The crucial battle for the
35-hour week
WEST GERMANY_
Following the Easter pause, the West German unions fighting for the 35-hour week have been forced to escalate their struggle. On May 14, IG Metall began an extended official strike in the Stuttgart region. About 13,000 workers were involved.
Strike referenda were held in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg (Stuttgart) on May 3-4 and in the state of Hessen (Frankfurt) on May 8-9. The results were respectively 80.11% and 80.77% for extended strike ac-
The printers of IG Druck und Papier, the other union involved in the fight for the 35-hour week, are also girding for a stronger fight. By May 2, strike votes had been held in 198 printing plants, with 19,600 printers and 3,000 clerical employees casting ballots. The result was 81% for
The strike votes were major hurdles because an elaborate system of class-collaborationist legislation in West Germany makes strikes quite difficult. In order to call a strike, the proposal has to be approved by 75% of all the workers involved. So, first of all, a high turnout was necessary to win the vote. In Baden-Wuerttembrrg, 250,000 workers voted.
Moreover, once an official strike is declared, the unions are obliged to pay the workers who go out strike pay at a rate specified by law. means that IG Metall has to pay every striker every week benefits amounting to 12 times a union member's monthly dues.
This entangling network increases the reluctance to move forward on the part of a union leadership that has been forced into a fight whose stakes and implications go far beyond any one they have fought before. Thus, at the same time as calling extended strike action, the IG Metall leadership proposed to the employers reopening regional contract negotiations. The fact of the matter is that a long series of regional discussions produced nothing before and talks are hardly more likely to produce
According to Luc Rosenweig, writing in the May 14 issue of the Paris daily Liberation, Hans Mayr, president of IG Metall has described the extended strike action as designed to show determination while "creating as little economic disruption as possible." Stuttgart represent about 5% of the workers in the area and work mainly in the auto parts plants.
IG Metall will probably soon have to call extended strike action in Frankfurt, the other area in which the workers have voted for this.
The International Marxist Group, West German section of the Fourth International, is calling for the holding of strike votes in the other regions as well. With the vacation period approaching, the unions do not have unlimited time for a slow buildup.
In a period of economic crisis and rapid automation, the fight for the 35-hour week in Germany is a crucial struggle for labor in all the industrialized countries. It is essential to meet the threat of demoralization to the working class from unemployment, to assure that working people gain rather than suffer from advances in technology.
In no other West European country in the past year has the demand for a 35hour week without cut in pay come so much to the center of the fight against mass unemployment and austerity as it has in the German Federal Republic.
After the mass mobilizations by the peace movement last fall, the unions took up the fight against the government of the right on a grand scale. But only in the post-Easter period will it become clear whether the movement will go so far as a general strike for the 35-hour week. International Viewpoint 21 May 1984
The 13,000 called out in
The fight for the 35-hour week, for which key sections of the West German union movement had been preparing for a year, has reached a turning point. Throughout the country, a campaign of strike action has begun to back up this demand. under very heavy fire.
The employers organizations and the right-wing Christian Democrat-Liberal coalition that has been in power for a year and a half are throwing everything into an effort to create a veritable pogrom atmosphere against this demand. Their slogan is that one minute less than fur alle
IG Metall
forty hours means the ruin
In the factories, under the pressure of unemployment, the workers are showing signs of anxiety and uncertainty. union movement is split. A number of the individual unions prefer to negotiate with the government and the employers for higher wages and early retirement at
The biggest and most powerful of the unions that have committed themselves to the fight for the 35-hour week, IG Metall with its 2.6 million members, has been negotiating for more than four months and it has not yet come to any decision about a general strike. leadership is still trying to avoid such a
At the end of February, the obligatory strike moratorium ran out in the steel and engineering industry, and at the end of March the small printers union IG Druck und Papier, got a free hand to strike. According to West German labor law, after contracts run out the unions are obliged to maintain "labor peace" for a
In the steel and engineering industry, after February 13, IG Metall launched a campaign of warning strikes, which were intended to accompany negotiations with the employers. In some cases, individual plants were on strike for one to two hours In others, the workforce from several factories assembled for rallies or demonstrations in the downtown areas. A highpoint of the warning strike campaign came on April 5 and 6. On April 4, 132,000 engineering workers took part countrywide in the warning strikes. center of gravity was in northern Germany, in Hamburg.
About 14,000 engineering workers in 48 plants "tried out" the seven-hour day. They left work an hour early. Seven thousand joined in a common demonstration with the printing workers. On April 6, the day of the first central negotiations between IG Metall and the industrialists, IG Metall mobilized 90,000 workers in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg alone, and countrywide 135,000 participated in short strikes. Here also the slogan was "Today seven hours is enough." In particular in the big Daimler-
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Stimme mit. JA 35 Arbeitslosigkeit Statt für viele- mehr freizeit
massive unemployment and cutbacks in social benefits. Central to this is a concrete plan for having the key industries in the public domaine.
Benz and Porsche auto factories, 90% ol the workers walked out after seven hours.
On March 14, "spontaneous actions" began in the printing industry. The union could not officially call for such actions. But after that time they continually inwithin the framework union's "flexible strike tactic."
IG Druck und Papier is a small union (it has only about 145,000 members today). It has been hard hit by the technological innovations in the printing industry and the decline in the number of jobs. But the proportion of workers in the industry it represents increased (to over
Since the big printers strikes in 1977 and 1978, this union has been considered financially too weakened to wage other big strike struggles. (West German unions are obliged by the statutes to give strike pay in official strikes.) But with its tactic of rotating strikes it has now taken the lead in the struggle for the 35-hour week. Up until April 6, 18,000 printing workers in 136 shops had participated countrywide in warning strikes.
Many newspapers did not come out or appeared late in reduced editions. On April 5, the IG Metall day of action in northern Germany, the press of the reactionary Springer combine, in particular the gutter rag Bild, disappeared from the newspaper stands throughout the entire northern region. One shift after the other stopped work in all the big Hamburg printing plants.
the leadership of IG Druck and Papier decided to hold strike votes in various key corporations where workers would then stage two-to-three day warning strikes throughout the coun-
The upshot was that on April 12 and 13 in 50 printing plants throughout West Germany the workers went out on one-day warning strikes, so that over the weekend a lot of newspapers failed to
The trade unions in West Germany are struggling against the current. But the effects of the 1979-82 world economic crisis and the replacement in 1982 of the
FDP) by a right-wing Christian DemocratFDP government made it clear even to a section of the Social Democratic trade-union bureaucracy that the reactionary "turn" in Bonn had to be met by a militant turn in the union movement. Otherwise, the unions would lose all their inwho was elected vice-president of IG Metall in 1983 and extent represented this change in consciousness in a lot of trade-union leaders, expressed it quite clearly. The fight for the 35-hour week is a "lifeor-death" struggle for the unions. unions are to be made toothless and tame, at best good enough to hold indoor Labor Day rallies. That's the bosses' dream. They want to use unemployment to achieve that." (Steinkuehler in an inThe unions have to fight
While in the EEC as a whole, the number of registered unemployed rose in 1975-83 from 4.6 million to about 12.6 million, in West Germany this tripling of the jobless figures was concentrated into a three-year period. The offical count rose from 889,000 in 1980 to 2,350,000 in 1983. In the years of the latest recession, there has been a massive introduction of microelectonics in West German factories
This alone will eliminate between 3 and 4 million jobs before 1990.
Since the 1978-79 steel strike for the 35-hour week, which was unsuccessful, the unions have just sat by and watched this development taking place. same time, real wages have fallen year by year, and at the end of 1982, they had already dropped below the level of 1982.
Although the decline in union membership has so far been limited (in 1983 the unions lost 100,000 out of 7.85 million members), the workers confidence in the fighting capacity of the unions has been undermined. A delegate to the 1983 IG Metall convention coined from a period of negotiations in boom to a period of struggles in hard
The need for such a reorientation was highlighted by the change of government. For more than a decade union leaders had been used to collaborating with the government. They were shocked by the confrontation course set by
It went on the attack not just in the area of social welfare (however, since 1982, Bonn's austerity policy was in fact started under Schmidt - has cost the mass of wage earners 176 billion German Marks). Above all, it was spoiling for a political confrontation with the
In the fight over the 35-hour week, the government has demonstratively taken the side of the employers. Chancellor Kohl, a Christian Democrat, has described the unions' demand as "stupid and ridiculous." In parliament, minister of the economy, FDP leader Count von Lambsdorff, has denounced IG Druck and Papier as a "Marxist cadre organization." The premier of Bavaria, Franz Josef Strauss, has declared that the 35-hour struggle is only a pretext to topple the government.
All the representatives of capital are talking about an upturn. Now that it is finally here, everybody is supposed to relax. The crisis is over. Nothing special has happened. Unemployment will go down. This propaganda is aimed directly against the 35-hour week struggle. unions, supposedly, have the solution in their hands. If they drop "unreasonable" demands, all the problems can be over-
"the normal operation of the market economy." But if they fight for demands as a shorter workweek, then the upturn will quickly falter, and still more jobs will be in dan-
This propaganda has not failed to have an effect in the factories.
the government has not itself in its propaganda to invoking the threat of ruin for the West German economy and the "free market system." It has already intervened on the
Social Democratic-Liberal coalition (SDP. the formula of a "difficult reorientation side of capital by passing new laws. On
March 29, for example, a law was adopted on early retirement, to go into effect on May 1. According to this legislation,
The position of the GM
- The goal is a seven-hour day, not "flexible" working hours!
- There must be a struggle to assure new hiring.
this is to get it written into the contracts, along with provision for monitoring of working conditions.
There must be no cut in wages and there must also be automatic adjustment for increases in the cost of living. Spreading the work among more people cannot be done without somebody paying.
In a situation where 2.5 million people are already unemployed, the 35-hour week already represents a compromise.
term struggle to spread the work among everyone.
-
Part-time jobs should be covered in the contracts and should get full protection.
The spread of part-time work should be prevented. In particular, the shorter workweek must be coupled with higher wages for women part-time workers (12.5%) so that they will have a stake in the struggle.
In new hiring, quotas should be set for women and immigrant workers.
- Discussion must begin in the unions on a common action program against
8
The best way to guarantee
It is the bosses who must pay
It can only be the beginning of a longerpart-time workers in the next five years workers 58 or over can retire on 65% of their gross wages. (With the exception of workers in small enterprises where there are less than 20 on the payroll.) To help pay the cost of such early retirement, the employers will get state grants equal to 35%. (This provision does not apply to the public ser-
The aim of this law, which is playing a central role in the negotiations with the bosses, is to split the unions. The alternative the bosses are offering to a shorter workweek is precisely a voluntary improvement in the early-retirement pensions, which hardly anybody could live on.
A proposed law to promote employment" also fits into the strategy of the capitalists, who are in favor of in-
International Viewpoint 21 May 1984
creasing the number of insecure and badly paid jobs. This bill calls for legal insurance of more part-time jobs, more "temporary labor," and cutting back the protective legislation for youths and the handicapped.
So, it was the government and not the unions that gave the conflict a political character. Today, West German society is deeply split over the issue of the 35-hour week. IG Metall and the unions which have joined with it in this struggle are gaining more and more solidarity from all the forces that oppose the government's policy of "The Turn." That includes the SPD, the Greens, the peace movement, the women's movement and the Immigrants' Rights Committees [Komitees fuer die Rechte der Immigranten].
On the other side are all the forces of the reactionary "coalition of capital and the cabinet" (to use Franz Steinkuehler's expression). The fight for the 35-hour week has become an all-out test of strength with the government of the capitalists.
Under the impact of the trade-union mobilizations, both parliamentary opposition parties, the SPD and the Greens, have dropped their initial skepticism about the 35-hour demand and declared their support for IG Metall and the other unions in their fight for this objective.
The SPD took a long time after it went into opposition in 1982 to shift from the openly bourgeois program of the Schmidt government to new political positions. Under the pressure of the peace movement, in 1982 it broke its decades-long loyalty to the Nato alliance and came out against the stationing of the new US missiles in the Federal Republic. The role of the SPD and the Greens
For the SPD to revive as a political alternative to the reactionary Kohl government, however, it also has had to take a new course on social questions and move back toward the unions' positions. In 1982, when the SPD was still the main
D Bere
Dieser
Betrieb bestreikt wiru nestreilt with the steel-and engineering workers union. Since then, the SPD has supported the trade-union mobilizations for the 35-hour week. It has made sure that the symbol of the fight for the 35-hour week (a rising sun over the number "35") dominates the scene in all the cities and towns. It has joined in rallies with representatives of the unions.
its own propaganda (its main slogan is "More jobs, shorter working hours"), the SPD treats the 35-hour week and early retirement (although on better conditions than those offered by the government's law) as equally beneficial ways of shortening working time. Moreover, its attitude to the demand for no cut in pay is extremely equivocal. As late as March 28, at the state SPD convention in Hamburg, there was no majority
The resistance to the 35-hour demand was initially even greater in the ranks of the Greens. movement, which they identified with
STREIK
STREIK
Dieser b Dieser Beti.cO
wird bestrefi wird bestreikt
Our factory is on strike (DR) "pragmatism" of the majority of the parliamentary fraction, favored a reorientation. Thus, the call for a 35-hour week "with no cut in pay for lower and middle wage earners" assumed a prominent place in the Greens' election program for 1983 as a measure for fighting mass unemployment. 1984, the Greens' parliamentary fraction invited trade unionists to a hearing on the worktime question to discuss what position the fraction would take on the 35-
In the resolution, the Greens declared their support for the individual unions "which face a hard struggle to win the 35-hour week." In addition, they called for preference for women in the new hiring that reduction of the workweek would make necessary "in order to progressively eliminate sexual discrimination in jobs women and give equal opportunity to
They called as well for the right of codetermination by workers in the introduction of new technological government party, 35-hour week was a far-off dream (Hel- the SPD as a government party, was mut Schmidt said: "I hope I will live to
Instead it favored early retirement. Moreover, it declared that any reduction of the workweek had "obviously" to be "paid for" by a reduction in wages.
As late as December 1982, the SPD introduced a bill on working hours that took the 40-hour week as the base and provided for 2 hours a week overtime on a regular basis and up to 20 hours overon an exceptional basis. same time, it permitted "flexible working hours" (that is, a dividing up of yearly working time in accordance with the changing needs of the capitalists). In the spring of 1983, the SPD proposed a 36hour week with a 5% cut in pay and state compensation to employers for their increased labor costs.
It was only after the IG Metall convention at the end of 1983 that Willy Brandt, chairperson of the SPD, announced that the party was "shoulder to shoulder" International Viewpoint 21 May 1984 marked by open hostility, as well as by the conception of the need for a "radical break from the industrial system."
The most consistent representatives of such conceptions, who have now begun to organize themselves openly as an "ecological-liberal" minority tendency in the Green Party, see their enemy not as capitalism but as "industrialism," for which they hold the bosses and the trade unions equally responsible. They reject the demand for shorter hours with no cut in pay as "consumerist thinking," and they do not want to exclude the possibility
"an environmentally economy" people may have to work 45 hours a week or more. But this position has long since ceased to exercise a
"Turn" in Bonn and the experience of being together with the SPD and the unions in opposition to the government's reactionary course, as well as the advances, agreements on the number of new hires and extensive shortening of working hours. But at the same time they proposed "labor-intensive small, middle and cooperative enterprises and self-managed initiatives."
Like the SPD the Greens have shied away from defying a taboo of West German politics, that is, that the most laws can do is round out the agreements that the "contract partners" (the unions and the employers) come to themselves. The Greens' bill for revision of the still valid (!) 1938 law on working time -which was put forward in sharp opposition to the SPD - nonetheless accepts the 40-hour week as a basis, just like the SPD bill.
Moreover, in the state of Hessen, where the Greens are negotiating with the SPD about supporting a Social Democratic minority government, it has not yet occurred to any Green or any Social Democrat to use the parliamentary majority the two parties together hold to intro-
9
duce the 35-hour week on the state level. Both parties have yet to demonstrate their solidarity with the struggle for the 35-hour week both in the parliament and
Already before the beginning of the fight for the 35-hour week, the formal unity of the 17 national unions under the umbrella of the DGB [German Confederation of Unions] evaporated. The deep split that exists in the union movement is the biggest danger to the struggle.
Eight national unions have committed themselves to the fight for the 35-hour
Along with IG Metall and the printers union, they are the Gewerkschaft Handel, Banken, Versicherungen (HBV, Retail, Bank and Insurance Clerks); the postal workers union, the wood and plastic workers union; the agriculture and forestry workers union; the public workers union; and the teachers union (GEW). after long debate at a national conference on working time on April 11, Transport and Verkehr (OTV, bus and rail workers), which with 1.17 million members is the country's second biggest union after IG Metall, decided to give priority to the demand for the 35-hour week and declared its solidarity with IG Metall. Labor split
On the other side, five unions have opnely refused to support this struggle. They include IG Chemie (chemical workers); IG Bau, Steine, Erden (IG BSE, the building, stone and earth workers); IG Bergbau (miners); the Gewerkschaft Textil, Bekleidung (textile and garment workers); the Gewerkschaft Nahrungs and Genussmitel, Gaststaetten (food, restaurant and hotel workers).
These five unions declared early for negotiating with the government and bosses for early retirement, in which they would concentrate on getting higher pentionary Factory Committee Law of 1952 the mandate for representing the workers in each factory. hand, there is the Factory Committee (Betriebsrat), which is elected by the workforce as a whole, both unionized and
It has the legal right to a say in the management of the factory (Mitbestimmung, codetermination). But it is bound to "keeping industrial peace in the factory." On the other hand, there are the shop-stewards bodies elected by the union members.
It is true that 80% to 90% of the members of the Factory Councils are put forward by the member unions of the DGB. But in the big factories a special form of "partnership" has developed these "Factory Council bigwigs" and the
And now in many arrangement is seriously obstructing IG Metall's efforts to mobilize the workers in the big plants.
A lot of IG Metall factory councilors not only came out against the 35-hour week in the March and April Factory Council elections. They even banned any propaganda by the union for mand, obstructed any move by the shopselves that the union leaflets disappeared affairs now is that a lot of these councilors not only hold a rein on the shop-stewards bodies but have also become quite independent of the local trade-union ap-
"So, what is at stake in this struggle is whether the labor movement can come up with a united response to the bourgeois policy, or whether it will be split up into a number of interest groups in a "neoconservative" society of a war of all against all.
Under these difficult conditions, it can hardly be overestimated how important the demand for the 35-hour week is as the starting point for the necessary reorientation of trade-union policy. For the trade-union movement is fighting for a demand that breaks with the logic of the
The immediate introduction of the 35-hour week is being sought with the aim of creating 1.5 million new jobs throughout the economy. In comparison with this, the regulations for early retirement from age 58 would "free" hardly more than 27,000 jobs a year. The speed-up has gotten so intense that there are hardly any older people still working in the steel and engineering industry. (In tact, the average age of workers leaving the job because they cannot do the work had already fallen to 58 in 1982.)
In particular, in the propaganda material put out by the IG Metall anticapitalist ideas are finding expression. With respect to the technological revolution, it is noted that there is not going to be any new "economic miracle" schaftswunder). That is, that the turn" promised by the bosses and the government will not reduce unemployment and that economic growth under such conditions would mean a further worsening of the ecological catastrophe. raised especailly by IG Druck und Papier and IG Metall also express an anticapitalist logic. The printers are demanding a veto right on the introduction of new technology. IG Metall points out that in 1982 overtime amounted to 2 billion hours, which corresponds to 1.2 million jobs. So, it is demanding contracts that permit overtime only in exceptional cases, and then to be balanced off by additional time off. Beyond narrow unionism
For the first time, a number of big national unions are fighting for a common objective, rather than jealously clinging to their autonomy. The attempts to coordinate the struggle in the various industries, nonetheless, remain modest on sions. (In West Germany, the bosses first time, a considerable part of the both the regional and central level. But negotiate only with the individual unions in the various industries. Thus, the separate national unions make decisions auton- Workers demand for 35-hour week blasts bosses hope for 'industrial peace' (DR) omously.)
The split in the union movement reflects the attempt by a section of the union leadership to continue even under conditions of mass unemployment and facing a reactionary government the policy of "social partnership" and "peaceful" negotiations that was pursued in the 1960s and 1970s.
Back in 1983, IG Chemie signed a new contract confirming the 40-hour week up until 1987. On April 2, 1984, IG BSE followed this example. In return for a 3.3% wage increase and promises of early retirement, it recognized the 40-hour week up until 1988. This sort of "prac tical trade unionism" is being used as an example by the bosses and the government in their public hysteria campaign against the 35-hour week.
Moreover, the unions' fighting capacity is threatened by another split and in the ranks of IG Metall itself. The reac 10
International Viewpoint. 21 May 1984
Statement of the publishers and supporters of Info 35 at the local level, active trade unionists are striving to develop effective collaboration, even going beyond the official union structures.
Moreover, for the first time in its history, the IG Metall has not just
"slid" into a confrontation. In fact, it
On April 7, 1984, the publishers and supporters of Info 35 met in Frankfurt for this had systematically prepared to discuss the present situation in the conflict over the 35-hour week with no cut
From the start, the struggle for a year.
About 20 workers from Frankfurt, Dortmund, Stuttart and Nuremberg leadership said that the 35-hour week
The meeting was held after the summit talks between IG Metall and
Gesamtmetall [the industrialists association], and after the decision of IG Druck demand could lead to the "sharpest labor and Papier to hold strike votes, but in advance of the decisive meeting of the leadconflict of the postwar period.
contrast to previous struggles, the tradi-
The men and women workers present summed up the results of the discussion in tional organizational discipline cannot be a statement that is to serve as the guideline for Info 35 in taking positions as the counted on to mobilize the workers. The insecure workforces in the factories are
The bosses have made it absolutely clear that they do not intend to concede often vulnerable to the propaganda of the bosses and the government.
panied by warning strikes, have changed nothing in this respect.
change the relationship of forces through our struggle. The current was against the
Confidence in the organization has deunions, but it is now beginning to shift in favor of a strike for the 35-hour week clined. Under these difficult conditions,
Before this struggle is fought, compromise offers are out of the union leadership was obliged to put
The result depends on the strength we can develop in this struggle.
forward measures for mobilizing that the about compromises in advance only demoralizes those who have committed themunion activists had often called for for years in vain.
In this struggle, we must make clear:
In a lot of factories, the shop-
Any giving way to the bosses' demand for reducing pay would make it imstewards bodies have set up Work Circles possible for a lot of fellow workers in the low-wage categories, who have been hit the hardest by the decline in real wages over recent years, to support the fight for in which all union members can participate. These Work Circles collect informa-
"Flexible working hours" are part of the bosses' rationalization strategy.
tion about the economic position of the
They want to get more use out of the new and more expensive machinery by more factory, the number of jobs that have
All forms of "working according to the (bosses')
disappeared in the past, and the layoffs need" run counter to our aim of creating more jobs by cutting the workweek threatened in the future.
The strike ballot has to be carried out now and won.
present these facts for discussion.
the bosses and their propaganda is to get as high a vote as possible for the 35-hour
They calculate the number of new
The vote should be held in as many workplaces as possible, in as close hires that would be necessary if the 35to all IG Metall distriets as possible and in as many printing plants as possible, behour week were introduced, and deter-
Symbolic actions are not enough.
mine the changes needed in equipment bring effective pressure on the bosses throughout the country. This means the and work organization. They are planning actions to keep the bosses from
A countrywide day of action before the strike votes or before the start of simply speeding up work if shorter hours strikes in key selected areas could be a first major rallying of support.
are introduced. (In the 1983 IG Metall
Common actions by steel and engineering workers and printers must be convention, a minority proposed that the planned and carried out in neighborhoods and localities.
right of the union to monitor working
Strikes at selected key points have to be accompanied by solidarity actions conditions should be included in concarried out by all unions, as was done in the 1978-79 steel strike.
They were unable to win major-
We cannot respond to lockouts just by protests.
well as strikers, have to participate in daily pickets and actions. Instead of letting ity support.)
ourselves be locked out, we have to try to get to our workplaces and make it clear
These Work Circles are also staging in this way that we are not going to let ourselves be excluded from the plants.
imaginative actions to publicize the redemand back pay from the bosses. Lockouts have to be met by solidarity strikes sults of their investigations, such as putby all the unions, including on a countrywide level.
ting up empty chairs in factory assemblies for those who have been laid off in
To support this mobilizing campaign,
IG Metall organized a countrywide conworkplaces,
600,000 workers took part.
For the first time in a long while, membership assemblies are held in the factories or on the streets.
Arbeit: plätze sichen i!
International Viewpoint 21 May 1984 in pay.
ership of IG Metall.
anything toward a shorter workweek.
Solidarity is growing.
selves to such a fight in the warning strikes.
the 35-hour week.
night work and Saturday work cause everybody is needed in this fight.
- With the support of IG Metall, and often enough against the resistance of the union's own "social-partnershipminded" factory councilors, the workers are refusing to work overtime and thereforcing management to hire more For the first time, the unions have begun to adopt the forms of action of the new social movements (e.g., the environmentalists and the peace movement). Naturally, a lot of initiatives remain caught in the bureaucratic routine of the apparatus. But in every city, the unions are going onto the streets and carrying out actions that can make an impact on example, this year the Easter peace marches were marked, among other things, by the theme of solidarity with the fight for the 35-hour week.
Likewise, for the first time the IG Metall leadership has officially called for building a broad, mass solidarity movement with the union's fight. In
Negotiations and summit talks, even accom-
So, we have to
The strike for the 35-hour week must
Locked-out workers, as cities, neighborhood and citizens initiative groups for the 35-hour week have arisen that are independent of the
Although the radical and socialist left clearly has a strong influence in them, the local union bodies recognize them and work with them. In an interview with the monthly magazine of the "eco-socialist" line of the Green Party, Moderne Zeiten, a leading IG Metall functionary has even appealed explicitly for support from the Greens and the Alternative Slate supporters.
For the first time, the IG Metall leadership has considered not just holding regional strikes, but striking key concerns throughout the country.
However, the "social partnership" past of the West German union movement is still throwing a long shadow today over the confrontation that is underway. In particular, in the leadership of IG Metall since the beginning of March a retreat from previous positions was unmistakable.
In a lot of press interviews, members
11
of the leadership have indicated a willing. ness to compromise with the camp the bosses and the government. Since the failure of the customary regional negotiations with the steel and engineering concerns, the union leadership, instead of holding a strike ballot and thereby giving the warning-strike campaign a focus, has agreed to two summit talks with the employers organization. The leadership was placing its hopes in a section of big industry that might make some concessions for an agreement on "flexible worktime." The tasks of the class-struggle left
In particular, the auto industry, which has been experiencing a minor boom over the last year, does not want to see any strike. Everywhere that new and more expensive automatic equipment has been introduced, the capitalists are interested in a flexible extension of shift work, in order to increase the operating time of the machines. Thus, the management of Nobel-Automarke BMW openly came out for a 36-hour week, divided up into four nine-hour shifts.
In the hope of being able to appeal to this interest, and thus avoid the risks of a general strike, the IG Metall leadership retreated both from the demand for an immediate massive cut in working hours (saying now that it would regard any reduction of the workweek below forty hours as a victory) and from the demand for the seven-hour day as the standard.
The union's original and well-founded rejection of "flexible working hours" part of the capitalist rationalization offensive has given way to a greater readiness to compromise on this question. And the union leaders are talking less and less about the need to force the compan-
Now, if it comes to a countrywide strike in the steel and engineering industry, it will be because of the industrialists, who favor a confrontation mainly out of political considerations, and hope to be able to deal the unions a severe defeat. However, if the outcome is a "compromise" reached without the relationship of forces being changed by struggle, this would also be an onerous defeat for the
For years, since the demoralizing end of the steelworkers strike of 1978-79, the 35-hour week demand was put forward only by a small minority in the union movement. The leadership tried to consign it to oblivion and discussed early retirement plans. The leadership's resumption of this demand - no doubt under the impact of the change of government - put active, socialist trade unionists, including the members of the International Marxist Group (GIM, German section of the Fourth International) in a new and unusual political and tactical position.
By no means has the "union rank and file" in fact "put pressure" on the union 12
XIA
COMEN
Vote 'yes' for a strike (DR)
leadership and forced it to act. Rather the left faces a difficult war on three
Against the bosses and the government, who are consistently pursuing their strategy (flexible working hours, time work) and who are pointing to the present economic upturn and foreign competition to argue that the 35-hour week would lead to massive new layoffs.
Against the skepticism of a lot of fellow workers made insecure by the economic crisis who are listening more to the arguments of the bosses than those of the unions.
Against the union leaderships, who for the time being are mobilizing for the 35-hour week but in no way proof against the temptation to "compromise"
at the expense of the objectives of the
Shorter workweek more jobs (DR)
A beitizest verkarien
Arbotplatre whallen! &
Arbeisten verkurien schallen 3
Alongside a large number of local structures for coordination and ex. changing experience, there is in this situation for the first time the beginning of countrywide coordination of the trade-union left. Last year, out of a loose coordination of workers who wanted to exchange their experiences of factory occupations as a means of defending jobs, the project developed of a countrywide information sheet. This was largely the result of persistent work by the GIM, which is the only current on the left that has been systematically preparing for this struggle for years. Since the end of 1983, Info 35 has been published regularly, with a press run of 4,000 copies. It has made it possible to circulate information among activists and unify them. (See box.)
However, beyond the circles of trade-union left, the GIM has also won a solid position in the movement for the 35-hour week, in particular through its work in building a broad solidarity movement. At the peak of the confrontation its paper, Was Tun, has achieved a weekly circulation of 10,000 to 20,000 copies.
The IG Metall leadership's attempts to reach a last-minute compromise to avoid a general strike for the 35-hour week are arousing massive opposition in the factories. The reaction is particularly strong from officials who have spent a year mobilizing for this objective. But even rather right-wing Social Democratic factor councilors are opposing such a move for fear that it could further weaken the union. Nothing is yet decided. A general strike for the 35-hour week is still possible. Such a struggle could put the demand for the 35-hour week with no cut in pay and with new hiring to take up the slack on the agenda throughout Western Europe.
This makes international solidarity for the 35-hour week demand all the more important, so that everyone can work shorter hours.
International Viewpoint 21 May 1984
has sharpened and world steel production has been redistributed. A larger and larger share of steel production is supplied by the 'new steel industries' constructed in certain dominated countries Thus the restructuring poliey hits particularly hard