Fighters for the 35-hour week exchange experiences
The following are excerpts from reports given at the conference of Info 35, a publication of a united front for the 35-hour week, held in Frankfurt on September 22-23. port of Holger Lange from the Bosch Reutlingen plant, organized by IG Metall, the German engineering union. from the report by Peter Koch, from a printing plant in Stuttgart organized by the printers' union, IG Druck und Papier. • During the fourth week of the strike, the IG Metall negotiating committee made three compromise proposals. There was widespread outrage among the pickets. A petition campaign against the compromise offers was started up. about twenty pickets went to the Collective Bargaining Board and delivered the petitions.
For the delivery of the petitions, a banner was made, Bosch Reutlingen Strikers Are Fighting For The 35-Hour Week With No Cut In Pay - No Rotten Compromise!" criticism of the leadership. Why wasn't the strike extended? Had it misjudged the problem of cold lockouts [that is, layoff of workers supposedly because the strike prevented the delivery of parts or materials needed to do their jobs]? Had it failed to take into consideration the Franke Decree [whereby workers laid off in "cold lockouts" would not get any bene-
For June 26, the day that Georg Leber's compromise proposal was presented, the IG Metall district leadership mobilized for a DGB [National Labor Confederation] rally in Stuttgart. The active pickets went to the podium and sang a song parody called "No Rotten Compromise!" They also went to visit the negotiations in Ludwigsburg and again to the Collective Bargaining Board. The first reaction of the Collective Bargaining Board members was that we were out of line, that there was no danger of a rotten compromise. The local strike leadership was supposed to calm us Bosch pickets down.
The next day the Leber Compromise appeared as a recommendation for a settlement. Twenty to thirty pickets went to the Collective Bargaining Commission. Pickets from other factories also assembled there. The district leader, Ernest Eisenmann, wanted the pickets out of there. The pickets stayed, the session had to be interrupted. We gained the "success" that the strike lasted another day and IG Metall had to pay out 20 million German marks more for the "longest labor conflict."
On Monday, July 2, the second strike referendum got under-
The active pickets distributed a leaflet calling fom a "no" vote. There was a 56% vote against the proposed settlement. • Another important question is whether the strike should be just for union functionaries or actively involve the union ranks. In this respect, I think, there is an important difference between the printers' union and IG Metall. We could not match the sort of numbers that Hoger [from Bosch Reutlingen] mentioned. We had maybe ten pickets, who had to block the plant from 5:00 a.m. to 11:00 in the evening for three weeks. We could not have done that. In our case, all the workers, with a few exceptions - people who got excuses from the plant strike leadership — did picket duty day in and day out in three-hour shifts. Every day there was a strike assembly. We only managed to hold out because we could discuss all the problems.
A second important experience was that we did not get all the workers to go to the DGB rallies in Stuttgart's Marktplatz, but we organized two car caravans, in which everyone took part and after which everyone was enthusiastic. Once we went to a rally, and the other time to the Printing Association [the emorganized pretty good strike festivals and, of course, soccer games.
For future strike tactics, is a big problem. In Stuttgart, we were not able to shut down entirely any of the big printing plants that were struck. Production continued at between 20% and 50-60% of capacity, with nonunion members,
In all cases, all the management people were originally skilled workers in the printing industry who
Moreover, it is scarcely possible to stop a small shop for long management personnel stand at the door and try to talk to the strikers one by one. There is an enormous pressure and some times you have to pay more attention to your pickets than to the strike breakers, because they cave in on you if they talk
We started from the estimation that we could not keep the plant blocked, and we limited ourselves to having the pickets argue a quarter of an hour or a half hour with the workers coming in, but we finally had to let them go in. For strike tactics, this means that you have to consider what else you can do. At a workers-struggle seminar with the printers' [French] CGT and IG Druck und Papier, the proposal was made to leave the plant "and take important parts with you."
The support from other unions was very good. We had very good support from the other unions on the first strike day and we had to go out. There were, however, especially for the central leadership, very big organizational problems, since the plant strike leadership was in command and the "outsider" workers often did not know what they should do. It is very important that the workers from the plant itself be distinguished and that they give clear directions and discuss in detail how the "outside" workers are to be deployed.
can only work over the local The others can form chains and take on other tasks
In conclusion, I would like to report that in our shop, where we had had no shop stewards, as a result of the strike 13 shop stewards were appointed, and they are to be confirmed by a vote next month. That is a very positive result.
On the negative side, we should note that the workers in our plant have "relaxed" too much. Attacks are coming down now. For example, a printer is to be laid off. And we have done very little to oppose it. We have not been able to achieve active forms of defense, an assembly of the personnel or a work stoppage, but only circulate a petition.
This layoff has unfortunately gone through with little re sistance because there is a very widespread mood that now we should have some peace and quiet for a while.
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awaiting them, and thus psychologically smoothen the process of transition.
It was those aged workers who, loyal to the company, enabled the Japanese economy to grow fast and allowed Japanese capitalism, in the subsequent years of economic stagnation, to develop