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Workers Power Global, Vienna: 4 June 2003
On 3 June Austria came close to a general strike. One million workers – this is every third wage earner in the country – in 18,000 enterprises responded to the call by the central trade union federation OEGB. And it would have been more if the union leadership had not restricted the call to the core industries and public services.
Such a mass strike is a tremendous experience for the Austrian working class. To make an international comparison: it was though six million went on strike in Italy or eight million in France or Britain.
However the defect of 3 June was that despite its huge size it was organised in an extremely passive way by the union bureaucracy. There was no central mass demonstration. The leaders desperately tried to avoid bringing the mass of strikers together which would have reinforced the militant mood and the demand for more strike action.
So thousands of workplace meetings and small public rallies happened but no real mass action on the streets. A meeting of striking teachers in Vienna criticised the leadership for this defeatist policy and stated correctly: “Those who are fighting in this way clearly don’t want to win the struggle.”
A journalist from the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung observed at the mass demonstration on 13 May the discrepancy between the leaders and the rank & file mood. He wrote that while many workers called for more massive strike actions until a general strike none of the official speakers dared to mention such words.
This was the third mass action against the neo-liberal pension reforms planned by the right-wing government of Wolfgang Schüssel. On 6 May half a million workers went on strike and one week later 200,000 workers from all over Austria came to Vienna and demonstrated against the government.
As a result the government was forced to start negotiations and make some concessions (in effect reducing the cuts and delaying their implementation). But the cuts remain and in effect this is a first step to fundamentally destroying the state pension system and to open the pension system to full privatisation.
So Austrian workers remain determined to fight back as our comrades experienced in their workplace meetings and at the demonstrations. But the union bureaucracy in the end feared loosing control over the mass movement and – faced with the government plan to vote on the pension reform in parliament this week – stopped the struggle.
The top brass proudly assured the bourgeois elite in their press conference: “We are democrats and we accept the decisions of parliament.” Naturally these leaders are much closer to the ruling class than their own rank & file and the people. Obviously when the parliament was elected seven months ago none of the ruling parties mentioned anything about their plans to destroy the state pension system.
All polls and the massive participation in the strikes show that the huge majority of the population rejects the government plans. This is what bourgeois democracy looks like: “Make your cross every four years at the elections and feel free to express your opinion – but accept that you have nothing to say in the decision-making about your future!” So these events are a tremendously important experience for millions of workers and youth about the class character of our system – “democratic” capitalism.
There are still difficulties ahead for the government. Even right-wing MP’s still threaten to vote against it. It is not excluded that this could delay the vote again. This would put the union leader the reform in parliament. But it looks likely that the government will secure a majority and get the vote soon.
ArbeiterInnenstandpunkt, the Austrian section of the LFI, and the youth organisation REVOLUTION intervened in the strike wave – the first in Austria for more than five decades! We mobilised for the struggle in many schools and work places and one of our comrades – who is a shop steward leader in the social services sector – chaired final rally of the biggest single union – the GPA.
As a result of our successful intervention in the past five months - first in the anti-war movement and now in the strike wave – we were able not only to deepen our roots in the working class and win new supporters but also to increase fivefold the membership of REVOLUTION.
Our main slogans in the movement are: “For a general strike until the attacks are withdrawn!” and “For the formation of action- and strike committees in the enterprises!”. All the experience of betrayal of the union bureaucracy shows the enormous crisis of leadership. We have a leadership that fears the struggle and feels comfortable only at the negotiation table behind closed doors. Many decent workers feel disgusted with them.
We are fighting for a transformation of the union into a class struggle and democratic body where decisions are made from the bottom to the top and not the other way as it is the case at the moment. We are fighting for a union that fights for the overthrow of capitalism.
While the current struggle may be lost despite some concessions made by the government, this struggle has undoubtedly positive long-term consequence. It has broken the taboo that Austrian workers are different from their European colleagues and don’t go on strike.
We have now joined the European league of class struggle. The May/June-strikes have opened a new period in Austria. Given that the bourgeoisie is forced to attack the working class many more times we expect many more strikes in the future. As revolutionary Marxists we are fully prepared for this and our task to overcome the crisis of leadership of the Austrian workers’ movement: to build the revolutionary workers’ party as part of the Fifth International.
(Readers interested in our regular comments and analysis in German-language can see them at www.arbeiterinnenstandpunkt.org or subscribe to German-language e-mail newswire “Red Newsletter”)
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