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NEWS & LETTERS, November 2004Our Life and Times by Kevin A. Barry
German wildcat strike
The capitalist offensive against European labor
continues, centered in the powerful German economy where unemployment stands at
nearly 11%. In October, General Motors announced plans to lay off 12,000 workers
across Europe, most of them in Germany. It threatened to move the work to
Poland, where autoworkers receive only $7,000 per year. In response, 6,400 enraged workers at the GM-Opel plant
in Bochum staged a rare six-day wildcat strike. On Oct. 19, up to 100,000
workers took to the streets across Europe against GM. Nonetheless, GM seems
still to have the upper hand, due in part to the assistance it received from the
IG Metall union bureaucrats, who pressured the Bochum strikers to return to
work. Volkswagen CEO Peter Hartz has also launched an anti-labor offensive, threatening 30,000 layoffs unless workers agreed to massive give-backs. This led to demonstrations and a large warning strike on Nov. 1. VW is winning this fight too, not least because Hartz is close to Social Democratic Prime Minister Gerhard Schroeder, who shares his view about greater "competitiveness." |
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