Progress of
35-hour week campaign
In the second half of April, the struggle for the 35-hour week in West
Germany will face a crucial turning point.
Early this month on the April 5 and 6 days of action, the movement the TV, radio. In short, the great bulk of up. In line with this, from now on during
WEST GERMANY.
began to take off.
IL
Arbeitsplatze sichern!
the campaign, Was Tun will be published weekly.
On the first day, 130,000 workers in northern Germany took a seven-hour day, with joint demonstrations of metal workers
The strongpoint in the actions was Hamburg, where 14,000 workers participated at 48 plants.
On April 6, a day of central negotiations between the bosses and the union, 130,000 workers took the seven-hour day in southern Germany, with the workers at the big Daimler and Porsche car factories in Stuttgart playing the leading role.
This upsurge in the movement came after the IG Metall national leadership started to begin making moves to retreat in mid-March. They had found themselves in fact facing total intransigence on the employers'
Four months of regional negotiations produced no concessions whatever on the shorter workweek issue from the bosses.
So, the union leaders proposed abandoning the demand for an immediate introduction of the 35-hour week, offering instead a long-term plan tor instituting it, coupled with long-term contracts, which, given intlation, would result in real-wage losses for the workers. retreat for the unions, which refused to accept negotiations for less than the 35-hour week in December.
Nonetheless, the bosses offered the unions no scrap of concessions to cover their retreat. For the first time, a rank-and-file movement in favor of continuing the strike campaign emerged. Strongly worked resolutions from regional and plant organizations began to flood into the national union headquarters.
The sentiment for continuing strike action got a major boost on April 6 when the printers union leadership decided to join in the campaign. was a courageous and a desperate move on the part of a union that has been very hard hit by technological changes and defeated strikes. meant risking the very survival of the union on the 35-hour week struggle.
In the second week of April, the printing union began a series of rotating strikes. It began holding strike ballots, resulting in 80% to 90% votes in favor of strike action. It will hold a general ballot before Easter.
The printers union action puts additional pressure on the IG Metall leadership - the duty of elementary solidarity - since the printers union had a mobilizing effect in a whole series could easily be broken if it were left alone.
Nonetheless, in the face of a new rise in the movement, the IG Metall central leadership again called for negotiations, to begin April 17. Thus, the movement is approaching a new turning point.
The 35-hour struggle has been the major priority of the German section of the Fourth International. The following is the comment on the progress of the movement from the April 5 issue of Was Tun, the paper of
Well over a hundred workers in the past days have demonstrated their support for IG Metall and the struggle for the 35-hour week with no cut in pay. Of course, it is difficult to mobilize the union ranks, more difficult than in previous years. That is obvious. Unemployment has reached the highest level since the immediate postwar period This is despite, one might even say because of, the "upturn" in profits.
On their side, the bosses have the heavy hand of the media - the press, International Viewpoint 23 April 1984
This was a major mass communications are waging an extensive campaign against the union's demand and trying to present their attitude as "public opinion."
The decisive days in this confronta-
Summit talks are of no use.
demonstrations.
The warning strikes must be extended now:
The campaign to counter the disinformation of the media has to be stepped
***
After a slow start the first week, with the warning strikes bringing out only small. numbers (from March 12 to 16, only 20,000 workers struck), things began to pick up in the following weeks. In this period, the average number out on strike days is 20,000 to 30,000. On some days, the number is higher. Most of the warning strikes in big plants are in the
The mood in the plants still varies
It goes from a cautious waitand-see attitude, especially in the declining branches of the steel industry, to growing confidence, mainly in the medium-sized machine-building factories and to some extent in auto.
In general, the IG Metall leadership's strike tactic is not very adept. It is true that for more than a week now, the Northern District of the union has called a chain of warning strikes in plants city by city. In other regions also, more and more warning-strike actions are being announced a few days in advance (which increases the publicity and chances of success). But so far (in four weeks of warning strikes), it is far from clear how the overall number of strikers can be increased in this way.
the warning strikes have of plants, but at the same time in other factories skepticism is growing (and not only in the steel industry) about whether anything can be achieved this way. In this respect, the workers are heavily influenced by the impact of the crisis in the past years, especially in the steel industry, and the defeated steel strike of 1978/79. They are also being influenced by the slight economic upturn (short-time is declining, severance pay deals are being very widely accepted).
As a rule, the warning strikes are held for one hour in the morning, with only a part of the workforce coming out. Undoubtedly, the best option is the "de facto seven-hour day," according to which after seven hours work the personnel leave the factory in an organized procession. Sometimes, a small rally in the city is included, as has been done for example in the Northern District.
25
AROUND THE WORLD will be expelled from the country.
The Revolutionary Communist League
Fourth International in
(section of the which had already the state of Israel),
Million Italian workers oppose austerity The national demonstration called in Rome on Saturday March 24 by the assembly of factory councils, and supported by the CGIL (Communist majority union federation) and the Communist Party was an enormous success. Nearly a million demonstrators came to say "no!' to the hated decree on the scala mobile, the price-indexing of wages. (See International Viewpoint, No 49, March 26, 1984.)
The reaction of the Italian working class has shaken the trade union apparatuses and the political scene. New actions have been planned, and there is a lively debate at shopfloor level.