25 STONDE
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WEST GERMANY.
It was the first big strike in general since the steelworkers' strike for the 35-hour week in the winter of 1978-1979. Throughout the country, it involved a million and a half persons if you add up the number of strikers, workers locked out, and workers laid off because of plant shutdowns. Lasting more than six weeks (13 weeks in the printing industry), it was the longest strike since the 114-day-long defensive strike by IG Metall in Schleswig Holstein in 1956-1957.
For the first time, IG Metall conducted a strike in two districts simultaneously. For the first time, two member organizations of the German Confederation of Unions (Deutsche Gewerkschaftsbund, DGB) fought a concerted struggle for a common goal, and were supported by other industrial unions. For the first time since the end of 1982, when the right coalition that ousted the Social Democrats from government proclaimed a social and political "Turn" modelled on the policies of Reagan and Thatcher, the unions have put up a fight against this government, which in the conflict in-
Balance sheet of the fight for the 35-hour week tervened directly on the side of the bosses.
In the course of the strike, two clearly distinct phases can be distinguished, which were separated by the biggest political mobilization of this struggle, the demonstration of 200,000 workers in Bonn on May 28. In the first phase, as
Hans Mayr, chairperson of the Executive Board of IG Metall, talked about a "brilliant historic achievement" by his union. ing to the 35-hour week has been broken down." dent of the Engineering Industry Association (Gesamtmetall) was quick to contradict him: "No, this agreement is not the gateway to the 35-hour week but the exit from a general shortening of the workweek."
Heiner Geissler, a minister in the ruling right-wing coalition of liberals and Christian Democrats rushed to back up his industrialist friend, summing up the results of the struggle for the unions as "barren and harmful." Along with showing satisfaction that their right-wing comrade, Georg Leber, was able to end the strike with his compromise proposal, Social Democratic politicians have also let it be known that they hope that, despite mass unemployment and a reactionary austerity policy, it will be possible to achieve a new and lasting understanding between unions and the bosses in the tradition of West German "social partnership."
The section of the "left," that did not want to know about this strug gle, and when it did get underway, contrary to expectations, saw it as "predestined" for failure, now consider that their dire predictions have been confirmed. For example, the former factory-council member, who belonged to the "Plakat" group at Daimler Benz in Stuttgart, which was expelled from the IG Metall, Willy Hoss, who now sits in the national parliament as a deputy for the Greens, said: sult. The workers were called upon to make a lot of useless sacrifices."
What is the real balance sheet of the strikes for the 35-hour week? There is no simple answer. Unquestionably, the West German unions have risen out of the torpor in which they seemed to have sunk in recent
But all of their weaknesses were also highlighted. To be sure, the unions managed to force the bosses and the government to retreat, to accept a reduction of the workweek below forty hours (38 hours in the steel industry). Nonetheless, the bosses are satisfied with the compromise proposal made by the former chairperson of the building workers union (Industriegewerkschaft Bau, Steine, Erden), Georg Leber. In fact, it puts an end to a regular workday and workweek for all and transfers a part of the unions' negotiating power to the factory councils, which work within narrow legal limits and which in many big concerns are involved in "loyal collaboration" with the management, more concerned about the welfare of the factory as such than the objectives of the union.* Peter BARTELHEIMER
There is no question but that the strike action waged by the IG Metall and
"The door leadWolfram Thiele, presi"The strike produced zero rethe IG Druck und Papier (IG Dru-Pa, the printers' union) for a shorter workweek was the most important official strike action in West Germany since the 1950s.
a result of the confrontation course of the bosses and the government, the strug gle was extended and sharpened day by day. In the second phase, the union leaderships' attempts to limit the conflict threatened to push the unions into a dangerous defeat This peril was avoided, but the chance for a solid and clear victory was also lost.
In March, the bosses and the government were still certain that the IG Metall and IG Dru-Pa leaderships had overreached themselves in raising the demand for a 35-hour week with no cut in pay. These unions were believed to have been too much weakened by more than ten years of employment running into the millions and an open split in the DGB to undertake a strike for such a goal.
The capitalists and their political friends relied on the results of an opinion poll they carried out, which showed that a majority of union members considered the 35-hour week as an unrealistic goal. This determined the way they dealt with the union representatives. minute less than forty hours," was the shout that came from Gesamtmetall.
was immediately echoed "Absurd, crazy, stupid," was Chancellor Kohl's comment on the de-
"It would make even a chicken laugh," sneered the economics minister at the time, Count Lambsdorff.
On March 12, warning strikes began in the engineering industry throughout the
Nearly 300,000 engineering workers took part in the April 5 and 6 days of action in northern and southern Germany. While the IG Metall leadership out the warning strikes, waitInternational Viewpoint 29 October 1984
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ing for two sterile central discussions with Gesamtmetall to produce something (in the engineering industry as in most others, the real negotiations are conducted regionally), the small IG Dru-Pa, with 140,000 members took the leadership of the movement. On April 12, it began one-day strikes, holding strike referenda at the same time in the individual plants.
(In the fall of 1983, the IG Dru-Pa Congress changed the union statutes enabling the individual factory organizations to call strikes, even without a strike vote, and to hold strike votes just in the shops concerned, rather than having to do it in all the shops in the industry at the same time.) The printers' union upset the expectations of the capitalists that there would not be a strike. Up to May 3, IG Dru-Pa members in nearly 200 shops voted overall by 81% for a strike. A "flexible strike tactic"
In the following weeks, the IG DruPa leadership applied a "flexible strike tactic." Every day, new printing plants went on one-day strikes, and later for longer periods. This was designed to prevent a countrywide lockout by the bosses, of the type that pushed the union to the brink of bankruptcy in the last printers' strikes in 1976 and 1978. In fact, the West German unions are obliged by their statutes to pay strike pay equivalent to 70% of net wages to striking and locked-out workers. (1) And the small and weak IG Dru-Pa could not manage a general strike. Indeed, even the biggest and richest union IG Metall, with its 2.5 million members, could only pay the cost of a general strike for one week.
At the beginning of May, the leadership of IG Metall held strike votes in two bargaining districts —Nordwuerttemberg/ Nordbaden (Stuttgart region). and Hessen (Frankfurt region). In both districts, more than 80% of the membership voted to strike. The IG Metall also opted for a strike tactic that involved only a small number of its members in the struggle, but in ways designed to have the maximum economic effect.
On May 14, in the Stuttgart area, around 13,000 workers in 14 plants downed tools. Strikes were focused on stopping production of important parts for the auto industry. When IG Dru-Pa was calling 10,000 workers out on strike every day, at first without the agreement of the IG Metall leadership, the Daimler Benz main plant in Sindelfingen near Stuttgart went on strike May 16. On May 21, for the first time in 33 years, there was a strike in the Hessen engineering industry, including the Ruesselsheimer works of the Opel concern. On May 23, the DGB in Baden Wuerttemberg called on all the membership to stage a solidarity strike for a few hours. The spector of a general strike began to be invoked in the pages of the press.
While the solidarity strike in the Stuttgart area got only weak support because of lack of preparation, the bosses and the International Viewpoint 29 October 1984 government were trying to make the regional selective strikes by the IG Metall into a countrywide general strike. To this end, they used the weapon of the lockout, which nowhere else has been so massively employed as in West Germany, where it was used in a new and unprece-
Officially, Gesamtmetall locked out workers only in the struck regions, and even there "only" 90,000 workers (and no white-collar workers) in plants with over 2,000 personnel. At the same time, however, in an action that had been clearly planned in advance, all the auto plants in the Federal Republic and most of the parts plants announced shutdowns. The management explained that the IG Metall strike in the Stuttgart area had made it economically unviable to keep their personnel at work.
At the direction of the federal government, the president of the Unemployment Insurance, Franke, announced that the local Labor Offices could not pay the workers concerned the benefits provided for such cases, because the Unemployment Insurance system had to remain respect to the indirect
The IG Metall suddenly found itself trapped by its own strike tactic. first day of the strikes, the Springer combine's Bild Zeitung already ran the headSoon? Germany Without Cars!" strikes progressed, there came to be 65,000 strikers, as against 120,000 officially locked-out workers and nearly 375,000 workers laid off by "cold lock-
According to the union statutes, the victims of the plant shutdowns had no claim for compensation from union, but the Labor Offices did not pay bosses hoped that these workers would direct their anger and anxiety about being able to survive against their own organization and thereby force the IG Metall to its knees. At the same time, the engineering industrialists gained the
They decided in what plants and in what divisions work would go on and where production would be brought
Thus, for example, in the auto industry, and often with the agreement of the IG Metall factory councillors, work on the new fall models was continued day and night in the research and development divisions. Profitable and particularmarketing and administration also continunder the pressure workers, the IG Dru-Pa widened the action, insofar as its strike tactic allowed But at the same time, in July, IG Metall was not able to come up with an answer to the lockout. The strike became stall-
After this, the relationship of forces did not shift decisively in favor of the
It was not the strike front in the factories that was responsible for this impasse. On this front at the end of May and during June the struggle took more and more effective and more and more radical forms. In many plants, the factory councils and workers tried to put up effective resistance to the lockout.
An example is in the plant that makes for the auto industry, Knecht in Lorch (Wuerttemberg). There, as soon as it became clear that the management intended to send 80% of the workers home on May 28, the factory council worked out a twenty-point plan for continuing production. day morning, the workers marched determinedly into the plant and tried to begin
The management shut off the The workers declared the plant occupied.
Two days later, the Filter-Knecht workers were preparing an enthusiastic reception for two representatives of the striking British miners. The next week, the occupation in Lorch was ended after a long weekend, because the IG Metall leadership made it clear that they disapproved of the action. In a whole series of factories, especially in the Stuttgart area, locked out workers went into their factories, demonstrated on the shop floor and "visited" their workplaces.
When Gesamtmetall announced ther lockouts for June 18, occupations
The predominantly Turkish and Kurdish workforce at the Esslinger works of the SEL electrical goods company got the jump on the lockout by going on strike spontaneously on
15 without the approval of the strike leadership. Factory occupations
The workforce at Werner & Pfleiderer in Dinkelsbuehl near Stuttgart went into work on June 18 with blankets and mattresses and prepared for a long stay. Their action was a thundering success. Out of fear of a factory occupation, the management backed off its decision to stage a lockout that very day. In many other factories, the local union officials prepared for occupations that did not come off only because of the negative attitude of the Frankfurt IG Metall tops. At the same time, union members and of ficials in other districts, especially Nordrhein-Westfalen and Hamburg, were demanding that the IG Metall leadership article in the May International Viewpoint on the 35-hour-week translator misinterpreted the source of the obligation to get a 75% majority for the
It is not the law that imposes this but most recent experience, active trade
In the future to declare a strike 75% votes cast should be enough (instead of 75% of the entire membership as previously).
Strike votes and strikes should be possible in the future in individual plants. ment or continuing a strike should be able to be adopted by a simple majority (up until now the agreement of 25% of the membership has whether or not they were involved in the strike, to get a settlement accepted and a strike ended.)
Капри в hold strike votes, so that they could respond to the factory shutdowns with their own forms of struggle.
After the success of the March on Bonn, which was IG Metall's attempt on May 28 to respond to the government's support for Gesamtmetall's lockout tactic, the conditions for extending the strike were more favorable than ever. In the Bonner Hofgarten, 200,000 workers at the biggest union demonstration in the history of West Germany, demanded NEIN at the top of their lungs that Chancellor which was what the regime was offering the workers as an alternative to the 35-
(According to a law passed shortly before the start of the strike, the government was to give financial backing to a plan for retirement at age 58 with 65% of the last gross wage.)
To general enthusiasm, the DGB chairperson Ernst Breit declared in Bonn that a countrywide solidarity strike was possible. The initiative of the workers in the engineering industry showed the way for an effective fightback against the lockout holding strike referenda in all regions hit by shutdowns, striking partially shutdown plants, factory occupations.
However, in this phase of the struggle, the IG Metall leadership dug its heels in against any such actions. Even the strike in the Sindelfingen Daimler-Benz works ran up against the disapproval of the leadership. Further "spontaneous" action was forbidden.
While Gesamtmetall was threatening to break off all negotiations and the threat loomed of a "breakdown of collective bargaining" in the engineering industry, the IG Metall chairperson, Hans Mayr, was preparing a compromise solution behind the scenes. He called the SPD politician Georg Leber back from his vacation in Italy and proposed him as a
The deal that Leber made was accepted by the IG Metall, and at the beginning of July also applied to the printing in-
It called for a 38.5-hour week "flexible work hours." Despite indignation among the strikers, more than 50% of the IG Metall membership voted referendum for accepting this settlement. On July 3 in Stuttgart, and a few days later in Frankfurt, the strikers went back to work.
The result is far less favorable for the unions than might appear at first glance. It is positive that after March 1, 1985, the workweek will be lowered below forty hours and that at that time also all workers will get a compensatory wage increase
On the negative side, the IG Metall and IG Dru-Pa have to make do with a wage increase of 3.3% on July 1, 1984, and a further 2% raise on March 1,
Particularly negative was the acceptance of the principle that henceforth in the engineering industry the workweek is to be reckoned as an average. As long as the average workweek for the workforce in a factory is 38.5 hours, a part of the workers might work 37 hours, another
Duisburg steel workers say "No compromise. (DR) part 40 hours, and others somewhere in
This divisive rule was avoided
Moreover, the worktime of the individual workers can be apportioned regularly over days and weeks. The limits
"flexibility" are still a bone of contention between the unions and the
The rule is only that the individual worktime has to average out to the official workweek over two months. The bosses interpret this as meaning that a worker might work 32 hours for two weeks, 36 hours for two weeks more, and then 41 to 45 hours, depending on the rhythm of production. Overtime and the extension of shift work were not limited by the contract.
Another negative feature is that no restrictions were placed on part-time work, which mainly involves women but also men in increasing numbers. In the future, more and more workers will be consigned to these insecure working con-
Finally, the reduction of working hours is to be implemented plant by plant on the basis of free-wheeling negotiations between the factory councils and the managements. It is left to each plant to decide whether the workday will be reduced by 18 minutes, as a lot of plants have already suggested, whether the workday is to be reduced to seven hours on Friday and every second Thursday, as a lot of active trade unionists propose, or whether the workers will get additional days off, or whether the workweek will be cut across the board to 38.5 hours for every one with no distinction, as the
Thus, it will depend on how the reduction is implemented in the plants whether the goal of the 35-hour week by the end of 1986, when the present contract runs out, will be a credible one and a live issue in the factories.
Above all, the settlement of a 38.5 hour average workweek failed to achieve the declared goal of the struggle, to create new jobs by a drastic reduction of the workweek and thereby to reduce the pressure of unemployment on the unions. And this is despite the fact that if the strike had been widened as late as June, the bosses and the government could have been forced to accept at least a plan for introducing the 35-hour week in stages. In this respect, the leaderships of IG Metall and IG Druck und Papier proved
International Viewpoint 29 October 1984
to be trapped by their own logic, in that strength not by the mobilization of its members but by its strike fund.
Above all, however, the decision not to widen the struggle was a political one. The IG Metall and IG Dru-Pa leaderships showed that while they were ready for a fight, they were not prepared to challenge the political and economic relationship of forces. Because extending the struggle involved the risk of a general confrontation with capital and a governmental crisis. And all the leading union officials shrank from this.
Moreover, looking at the material results is not sufficient to answer the question of whether the strike was "worth it." The material results show a defeat in the fight for the 35-hour week but a partial success for the union movement. In 1984, a year of important struggles for the workers movement in Western Europe, IG Metall and IG Druck und Papier were the first unions to take up the fight for an offensive - in essence anticapitalist - demand, and they won a partial success in a direct confrontation with a reactionary government directly tied to capital. Above all, this fight was vain" and did not result in a "defeat" because it set the entire West German union movement in motion, because it posed a question for thousands and tens of thousands of activists that will be decisive for the coming struggles, and because the experience of struggle achieved in this campaign favors a militant turn in trade-union policy.
es involved in illegal contributions to political parties and tax fraud.
On June 6, Chancellor Kohl suddenly declared that shortening the workweek time, his minister of labor, Bluem, convinced Gesamtmetall not to go ahead with the extension of the lockout to districts where there were no strikes that it had already decided on. July, Count Lambsdorff, who as minister of the economy had steered the course toward confrontation with the unions, had to resign, because he was charged with corruption in office.
Solidaritat
List unsere minority government in the Hessen state parliament, the questions of the strike, lockout and shorter working hours played no role. Behind the scenes, the SPD pressed the unions to end the strike before the European elections, because it was afraid that its position of support for the strikers would cost it votes.
In Hessen and Hamburg, the SPD state governments refused to take legal measures against the lockout (which is forbidden in the constitutions of these states). And in the states and towns ruled by the SPD, the party was as hostile to granting the 35-hour week to public
A political strike 'Solidarity is our strength' say supporters of the 35-hour week (DR)
The strike has shown that it is primarily the split in the ranks of the workers themselves and the lack of experience in waging trade-union and political battles that enabled the bosses and the government to pursue their austerity policy and their anti-union offensive. The DGB, as an umbrella organization, is split. A section of its member unions accepted the offer by the bosses and the government of early retirement at age 58. And at the very time that IG Metall and IG Dru-Pa were striking, they reaffirmed the fortyhour week up till 1988.
Indeed, even in the engineering and printing industries a lot of union members still have to be convinced through further actions and struggles of the justification for offensive demands incompatible with the market economy, such as a radical reduction of the workweek.
The use of the means of trade-union struggle against the government is no longer taboo. This was a political strike, and it was understood by those who took part in it in the factories as a struggle against the Kohl cabinet. The government was forced to retreat and proved to
It faced a series of defeats throughout May and June. On May 24, in the face of general protest, it had to withdraw a bill that would have given immunity to politicians and big businessInternational Viewpoint 29 October 1984
At the end of June, under the pressure of pro-union court rulings, the government went back on the decision that the Unemployment Insurance Office would not pay workers affected by shutAnd at the beginning of July, Labor Minister Bluem got the recaleitrant printing bosses to accept the compromise proposal made by the Social Democrat Georg Leber for their industry as well.
More recently again the government has backed away from its initial confrontation course with the unions. While it had been declaring since the start of the year that it would not grant public workers either higher wages or shorter working hours in 1984 and 1985, on September 25, at the Beginning of bargaining with the public workers' union, it has already shown itself prepared to negotiate in limited areas. (The unions are demanding 5% more in wages and ten more days off per year as a "bridge"
In this situation, it was above all the restraint of the union leaders and of both parliamentary opposition parties - the SPD and the Greens - that saved the government from a bigger defeat. Both parties had declared solidarity with the unions' fight. But they behaved in practice as if this were an entirely nonpolitical conflict.
In the negotiations between the SPD and the Greens over support for an SPD employees as the bourgeois parties. the demand that the SPD and the Greens commit themselves to introduce jointly a law introducing the 35-hour week as the foundation of red-green parliamentary majorities in the towns, states and later also in the national parliament is assuming a greater importance.
The experience achieved in this struggle has convinced a broad layer of active members and officials of the unions of the need for fundamental changes in the way of functioning of the unions. changes are seen to be necessary especially in the forms of struggle, the question of the strike funds, and the attitude of union members and the shop stewards they elect to the factory councils.
In the public workers' unions a dispute has been going on for a year whether the demand for the 35-hour week or one for early retirement should be put in the contract nego-
The biggest public workers union, the OeTV, has been and remains split on this ques
In April, at a conference of this union on week was given preferBut at the union congress in June, no ELSE
The demand for 10 more days off that was raised after the end of the strike in the printing and engineering industries represents a compromise in the union It amounts to a 38.5-hour week in the industry, presented as a bridge to the 35-hour But it does not mean any shortening of workday, and thus leaves the question of orientation of further struggle for cutting The discussion in the OeTV has had no influence on the policy of IG Metall.
Before the strike, factory occupations were not generally discussed in IG Metall. Relevant experience was limited to a few workforces that in recent years tried to use this method to prevent the closing down of their plants. Today, more and more workers are convinced that lockouts can be combated most effectively by occupations. A court decision that ruled that it was legal for workers locked out during a strike to make their way onto the shop floor should favor further discussion on this subject. Under discussion also is the demand that in the event of a lockout the strike should be continued until the bosses agree to pay back wages.
In the printing industry, where thanks to strike breakers and the most modern layout and printing techniques a lot of newspapers could be printed despite the strike and delivered under police guard despite massive blockades at the doors, today active trade unionists are discussing the need to stay in the plant during strikes or to make the machines inoperable. The problem of strike pay
Under the impact of the strike of the British miners, who have held out for more than a half year without union strike pay, a lot of activists are challeng ing the previous practice of paying workers involved in struggles out of the union coffers. "You have to get out of this strike-pay trap," Joe Holmes, representative of the British NUM advised at a conference of militant trade unionists that met in Frankfurt on September 28 to draw a common balance sheet of the struggle. "Strike pay kills any movement. Without strike pay, there is more autonomy in the districts and regions for independent actions and less bureaucratic control."
Without the obligation to compensate locked-out workers for lost wages, the unions could have held up against even mass lockouts without being forced to their knees. Instead of handing Demonstration against youth unemployment (DR)
TROTREATEN ST LUERN 15000M STEIERFREHEIA
OTV: Schwestern und Arzie forder.
Schluß mit den Sparmaßnahmen on
Kein sozialer Abbat am Krankenhaus
Keine Verschlechterung der Kranken-
versorgung 20 strike pay in the previous amounts, the unions' local and central fighting funds should support striking and locked-out workers in accordance with their needs and rely on the solidarity of all union members and the public. change their statutes accordingly, the unions will not be in a position in the future to wage countrywide strikes. The unions have a future only as fighting organizations, not as societies for insuring against the effects of strikes.
The need to implement the new worktime settlement at the plant level brings the conflict between active union members and the social-partnership-minded factory councils to a head. the start of this year, many factory coun refused to campaign for the union's demand of a 35-hour week. During the strike, the factory councils in many big plants either stood aside or stabbed their union in the back. Instead of fighting against the plant shutdowns that were carried out as a result of the strike, they often made a deal with management to take the time that production was halted out of yearly vacations.
factory council chairperson in Golda, called on the IG Metall to which he belongs during the strike in letters sent to all the workers to end the struggle. Moreover, he arbitrarily reduced contributions to the union to three German marks a month. In the wake of the strike, when the auto companies were trying to make up for the lost producthe factory councils at Daimler Benz, Porsche, and other works agreed to massive overtime and special shifts up to Christmas, so that the immediate result of the strike for a lot of workers was not a 35-hour week but a fifty-hour
(Everywhere the factory councils acted in accordance with the IG Metall's demand to refuse overtime or to accept it only in return for additional time off, the companies have had to hire more workers after the strike.)
Democratization of the unions and a reinforcement of their fighting strength in the factories can only be achieved if regular membership meetings are held in the plants and if the shop stewards elect ed by the membership are able to exencise effective control over the union's repte sentatives on the factory councils and the local and central union leadership.
In the struggle for the 35-hour week trade-union activists supporting the most various political currents came closer together. In neighborhood initiative com mittees and local work clubs, they worked closely together both before and during the strike - engineering workers printers and public workers. them remained together after the strike as well. They are organizing solidarity for the British miners and for the public workers who are now bargaining with the government on their wage and worktime demands.
About 140 of these activists from all over the country met on September 22 23 in Frankfurt, at the invitation of the information bulletin Info 35 to exchange experiences and work out a common strategy for getting the new contracts applied at the plant level. This was already the fourth such countrywide conference of active trade-union members. But it was broader than all the previous
Jakob Moneta, former editor in chief of the engineering union's magazine Metall and a leading member of the Gruppe Internationale Marxisten (GIM, West German section of the Fourth International) caught the mood when he
"We need organized collaboration, a work group for fighting unions."
In fact, under the blows of massive unemployment and the austerity policy, the broad masses of union members cannot be led into battle by "spontaneous" initiatives of some active officials. if the union as a whole can be transformed into a fighting organization, only if socialist consciousness penetrates into the union leaderships, will it be possible to wage victorious struggles in 1986 for the 35-hour week, for the nationalization of key industries and for forms of work-
The GIM went into this strike as the countrywide organization fought in an effective and determined way for the 35-hour week and for widening the struggle. Its newspaper, Was Tun, editions with a circulation running between 12,000 and
It was read by many active officials and discussed in the work-
The trade-union activists of the GIM stand today in the first ranks of the lessons of this struggle advance militant positions in the discussions within the unions.
*A detailed account of the strike and a balance sheet was published in German six weeks after the end of the conflict. See Peter Bartelheimer and Jakob Moneta, "Das kann doch nicht alles gewesen sein... Der Kampf fuer 35 Stunden, " Frankfurt 1984, 160 pages, DM 10,80. It can be ordered from ISP-Verlag, Postfach 11 10 17, D-6000 Frankfurt/Main, Federal Republic of Germany.