New rise of workers struggles against austerity
WESTERN EUROPE. Steve Roberts Workers action against austerity in Western Europe is becoming again a major factor in world politics. The struggles at the centre of the political stage in at least six countries are the most developed since the massive strike wave of 1968-72.
With the parallel development of the anti-missiles movement they testify to the integrated character of European politics which increasingly demands a consciously coordinated response from the labour movement. The EEC elections will underline this objective need, as governments of both the right and left
In West Germany, the 160,000-strong printers union IG Druck und Papier staged 24-hour strikes at all the major plants to press the demand for the 35-hour week with no loss of pay. The union had appealed to workers in 50 plants countrywide to join it. The strikes follow a succession of 'warning strikes' by members of the country's biggest trade union IG Metall throughout March with many of its 2.6 million members in the engineering industry involved
What explains this synchronised eruption of workers anger? There are wide differences between the breadth of the strikes, their chances of victory and their political implications. Neverattempt to use them as referendums of confidence in their theless there are some common factors. austerity programmes.
A brief survey of the industrial scene amply demonstrates why bourgeois politicians from Craxi to Kohl believe such a vote of confidence is necessary.
In Italy, the anti-inflation programme of socialist prime minister Bettino Craxi has been met with the largest workers demonstration in Italian history. One million people demonstrated in Rome on 24 March in defence of the sliding scale which cushions workers wages against the effects of inflation. The motor force of the movement comes from the national assembly of workers councils. This body has met twice, convening over 2,500 rank-and-file delegates in defiance of bureaucratically inspired divisions in the workers movement. As we go to press, delegates are planning to organise a general strike unless the government withdraws its plans.
In Spain, the epic fight of the Sagunto workers to save their jobs at the state-owned steel works, has suttered a defeat with a majority of the workers approving the closure of the main iron and steel casting installations. Nevertheless, the Sagunto workers led a strike wave in the first months of 1984 unprecedented in modern Spanish labour relations in the terms of the number
Firstly, the fact that the organisational strength of the workers movement remained intact despite heavy defeats, meant that a clash between the bosses and the labour movement was in. evitable, however delayed
Even in Spain, where the trade-union movement had been ravaged by heavy-handed operations to establish bureaucratic control of the post-Franco mass legal unions and by the early signing of a social pact that tied trade-unionists' hands in the face of savage attacks on workers standards of living, the huge strike wave of recent months has created a new confidence in the possibility for fighting back.
This type of confidence is reinforced by the general recovery of the European economies, however sluggish. Even in countries where the gross domestic product is still in decline, such as Italy, industrial production has experienced a sharp rise. This expansion does not necessarily mean a reduction in unemployment, as employers try to jack up productivity through new technology and new working practices. Plans for the reduction of the working week without loss of pay, coupled with 'social control' of new technology as sponsored by the West German unions, are a response to the bosses' stratagem being urged on all of strike days lost, serving notice on the PSOE government that the member unions of the European trade union confederation.
"industrial restructuration' will not go unchallenged.
In Belgium, the Martens government is facing a renewed rise of the general strike movement, despite the bureaucratic divi-
The EEC elections can be the occasion for militants to make valuable propaganda for a consciously coordinated plan by the
European working class to put the cost of the crisis of the back sions in the workers movement. The government's proposals to of the employers and to overcome the unevenness of the strugslash social security provisions have provided a fresh twist to the austerity package that has already made Belgium the country with the third highest unemployment in the BEC atter Ireland and Holland.
In France, the plan announced by President Mitterrand on 29 March will mean the loss of 20,000 jobs in the steel industry, mostly in the depressed Lorraine area in the northeast of the country. The steel workers, through a general strike in Lorraine, have taken the lead in fighting these proposals which form part of the package of 'modernisation' which will'eliminate 25,000 miners jobs, as well as closure and lay-offs in shipbuilding, the car industry and telecommunications. On 13 April 35,000 Lorraine steelworkers and their supporters marched through Paris chanting 'Mitterrand watch out! The working class is in the streets!' The fight of the steel workers is provoking growing pressure for the French Communist Party to openly oppose the government's policies.
In Britain, the decision by the miners union leadership on 12 April to continue their strike action against pit closures and a low wage offer, represents a massive escalation of the stakes involved. Failing to defeat the strike by a policy of encouraging divisions in the miners union, the Thatcher government must now turn towards the full unrestrained use of the government's anti-union legislation, through the police and courts, in order to inflict a defeat on the miners and the left-wing-led unions who have backed them through solidarity action. International Viewpoint 23 April 1984
However, in some instances such actions can go beyond
The Italian factory councils' national assemhly passed a resolution of solidarity with the steel workers of Lorthe West German metal workers and printers, the British miners and the Belgian workers.
The practical links between these struggles can be a permanent consideration in the present struggles. Ford car workers already have permanent European coordinations of workplace representatives and trade unionists. Other
Secondly, the adoption by most trade-union confederations in Western Europe of the plan to fight for the 35-hour week, has to be the subject of resolutions and a plan to achieve action
The experience of the present waves of struggles and for a European-wide response to the crisis will be at the centre of an Assembly of workers against austerity and the Europe of the capitalists' on May 26-27 at Le Bourget near Paris, initiated by the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire, the French section of the Fourth International. On the platform wiil be rank-and-file leaders from all the present struggles.
It will be a modest contribution to the vital task of building an internationalist consciousness that can make a Socialist United States of Europe a vital objective for the European working class vanguard.
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