version of suicide.
congress. If she had got down on her knees after the rejection of the deal her re-
Finally, the resignation of foreign minister Genscher smacked election would have been in doubt.There of stage-management. A man of this calibre does not resign on were already doubts about her getting a the first day of a strike (gaining thereby bigger headlines for himmajority in favour of the 5.3% offer in the self than for the strike) without knowing what he is doing. An union's wages commission.
article in Der Spiegel on May 4 ended with the remark: "But he
[Genscher] let his friends know that he would still influence the
Government on the ropes
'basic lines of German politics' in the future. And then a dire threat: he got a red pullover for his birthday. 'If I wear it, some in
The government is currently on the
Bonn will take it personally as a sign. Of a potential social-liberal defensive. In recent regional elections it coalition - W.W.* has seen its vote drop by 10% and the far right gain ground. The state debt, which has burgeoned as a result of unification and the growing signs of recession, is also out of control.
The resignation of Kohl's long serving foreign minister Genscher on the very first day of the strike was widely read as a premonition of a political earthquake.
Both the manner of his resignation and its aftermath produced confusion in the ruling coalition — the smaller Christian
Democrat party, the CSU, felt it had been overlooked, while the Liberals of the FDP feared some plot aimed at bringing about a grand coalition with the Social Democrats.
According to the country's largest circulation regional paper, the Süddeutsche
Zeitung, on May 4, "The Kohl government is at the end of its road. It is being shaken by a rapid succession of crises, each one more violent than the last. The coalition is rotten to core..."
The big circulation weekly Der Spiegel headlined in similar vein on the same day:
Next to a woodcut of Chancellor Kohl one could read "how long now?" The lead article drew many parallels with the situation in 1982, when the SPD/FDP coalition in power since 1969 broke up. It reported that (b) this was to do with that, just as in 1982, several strategy papers are on offer setting out the problems that must be tackled by summer 1992 at the latest. "As at the start of the 1980s, the problems are mounting — but this time they are bigger: the incalculable costs of unification, economic stagnation and inflation, social decomposition and homelessness, struggles over the division of the cake and strikes... The government runs the risk of losing its ability to solve problems. (FDP boss Lambsdorff) has let it be known that 'if things are not back on the rails by the summer break, even I will begin to see red""
In this situation Kohl knows that he cannot survive a lost strike. The parallels with 1974, when Willy Brandt fell largely owing to an ÖTV strike, to be replaced with Helmut Schmidt, cannot be ignored.
German unity has meant that the political balance of forces in West Germany has moved in favour of the right. The bosses are in a stronger position and the radical left dramatically marginalized
The SPD has become more timid than ever and puts forward arguments that are in harmony with those of the CDU, such as on the asylum question; indeed, on some points the SPD's positions are to the right of the CDU/FDP (with the rejection for example of a reconciliation with the "terrorists of the Red Army Faction" offered by the latter, to which leading members of the FDP had reacted positively).
The German Communist Party (DKP) exists in the West only in the form of small groups with a few thousand members. The PDS (the remnants of the former East German ruling Communist party has shrunk massively; more than half of the mayors who belonged to this party in 1990 have now resigned from it and it hardly exists in West Germany. It has the largest membership of any party in East Germany (about 140,000) and opinion polls give it about 8% of the votes there.
The bosses feel in a position to pursue a provocative line, at least when it won't cost them much. It was striking that the banks made a settlement with their employees of around 6%, since the 5 employers did not want a protracted May 25, 1992 #229 International Viewpoint
GERMANY struggle. In the food sector there has even been a settlement of 8%. But now the bosses are demanding that the government take a hard line. Bild am Sonntag asked the president of the employers' organization, the German Industry and Trade Congress (DIHT), Hans Peter Stihl, "should the employers in the public sector seek to bring the strike to an end with a higher offer?" Stihl's reply was "No. If the federal and regional authorities settle too high, bills and taxes will rise. Nobody can want that, since it will undermine our international competitiveness. The employers' offer of 4.8% is already at the upper limits of the feasible. And therefore we are calling on you, Herr Chancellor: be firm! A few weeks of strikes (our emphasis) are better than high wage settlements that threaten jobs."
In the same interview the boss of bosses announced precisely what would follow: "we will support the chancellor if he decides to drastically cut back on the demands for subsidies from Berlin, the border area and the mining regions".
This support cuts both ways. It can also be interpreted according to the theory that Kohl is being led into a trap and that leading sectors of the employers are in on the plot.
Certainly, it will be difficult for the present government to implement the programme that the employers now want. Much speaks in favour of a new government, perhaps a "Grand Coalition" of the CDU/CSU and the SPD
A four-point programme
The bourgeois programme centres on the following points:
a) Dealing with the immense new state indebtedness, above all through a massive b) A series of constitutional changes to enable the privatization of the post and rail services to be pushed through;
c) "Solving" the asylum question, above all through changes in the constitution and even more restrictive measures against refugees;
d) The exploitation of the new possibilities for giving the German army a worldwide role (this also implies a constitutio-
Any change in the constitution requires a two thirds majority in parliament, which depends on the votes of the SPD
On each of these points, the SPD has made known in recent weeks that the unions concerned, whose leaders are close to the SPD, are ready for the necessary compromises.
Concerning (a): The German state budget deficit rose from 925bn DM in 1990 to 1170bn DM in 1991 and is set to reach 6 2500bn Dm by the year 2000. In the interInternational Viewpoint # 229• May 25, 1992 vening eight years, interest payments will have reached 180bn DM, that is, three times the present defence budget or two and a half times the current welfare budget, making it easily the biggest item of state expenditure
Measured against Gross National Product, statisticians predict only a relatively small rise in the share of debt (by 55% in 2000), but this involves an assumption of uninterrupted economic growth.
The SPD has openly expressed its readiness for "common talks on solving the crisis of state finances".
Concerning (b): The SPD and the relevant unions in the post and rail have already signalled their acceptance of privatization plans. The post has already been put firmly on the privatization track by being split into three (Telekom, the post and the savings bank) and no further resistance to privatization is to be expected. In the weeks before the outbreak of the strikes the rail union, the GdED, gave its unconditional agreement to the federal railway's privatization plans.
Concerning (c): In the first week of the strike a decisive debate on the asylum issue took place in the Bundestag, in which the new SPD fraction chief expressed his party's agreement to the relevant changes in the constitution. This is a clear change of line by the SPD on this subject and it earned words of praise from the head of the CDU's parliamentary fraction,
Concerning (d): In recent months leading figures in the SPD expressed their agreement to changes in the constitution which would allow once again the sending of German soldiers throughout the
Social Democats prepare for coalition
This last is symptomatic of the state of the SPD: Lafontaine made his way in Helmut Schmidt's SPD as a leading light of the left; A particular hobbyhorse of his at the time was his demand for withdrawal from NATO. Gerhard Schröder, another "Brandt baby", had previously been the representative of the Socialist youth ("Jusos"), and now heads a "Red-Green" regional government whose policies differ little from those of the previous CDU administration. The new SPD candidate for chancellor, Engholm, supports an even more aggressive pro-market course.
All these men form the so-called "Tuscan faction" of the SPD, which does not mean that the fraction (Farthmann, Rau) with roots in the workers' movement and favouring a more traditional approach is any more leftwing — quite the contrary, often this wing gives voice to racist positions concerning refugees.
Frau Simonis is a minister in Björn Engholm's government in SchleswigHolstein. During the negotiations on public sector pay she sat on the employers' side of the table, where she went along with the hard line against the unions.
There has been hardly any sign of the SPD, which controls the majority of the administrations of the Länder, breaking rank towards the unions, although the party has the power to split the employers' side decisively. The SPD leaders know that, if they did this, they would lose their chance of entry into a coalition government.
Shades of the past
The debates over a Grand Coalition recall those of December 1966 and the formation of the first such coalition, with Kiesinger as chancellor and Brandt as foreign minister. At that time the central objective of bourgeois policy was to carry through the political and economic opening to the East and make the necessary changes to the constitution to pass the emergency laws. The SPD was needed for both and was ready for both.
In fact the tendencies towards a Grand Coalition have been visible since the start of the year, being made explicit in March 1992 — long before the strike. It was the employers who were pushing for this, well before the outbreak of the strikes. At the time the socialist weekly, Sozialistische Zeitung, reported on an open provocation to Kohl by the employers' representatives: "For the first time, Chancellor Kohl's regular conference on the development of the new Länder [of the former GDR] took place without the presidents of the key economic associations being present. The employers' associations justified their absence on the grounds that they had 'other important engagements' (February 2, 1992)".
It is also interesting that even at that time it could be reported that "It has been indicated that Chancellor Kohl has no further objections to having [the SPD's] Hans-Jürgen Vogel as the next federal President [a largely decorative post]". The way was cleared for the 1966 Grand Coalition in precisely the same way - with the election of the SPD candidate Heinemann as federal president as a test of the new spirit of cooperation between the SPD and FDP. The strike, the attitude of the government and above all that of the employers must also be seen in this overall context.
We do not mean to imply by this that the unions are simply playing the game of the employers who want strikes as a means of bringing the Grand Coalition into existence).
Dutch railworkers defeated
DUTCH railworkers struck for two days on April 6 and 7, 1992, completely paralysing transport in answer to a call by rail unions
GERMANY construction employers were to agree to this, it would be a death blow for the government.
Furthermore, if the strike had lasted longer, other issues, such as the privatization plans, would have come into it. The from the country's three union confederations. The central demand was for the rejection of the board's proposal to introduce "broken shifts" ( in which for example, you work from 4am to 8am and then go home and start working again from 4pm to 8pm) in the maintenance department, Infrabeheer. This was the first big industrial action against so-called "flexible working" in the
Netherlands. On April 7, negotiations resumed and, to the strikers' amazement, two of the unions signed a contract which did not exclude "broken shifts" in return for higher than anticipated wage offers.
The union leaderships then advised their members to return to work, but the following day strike action continued in many places, sometimes with the backing of the social democratic union, the FNV, which had not signed the sell-out deal. However by Thursday services were back to normal.
It was then hoped that a national meeting of delegates from the independent FSV confederation would reject the deal and motions to this effect were brought to the meeting by four big districts of the union. However these were not put to a vote, and the leadership got the green light to sign the deal. The same happened at the national meeting of the Christian social CNV confederation.
This left the FNV out on its own; the unity which made the stri-
Kke such a success had been broken.
Furthermore, on April 17, the FNV union in the food processing industry decided to halt strikes in the milk processing sector aimed at obtaining retirement at 59 — a crucial demand giving the coming "rationalization" of the industry. This retreat took place under pressure from an anti-striker campaign, allegedly by an outraged "public". Furthermore, farmers started physically intimidating strikers. These defeats may have a longlasting negative effect on the
Dutch trade union movement. The FNV's chairperson, Johan Stekelenburg, has said that "he considered it necessary to discuss the usefulness of strikes as a means of resistance". In interviews, rather than defending his own members, he kept on saying that
"maybe going on strike was not so clever" — Wim Baltussen.
*
At the start of the second week, both sides were under the pressure of the independent dynamic of the strike. The unions could only now accept a deal which gave them 5.3%+ as the arbitrator had decided. A settlement beneath this level would have been perceived as a grave defeat for the unions. The government on the other hand could not be seen to have conceded this under the pressure of industrial action without seeing the beginning of its own downfall.
The unions could only, however, be brought to their knees by the use of drastic measures, such as the use of the army to clean up rubbish, which, given the widespread support for the strike, would have been a dangerous escalation.
All this is all the more true because after the public sector workers come the engineering workers. The employers here have offered a mere 3.3%, which is well below inflation. The unions have demanded 9.5%. There is no compulsory arbitration in this sector, which means that the IG-Metall union could call a strike ballot for this week. The warning strikes will spread more or less automatically. The link up of action in this decisive industrial sector, where some industries, such as cars, are still booming with the public sector strike, would have hit the economy hard.
Still other sectors are heading towards a breakdown of wage negotiations, including construction, where the employers have offered 3.5%. The arbitrator here is a Social Democrat, Apel, who is apparently going to come up with a decision similar to that in the public sector. If the government is currently contemplating the first all-German road plan which will inundate the country with concrete (individual car ownership is predicted to rise by 80% by the year 2000 and the road area by more than 100%). This proves that there is certainly money around; it is a question of what it is to be spent on. A decision by the cabinet not to restrict rises in ministerial salaries to the 5% limit politicized the strike.
All this means that in these weeks West Germany has been hovering and will hover again on the edge of a strike wave unprecedented in its postwar history.
The missing issue
But of course there is one issue that is not being raised: East Germany. The decisive demands here are for wage parity between East and West and a state programme of work creation. The adoption of such demands would mean a decisive politicization of the strike movement. However there has been little sign of such a development so far.
The May 1 celebrations were distinctly feeble this year, although bad weather may have had something to do with this. Even the central meetings, addressed by the heads of the ÖTV, IG-Metall or the central union confederation, the DGB, attracted less than 10,000 people. The trend seen over recent years was confirmed; much of the attendance was made up of foreign colleagues.
There have been a considerable number of strikes and occupations in East Germany in the past few months, which have provided some important initial experiences. They failed, but now there is a situation where the strikes are taking place where they can hurt the German capitalists: in the West. Were there to be East-West solidarity in struggle, this would have a huge political significance, above all in terms of beginning to break down the enormous wall which separates all aspects of the West and East, including the left and the workers' movement.
In any case, it remains to be seen what the implications of Kohl falling in the wake of such a strike wave would be.
One thing that is certain is that the entry of the SPD into government will have a dampening, if not directly strike-breaking effect. * May 25, 1992• # 229 International Viewpoint
May 25, 1992 abandoned by the unions (the latter have recently signed agreements concerning factory closings). The COBAS mobilized alongside "Essere sindicato" against the rationalization accords on the cancellation of the indexation of wages in December 1991.
The demand for union democracy is one of the central points of these wor-
THE defeat at the big Italian car firm FIAT in the fall of 1980 symbolized the beginning of the retreat of the workers movement for the following decade. This setback dampened militancy in Turin, the "FIAT city", though other centers of major capitalist industrial production in the
North like Milan and Brescia experienced important workers' mobilizations around national engineering contract negotiations and the struggle for the defense of wage indexation.
GIGI MALABARBA
ODAY, the bosses are entering a
T new phase of economic restructuring in a strong position thanks to the growing subordination of the unions and of the left to the capitalist demand that foreign competition be confronted. This situation reflects the weakening of the mechanisms of wage recuperation and the facility of lay-off procedures that have been adopted by the government without opposition. This in turn has favored the shift to the right that has been seen on the social plane as well as on the level of political institutions.
An acceleration of this on all fronts stemmed from the double need to respond to economic integration into the single
European market on one hand, and the pressure exerted by some sectors of the bourgeoisie whose privileges accumulated during the speculation boom are now threatened.
The opportunity for the bosses to register a strong financial recovery and at the same time to strike at the bastions of the working class has been provided by the possibility of "liberating" vast of areas of industrialized urban space through real estate speculation undertaken by massive groups of public and private Italian capital like
Fiat, Pirelli, Montedison or
Ansaldo.
The state has massively intervened to facilitate the partial transfer of production to southern regions controlled by the
Christian Democracy and the mafia. For their part, the unions accepted exceptions to labor laws and workers in the southern factories were forced to submit to "total quality" schemes.
In fact, the transfer of production and capital often takes the form of expansion into other countries. After the failure of
) several Italian industrial groups to make inroads into the West European market,
International Viewpoint # 229 efforts have been made by companies like
FIAT to penetrate the East European market while other firms like Olivetti have turned to the Far East.
Sirens of the free market
Unionization is not in a free fall, but the strong attraction of the sirens of the free market of the key centers has been undermining worker militancy. In the General
Confederation of Italian Labor (CGIL), collaboration between the Socialist Party and the Democratic Party of the Left (the ex-PCI) is quite close.
At the last congress a national opposition called "Essere Sindacato" (ES — "To be a unionist") was formed with strong rank-and-file support. It managed to obtain representation on leadership bodies.
the
At time same some sectors of the workers' vanguard initiated for the first time in the industry an embryonic form of self-management which broke with the union bureaucracy in large factories in
Milan, Rome and Naples. The industrial
"COBAS", like those which have already occurred in public sector employment and in the services, have a clear class connotation. Though they are still rather limited in scope, they have already played a key role in defensive struggles that have been kers' initiatives as has been recently demonstrated by the COBAS at Alfa Romeo. Their professed objective is to refound a class unionism on the model of the factory committees of the early 1970s.
Alfa Romeo at Arese, with 13,000 employees, was acquired by FIAT in 1987 without spending a lira (the first installment should be paid to the state in January 1993), essentially to prevent competition from Ford or the Japanese which could injure the traditional monopoly conditions of automobile production in Italy. These developments have also affected the two other enterprises in the Milan area, Autobianchi and Maserati, which will be closed next July.
The Alfa Romeo vanguard
There remains at Alfa an important nucleus of vanguard workers with mass influence that has resisted the thorough restructuring of the previous years. In order to eliminate this grouping, FIAT, following an old pattern, organized a clandestine parallel structure — the so-called "Gladio" - to that of the official leadership, in order to neutralize the most militant workers.
According to the testimony of a part of the former union leadership in the plant, starting in 1987, this body, with the aid of certain sectors of the state apparatus, trailed union militants around the clock, tapped their phones, and fabricated "accidents" and other "proof" that was used to victimize them. Since the unions accepted the principle of political firings, the struggle against these practices was organized outside of official union channels by the workers themselves with legal and political support coming from outside the plant. The bitterness of this struggle and the determinaSabadel tion of FIAT to "normalize" the situation in the plant has been underlined by the fact that some workers have been fired and re-hired under court order seven times. Fired workers have come to the factory gates, attempted to enter and have organized meetings and occasional strikes.