Head-on class confrontation in 35-hour week fight
The lockout of IG Metall workers in the state of Baden-Wurttemberg marks a major escalation of the confliet over the 35-hour week, and more
The following is the editorial on the new phase struggle from Was Tun, paper of the German section of the
- when are we going to throw them out?"
WEST GERMANY lockouts are threatened.
Fourth International.
This. strike has turned into a
It's collusion. The bosses have launch- workers. ed a big coordinated offensive. Twelve hours after 13,000 IG Metall union members went on strike, the big auto companies all suddenly realized that they would have to shut down in a couple of days. Twelve hours after the start of the strike, Bild [the flagship of the right-wing Springer gutter press] was already running the provocative headline. "After Monday, 1.5 Million New Unemployed."
At the same time, Bild's more gentee] colleague, the Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung [the liberal, prestige bourgeois daily ] referred to last year's change in the printers union statutes making it easier to call strikes] as an "emergency powers law" [this is the term applied to the law that cleared the way for establishing the Nazi dictatorship].
On the evening of the first day of the strike, the first and second TV channels fired broadsides at IG Metall and the striking workers. The "Day's Events" show on the second channel offered an embittered BMW (Bavarian Motor Works) worker saying, "I'm going to quit the union." On the first channel, anchorman Feller commented: "It's a good thing that the employers are locking out the Factory on strike for the 35-hour week (DR)
strike against the economy."
The bosses, the government and the media are waging a concerted assault on
The heads of the employers organizations have launched a crusade. They have a thoroughgoing political understanding of their class and its interests. every big confrontation with the unions, the way to wage class struggle from above has always been and remains a massive lockout to bring the workers organizations to their knees.
All the bosses' economic arguments are phoney. Are they having to halt production for lack of parts? If so, that's because they deliberately created the situation, either for the sake of profits (to bloat the inventories of parts suppliers in order to bring down prices) or to prepare the way for the lockout. Does stalled production mean they have no money to pay wages? Hasn't Daimler Just accorded its stockholders record dividends of 21%, and BMW dividends of 24%? Aren't Daimler's declared profits running at around a billion Deutschmarks a year, BMW's at 200 million, and Audi's at 130 million?
wild
ened? Haven't the auto companies themselves transferred operations abroad in recent years - Mercedes and Volkswagen in Brazil and the US, Opel and Ford in Spain and Vienna, BMW in Steyr, Austria - and therefore themselves undermined car exports from West Germany?
And now the first few minutes of a strike by a few thousand engineering are supposed to be responsible for layoffs and crisis of the capitalist economy, even for the 2.2 million un-
No, the reasons for the bosses' campaign are not economic. It's politics, class politics. The bosses are demanding the change that they sought by backing this right-wing government of "The Turn." The victory of the bourgeois parties was intended to open the way for the defeat of the organized workers. It was supposed to open a long period of Thatcher-style "law and order" in our country. The working class was supposed to be held in check by a reserve army of 3 to 4 million unemployed and profits kept high.
There is only one way to fight this effectively. The concerted action of the bosses, the government and the media has to be met with concerted action by the workers movement. The capitalist press cannot wage a hysteria campaign against the workers if it doesn't come out. The printers are already calling for newsttikes. The bosses can't enforce a lockout if the teams of workers stay in the factories all the time as a guarantee.
The owners cannot lie, evade taxes, conceal profits or transfer capital abroad if the books and ledgers are opened. The bosses cannot split the union movement if the strike front is widened, if a readiness to strike is built up everywhere by strike referendums, and the broadest possible solidarity movement is built.
The postal workers are already planning demonstrations this week for the 35-hour week. The HBV [Handel, Banken, Versicherungen - Store, Bank, Insurance Clerks Union] is calling for strike action for the 35-hour week in the insurance companies.
The slogan of the 1979 steel strike suits the present situation quite well. "Today the bosses are locking us out,
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