GERMANY Resistance and resignation
BETWEEN November 1990 and May 1991 Dieter Reinken, the secretary of the IG-Metall trade union in Bremen, was sent to the East German port of Rostock in order to assist with the administrative re-organization there. This interview with Dieter first appeared in Sozialistische Zeitung, the weekly paper of the German United Socialist Party (VSP).
entire workforces, the abandonment of social plan negotiations and the issue of the "employment associations" • Can you tell us about what happened in the region's biggest enterprise, DMS?
There were of course problems in all of the region's enterprises, but the dominant industry in the region was the German Machine and Ship Building Company (Deutschen Maschinen- und SchiffbauGesellschaft - DMS), which in the last years of the DDR's existence was changed from a Kombinat into a licensed company employing 54,000 people. It took in all the big shipyards along the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern coastline on the Baltic, including small inland shipyards, machine building plants and engineering, research and trading offices. • Owing to the agreements made, people were not sacked but put on no-time working.What effect did this have in the Rostock region?
It should be remembered that, owing to orders from the Soviet Union and the West, the shipyards were at full production; thus there was overtime and short time running side by side. • The press said about these orders that the proceeds would only cover half of the costs of production. What are the prospects for the region's industrial structure?
As far as the mentioned orders are concerned, the share-holders will get their money. It is impossible to be certain about the perspectives.
From early on we have reckoned that the situation for the ship-building industry is critical and have made no secret of the fact that there will not be 54,000 jobs here and that it is quite likely that only half will remain. Precise figures and the exact nature of the changes remain controversial. • Thus there is no sign of a Western firm?
No, no one wants to come in. On the contrary there have been declarations by all the shipyards that they do not intend to take over either DMS or its parts, even in partnership. Presumably the calculation is that they can get their hands on DMS' orders and capacity when DMS is finished. IG-Metall has taken a position against this, saying that the outfit should be kept together and that the individual - inevitably smaller — units should continue to build ships rather than merely performing secondary functions for the Western yards. • What role did the "Wessis" play? The advice which we gave was wellreceived. The problem is that there always comes a point at which our colleagues would give in to the immediate economic power in the plant, who would come up with very plausible arguments about the market and with promises about the future. Then our advice would be questioned. When, however, the situation in the enterprise got hot, then conflicts broke out between what we believed possible and what the people concerned felt capable of doing in the plant. Often we arrived too late; the agreement had already been made and signed. • What is your estimate of the readiness to resist? You have been able to mount quite successful mobilizations but often the opposite has occurred. Both are true at the same time. By this I mean that there was for a time a great readiness for political resistance. This was shown by the big demonstrations that we were able to mount in the region and also by numerous actions at the workplace level.
At the same time this has gone together with a readiness to swallow all kinds of things in the workplaces. This is not wholly a contradiction. It took place under the motto: if we can only shake things up in the workplace then we 1. Factory councils are legally recognized institutional 5 structures in Germany.
GERMANY mate. • I. had the Impression that the formula "clean-out not privatization" was, for a time, a popular and striking slogan on the demonstrations. However double-edged, was this not a way of expressing opposition to TREUMAND the logic of the Treuhand and the business circles?
tion.
This is also true for the left; even the PDS? has nothing but the market to offer. Where the market outlook dominates we should be glad that these employment associations deflect the full force of the market for a time. • Do you not also think that the dramatically negative experiences of the market that have already occurred could strengthen the readiness to challenge the pro-market ideology?
Over there I learnt little else than that everybody considers conformity to the market as the normal state of things. There is a different attitude to the market there than the usual one in the West: people think; our production will be competitive if only we can get rid of a few political burdens. If we were allowed to get things right, then we would be as competitive as the enterprises in the West. • How do people respond. to the argument about the feeble managerial capacity in the enterprises?
It is widely believed among the whitecollar workers, in particular near the top, that the cause of the bad developments lies in inefficiency and sloppiness: the workers perceive things differently; they say we have already given our work, the problem is above all the hugely inflated administration and the bureaucracy. However they all share the feeling that, if things were "properly" taken in hand, then all would be well.
First of all they want to be shot of the old baggage. They put much of the blame for the crisis on the old functionaries responsible for mismanagement who engaged in false accounting and bad organization.
There can be no question that people's viewpoints on the present developments are strongly influenced by the preceding course of economic development in the ex-GDR.
There are a series of people in the workplaces and elsewhere who are abandoning themselves to nostalgia and consider that what existed before was not so terrible. The unifying point of such ideas is a very positive assessment of the services provided by the firm, in terms of housing, kindergartens and facilities for women. However in my opinion everything depends on the kind of people who will be the final winners out of the developments underway.
Even if a third bemoan the passing of the old times they are not a real political force. • Do you not belleve that the impact of mounting social misery in the coming period will throw pro-market thinking into crisis?
This is not really my impression. Nor is it true from a world political point of can meet the demands of the market and be ready for the world market. Thus plans by the Treuhand? and the government for dismantling entire production sites were met with great indignation.
The political opposition then ended up in a blind alley, because it became clear that the course of the capitalist world could not be halted by demonstrations, even if these had been enough to get rid of Honecker. • The expression of this political opposition were the regular Monday demonstrations.
These played almost no role in Rostock. We concentrated the whole discussion on the issue of the ship-building industry. This was relatively successful, because it provided a concrete goal and people knew what it was about. A role was also played apparently at the time by the fact that a wage round was underway. • But then the movement fizzled out. The trains for the central demonstration in Berlin in April from Rostock and other towns of the exGDR were empty.
My impression is that people had become disillusioned about what was possible in terms of an alternative economic policy. They were experiencing the full force of the wave of sackings. While until June 30 there was statutory protection against dismissal, nonetheless what was going to happen was already clear.
Expectations had changed in the IGMetall to such an extent that nobody really believed any longer that the basic economic development in the ex-GDR could be changed. In my view IG-Metall, and the DGB (German Trade Union Confederation) as a whole, were from the beginning very hopeful, far more so than the parties.
I believe that this is still true but the scope has been reduced to that of enter6 prise and wage negotiations. I myself have experienced the rapid change in cli-
It certainly played a role. Less because of the content of the slogan than as a striking anti-Treuhand slogan. In our region privatization has not played such a big role because the big morsel is the DMS and Western interests have thus far not got involved. No one wants the thing and this leads to constant anxiety that, if this remains the case, the whole complex will collapse. The opposition is not to "privatization" but to the Treuhand's devastations. • An important topic has also been the discussion on the "employment assoclations". . What have been the experiences in Rostock with these, and what do those who go onto them expect?
The practical value of these associations is that people are not immediately thrown into poverty; they are kept together and given training. But of course there is no question that it also makes it easier for the entrepreneurs to sack people and for the workplace councils to accept restructuring. A further practical consequence could be that it could promote the development of a local government economic policy. • An opposition cannot really be developed with such a policy. What you have described is the classical position in favour of social cushioning, that is, the best possible social plan, that we have often criticized.
Then, how can this potential for opposition be developed? • It is quite clear that such actions mean that the entrepreneurs are no longer viewed as the direct problem or the logic of the market challenged.
I start from the view that this conception allows the strengthening of the positive demands of the employees, and in any case, there is no basis for any other conception. Here everything is submitted to the market. This is the universal posi-
International Viewpoint #215 • October 28, 1991
view. Even if you go on and on about the crisis-ridden nature of capitalism, nonetheless at the moment we are going through a phase when all alternatives have been smashed. And demonstrating that the market system leads to ecological catastrophe and worldwide poverty cannot overcome people's absorption in their own problems. • How do you see the immediate future of a "general representation of interests"? IG-Metall has become significantly bigger due to the influx in the East, but the interests of those in East and West are very different.
The main problem is that we have to deal with a divided reality and that up till now we have not taken this sufficiently into account. I also believe that we must not lower our sights from what we have been discussing in the framework of the perspectives discussions and the "Wage policy 2000".
It is first of all important that we here should take into consideration what is going on there and grasp it as an element in the balance of forces. It is clear that people in the East have other ideas to the themes of "car, environment, transport". They first of all want cars and decent roads. What matters, however, is that we do not stop the discussion that had begun here. • Unemployment remains the main issue in the East. The unemployed associations in the ex-GDR are planning a day of action for September 27. It will remain a purely Eastern event. It is hard at the moment to see common actions developing. How do you see this conflict?
What I think is that union circles in the West have hardly begun to take in what is happening in the East — what is really happening, not what one might wish to be happening.
The workforce's interest in the developments there is in the sense of finding everything terrible and feeling sorry for the people there, and not much more than that. • But the opposite feeling is also - Dul ine opposite reeling is also apparent — fear of the threat of competition, in any case where the threat has become concrete, as for example with Siemens in Gladbeck, when it was learned that a part of the production was to be transferred to Leipzig.
This is true, although it is exceptional. The main trend is the belief that nothing will be made there and that in reality (rather than in propaganda) the East does not represent competition.
Naturally the notion of "solidarity contributions" deducted from wages for the East that are being raised in the discussion are obviously unpopular, and nobody wants them, for different reasons.