Union right saves bosses' bacon IN CRISIS CONDITIONS, the traditional Scandinavian practice of concentrating contract negotiations could set the stage for national explosions. That was shown by the so-called Easter rebellion two years ago in Denmark. This year the Danish contracts came up again for renewal. A new explosion was forestalled, but at what cost? INGE SORENSEN
DENMARK skilled and unskilled workers who work in the steel industry) could make a quick agreement with the bosses. That is because Metal - the strongest union in the coalition -has a very right-wing leadership ready to sell out the demands that had been raised, of which the most important were a 35-hour workweek with full pay and extra hiring to take up the slack, a minimum wage of 70 crowns (about 10 US dollars), and 10 crowns more an hour for apprentices.
To counter Metal's maneuver, the left wing in the shop stewards' organizations set a 'Take it Your selves" week of action for the beginning of December. The workplaces were called on to impose a 35-hour week by going home an hour earlier every day. The idea was that the union activists would go to the other members to make sure that the call was observed, and to create a situation where the contract would be discussed.
Danish Communist Party (DKP) members, who are strong in the shop stewards' groups, voted for the proposal, but in practice did not lift a finger to carry it through. None theless, the left wing was able to get discussions going at over 70 workplaces - mainly in the decisive metal industry - about the need for sticking to the demands. And a section of the workers in these plants did go home earlier.
After a week of totally blackedout negotiations, the Metalworkers' Central Organization signed the first contract in January, a month and a half before the contracts ran out. A handful of negotiators acting on behalf of 120,000 workers threw the latter's demands in the waste. paper basket, and accepted a five-year contract calling for reducing the workweek by a half hour per year, so that in 1990 it would be 37 hours, and without maintaining full pay.
That means that rationalizations can eat up the reduced worktime, without a single extra person getting work. At the same time, overtime was greatly expanded, and for certain trades the way was opened up for introducing flexible working hours. So, in the building trades, for example, the bosses have the right to increase the workweek to 60 hours for 10 weeks a year and reduce it in the other weeks, so long as they keep the average workweek at the level agreed. Up until now, the bosses have not made much use of this right, and they will run into resistance if they try, but the threat remains.
the wages front, the rightoriented negotiators accepted a minimum wage of 55 crowns, which is
5
Renewal of the national labor contract did not lead this year to an upsurge against the bourgeois Schluter government, as it did two years ago in the Easter strikes. The government, which ever since then has been hated by large parts of the working class, did not dare once again to adopt a law dictating the sort of contract the working class would have to live with. The only way out for it in this situa tion was to resume class collaboration, relying on the right wing of the social democracy to work together with the employers.
The tactic has worked, inasmuch as the social-democratic right, backed up by large sections of the left reformists, in fact did the job expected of them. But opponents of this deal were also able to mount an extensive "no" campaign at the shopsteward, union and confederal levels. They forced all the political tendencies in the workers' movement to present their points of view out in the open, and weakened the grip of the left reformists on the militant section of the working class.
In the past contract period, the workers have watched the bosses and stockholders rake in the profits, while a ceiling was imposed on wage rises for them. Another thing that made their blood boil was the cutbacks in public services, especially in the hospitals. Protests and strikes by hospital workers have in every case gained support and sympathy.
The more politically aware also saw the social-democratic parliamentary fraction rescue the Schluter government time after time, and compromise with it on the question of the missiles and the Star Wars program; on the tax law that sets lower rates on dividends and super-profits than on wages; and on the refugee question, where social democracy helped close the frontiers to
International Viewpoint 20 April 1987 refugees. At the same time, social democratic city council members have faithfully carried out the bourgeois austerity policy on the local level.
Smouldering discontent with this whole course focused around two points. On the one hand, people looked toward the 1987 contract, which offered an opportunity to fight together against both the bosses and the bourgeois govern. ment. On the other, the polls showed gains for the left reformist Socialist People's Party (SF). And that was despite the fact that on a series of questions, SF had gone to the right, in order to entice social democrats into discussions, with an eye toward forming a governmental alternative to Schluter. Workers impose 35-hour week by walk-outs
In the fall of 1986, all the poli tical forces in Danish society were drawn up for the test of strength between class forces that the national contract represents. A first and important round was won by the right wing of the trade-union movement, headed up by the reactionary leadership of the metal workers union, which managed to force through decentralized contract negotiations.
That meant that every union would negotiate separately with the corres ponding employers' association. The alternative, which was lost, was centralized negotiations in which the main demands such as a shorter workweek, a minimum wage, and cost-of-living increases would have been negotiated in common.
The risk in decentralized negotiations was that the Metalworkers' Central Organization (a coalition of all
a starvation wage. Nonetheless, they had the effrontery to claim that this was an advance. Out of the Central Organization's 120,000 members, only 423 were found who got under 55 crowns. So the bosses really got off cheap.
All the other bosses rushed to say that they would also love a deal like that, and demanded that the other contracts be modeled on the steel agreement. On the workers' side, however, a massive "no" campaign was organized straightaway, especially among unskilled male workers and women in the steel industry. And among the workers in the metal industry, there was in fact a majority of "no" votes. Nonetheless, the contract remains binding today.
The top negotiators had a clear premonition that class collaboration would not work, if the workers' democratic rights were maintained. So they planned a way of manipulating the votes. They called for application of an anti-strike law that stipulates that all the votes in the country should be totalled, that is all the votes in the private sector -in the printing industry, the metal industry, textiles, fishing, and so -. go into a great pool. According to the law, a contract can only be rejected if not only a majority of the votes cast, but 35% of all those entitled to vote, are against it, which means that those who do not vote are counted as voting "yes". In this way the contract was accepted, with 53% voting "yes" and 47% voting "no."
The members of the General Workers Union (SID), which is Denmark's biggest union, voted down the contract by 71% to 29%. If the votes on the contract had been held in accordance with general democratic rules, there would have been a big struggle in Denmark, since the members of seven unions voted against the contract.
When the fight against the contract itself was over, the Socialistisk Arbejderparti [SAP - Socialist Workers Party, Danish section of the Fourth International] and the rest of the left wing fought to bring the large "no" vote in the SID to bear to get rid of the right-wing leaders who had signed the steel agreement and made a deal to use the vote-pooling regulations in the referendum on the contract.
In a recently held special congress, SID President Hardy Hansen went out on a limb and in the abused name of unity kept a no-confidence motion from coming to a vote. But he did not get "unity." About a hundred of the 800 delegates walked out in protest, including, besides the far-left wing, Communist Party members who were divided on the question, social democrats who went to the left of Hardy
Hansen, and independents. While that was happening, about half of those who stayed in the hall struck up the social democratic version of the Internationale.
The Moscow-loyalist DKP's actions during the 1985 Easter strikes, when it defused a mass struggle for the sake of isolated strikes over wages, along with similar historical experi ence with its demobilizing maneuvers, have taught the Danish left wing to be watchful when they are working with them. Class collaboration imposed by trickery
So the SAP, together with the Revolutionaere Socialister (RS) and the Left Socialists (VS) - two centrist organizations - for the first time organized common contract conferences. They collaborated throughout the contract struggle, among other things on an information sheet published by a series of shop stewards.
One of the reasons for this joint effort was an awareness that it was necessary to offer a political alternative when the DKP deserted. In the beginning, the left-wing's amend. ment was adopted in the shop steward's groups, and there was agreement that the perspective was for a big conflict to bring down the Schluter government.
Unity lasted until the social democratic right wing accepted the steel agreement. As soon as that happened, the Stalinists changed their tactic. The idea of waging a fight against the government disappeared, and the slogan "Vote no, get ready for a big struggle," changed to "Vote no, demand new negotiations."
This was a completely false political line, because neither the bosses nor the bourgeois government would give an inch unless they had a knife at their throats. The only thing that had changed was that left reformism, represented by Hardy Hansen, had capitulated to the right wing in the union movement. And the DKP's line was to trail along behind, although in fact not all the DKPers did that.
The same thing happened in the most recent congress of the SID, which was called to evaluate the procedure of adopting the contract. The majority of the DKPers preferred peaceful coexistence with the treacherous right wing that had accepted the steel agreement, instead of breaking with the left reformists' capitulationist líne.
From the beginning of the contract negotiations, the left wing worked to give reality to the slogan "privateand public-sector workers - the same struggle." The contracts for the private-sector labor market always have had a contagious effect on the public sector, where the contracts are negotiated shortly afterward.
The same thing happened this time as regards worktime and the length of the contract. But in order to forestall alliances, the finance minister exceeded his budget, and offered public workers 6% wage increases. Although that did not even make up for their lost buying power most of the public workers accepted it, among other things, because it was presented as if the public workers were privileged.
The only sector that had a "no" majority was the unskilled workers in the SID, of whom 54,000 are in socially key positions. It is they who provide water, gas, electricity, collect the garbage, operate the harbors, and so on. As this is being written, the union, employers and a state arbitrator are working feverishly to keep a conflict and sympathy actions from breaking out.
When Schluter came in 1982, he rejected class collaboration. He turned to a hard-nosed bourgeois policy, including outright dictation of contracts. [The 1985 contract was imposed by the passage of a law.] Since the Easter strikes, this line has begun to crumble. The social democratic top leaders in the union movement, who have no role to play without class collaboration, were also pushed aside by the Easter strikes. Both "partners" therefore have a common interest in pacifying the working class and reviving class collaboration.
The social democrats realized that they, unlike Schluter could offer the bourgeoisie a contract without a conflict. For them, that was the consumation of two years' scrambling to re-establish themselves as reliable partners for the small bourgeois parties. They are already talking as if there never was a demand for a bourgeois government that would break with the bourgeoisie, and are openly going ahead with the perspective of a social democratic government that would collaborate with the small bourgeois parties.
However, the social democrats are overlooking an important fact -that class collaboration has not been re-established with the freely given consent of the working class. Rather it was imposed on the more militant section by means of trickery. And the philosophy about the blessings and necessity of class collaboration has very little support, since the small improvements that previously sweetened the bitter pills have now been replaced by hard-fisted undemocratic maneuvers. International Viewpoint 20 April 1987