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Public sector strikes in Germany

In the last week, Germany has been shaken by the broadest strike wave for decades, reports Peter Main.

In the last week, Germany has been shaken by the broadest strike wave for decades. The dispute centres on a pay claim by Ver.di, the 2.4 million strong public-sector and services union. Rank and file militancy forced the union leaders into at least limited action in support of an 8%, no strings, pay increase but the employers have replied with an insulting 5%, staged over two years and conditional on workers accepting longer hours.

After a three-day “warning strike” by 100,000 workers, which closed a range of services from libraries and waste collection through to airports, negotiations broke down last Friday and the employers have now forced the dispute into arbitration. However, no settlement is in sight for this national dispute and it is likely that a failure to agree will be followed by a ballot for further strike action.

To add to the sense of a mounting strike wave, train drivers on Berlin City Transit, also ver.di members but subject to a local contract, have launched a 10-day strike in support of their claim for a 12% increase after years of real cuts in pay that have left them with an average take-home wage of less than £1000. What has fuelled this wave of militancy? Above all, it is the pent up anger at years of job losses, wage cuts and worsening conditions, which have seen over 2 million public sector jobs lost since the mid-1990s.

Just as in other EU countries, German governments, whether under Social Democratic leadership or the current “grand coalition” between Social Democrats and Christian Democrats, have been implementing the “Bolkestein Directive” to ” marketise” public services through deregulation, reduced spending, job insecurity and privatisation. For the last two years, these cuts have taken place against a background of rising profits and dividends in Germany’s big corporations. Not content with obscenely high salaries – the boss of Porsche “earned” €54 million last year and Hartmut Mehdorn, the boss of the German Railways, €3.2 million – Germany’s fat cats have also been avoiding paying tax by salting away their millions in tax havens such as Liechtenstein.

But the militancy also owes much to the campaign of strikes by Germany’s small train drivers’ union last summer. Although traditionally a rightwing and conservative union, the GDL refused to accept a further cut in real wages. Even if the leaders were mainly motivated by a desire to maintain their own bargaining positions, the militancy of the rank and file sparked a wave of solidarity across the working class. At last someone was standing up to the government and the bosses!

Now Verdi’s leaders have to be seen to move away from their previous, completely ineffective, strategy of token protests and limited strikes. Just as in the train drivers’ strikes, today’s public-sector dispute is being met by a barrage of propaganda from the bosses, their government and their media. Once again low paid public-sector workers are portrayed as holding Germany to ransom, their actions are somehow a threat to the whole of society. From the media, of course, that is no surprise but the Berlin train drivers have also been attacked by DIE LINKE (the Lefts) the party formed from the old Party of Democratic Socialism (the former ruling party of the German Democratic republic – “East Germany”) and the “Electoral Alternative for Social Justice” (WASG, a split from the SPD).

According to the Berlin daily, Tagesspiegel, the leadership of the Left grouping on the Berlin City Council have accused the drivers of “pursuing their dispute with the West Berlin mentality of the well to do – they do not realise how privileged they are”! Once again, however, the overwhelming majority of “the public” that is to say other workers, are not buying this rubbish, support for the strikers is widespread and impossible to deny. But there are no grounds for complacency.

The public-sector strikes are indeed a serious threat, not to other workers, certainly, but to the government and bosses’ plans for yet more cuts in public spending, more deregulation and more privatisation. In reality, the dispute is not just over pay rates but over the entire direction of political and economic policy.

As the German section of the League for the Fifth International, the Gruppe Arbeitermacht (GAM) put it in a recent article, “for the rulers this is about more than just a few percent on pay, for them it is a question of strengthening the competitiveness and carrying through the expansion plans of German capital. And one part of that is to force the workers to back down and to prevent even a partial success against their offensive.”

And there lies the potential weakness that the strikers must overcome. Their own leaders, both in Ver.di and in the GDL, fear the political implications of an all-out fight against the government. As in the past, their strategy is aimed not at defeating the employers and, therefore, the government and reversing the effects of past defeats, but at negotiating a compromise that will avoid a political confrontation. But that can only mean accepting the bosses’ main demands, even if for a little more money.

That is why the GAM is calling for:

• Control of the strike by the strikers themselves!

• No secret negotiations!

• No suspension of the strike to allow for negotiations without the prior agreement of the strikers!

• For regular mass meetings of all strikers!

• For the election and recall ability of the strike leaders by the strikers! • For a public solidarity campaign against the lies and disinformation of the press!

• For solidarity action by other trade unions in support not only of wage demands but also against privatisations!

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