The unofficial strike by over 13,000 Saar miners which ended last Friday was only the latest in a series of struggles which have shattered the myth of 'industrial peace in West Germany The first strikes took place in February of this year following the conchesion of the annual wage agreements in the engineering industry, in which the trade union leaders accepted a paltry 8%% increase on behalf of their members. But it was only in August that a mass upsurge took place, when the workers returned from the holiday break to find that their pay awards had been eroded almost completely by a sudden spule of price increases on top of the steady inflation of previous months.
In the last four months the strike movement has spread to invoive some 140,000 workers in over 80 separate stoppages. But no less important than the scale of the movement has heen its development in militancy and organisation since the last wave of struggles in 1969. In particular, the strikes have been marked by a willingness to launch struggles independently of the trade union bureaucracy, the wide variety lished by Axel Springer, has carried stories of industries in which they have taken place. the massive involvement of immigrant and women workers, who have often assumed a leading role, the formation of independent stike committees elected by the workers in struggle and separate from the works councils, which are dominated by the bureaucrats: and the extension of the demands in many cases to cover not just wages but issucs like the organisaLon and rate of work.
Such developments were particularly notice able during the Ford strike in Cologne, where the work-force of 32,000 mcludes 12,000 Turkish workers. The strike started after 500 Turkish workers were sacked for returning late from the holiday break, but its demands rapidly extended to take in questions of speed-up, etc. Launched in defiance of the trade union bureaucracy, the struggle was led by an elected committée of 12 Turkish and German worken from a vanety of political tendencies. But the most advanced strike took place some weeks earlier at a big factory in Lippstadt, after management had given an increase of 15 pfennis (26p) an hour to 800 German workers but nothing at all to the 3,500 immigrant workers employed there. An immediate walk-out in one workshop rapidly spread to the rest of the plant, spearheaded by a group of young Spanish workers, The factory entrance was barricaded and the canteen occupied.
Despite violent attacks by the police from the neighbouring town of Bochum (the authorities didn't dare to use the local foroc), the workers stood firm and organised a demonstration of thousands through the town as well as a series of mass meetings. On the fourth day came a turning point, when militants of the revolutionary lest successfully proposed at a tass meeting that a strike leadership be set up.
Very rapidly, with some help from outside, various steps were taken to strengthen the organisation and involvement of the workers: defence guards at the factory gates, allocation of 20 workers to negotiate with the bosses, a system of couriers to keep the rest of the workers informed about the negotiations, ete. Management soon crumbled, conceding an across-the-board increase of 50 pfennigs (8p) an bour, three days' strike pay, and a guarantee of no victimisations.
In this first strike wave, an unprepared management have tended to selle very quickly to avoid a disastrous loss in production, which could cripple the export trade. But it will not be so easy again. Already the capitalists are hitting back, with 50 militants victimsed al Ford's and an increasing use of police and umol ficial strike breaking forces against such struggles, The press has also been brought in to play the racist card: the daily paper Bid, pubwarning of a 'conspiracy of foreigi workem against Germany, couraged by the extreme This situation also poses probloms for the trade union burcaucrits, who have long been integrared into the capitalist apparatus as well as being closely tied to the governing Social Democratic Party. As prime minister Willy Brandt put it to the employen: "If you think you are in a had way, gentlemen, I tell you that your partners in IG-Metall (the engineer ing union) are in a far worse situation. The wave of unofficial strikes has for the first time in recent years put on the agenda the possibility: of building an alternative leadership to the bureaucracy in the trade unions. The struggles
which are expected to break out round the annual wage negoliations this winter can only accelerate this process.
This development is of importance not only to the German workers moverent but to that in the rest of Europe. Not only has it already provided certain lessons in terms of arvansation the role of immigrant and women workers, etc. which have a common relevance to all workers" struggles, hut it signals the opening of an attack on a ruling class which plays a vital role in the whole structure of European capitalisin. With major struggles likely to develop this winter in France, Britain and other nerve centres of capitalist Eurone, the new willingness to struggle of the German working class vangnard may well be crucial.
Martin Meteyard Name 182 Pentonville road London NI (British Section of the Fourth International)
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