German industrial workers continue strikes
By
Ulrich Rippert
13 January 2018
Strikes by workers in Germany’s automotive, steel and electronics industries were expanded on Thursday and Friday. Since the beginning of the week, 340,000 employees have participated in short walkouts, protest rallies and demonstrations.
Anger over social inequality and threatened layoffs, such as at Siemens, and many other companies is on the rise, and at the strike rallies it is pervasive and plain to see.
The IG Metall trade union is increasingly concerned about the unrest in the plants. While their officials deliver radical sounding speeches at strike rallies and accuse the companies of greed for profits and inhumane behavior, the union is already indicating its willingness to cooperate with management and is preparing a sell-out.
At the latest round of bargaining in the state of Baden-Württemberg on Thursday, the IG Metall delegation signaled its readiness to compromise on the issue of working hours. The head of the employers’ group Sudwest Metall, Stefan Wolf, evaluated IG Metall’s actions after the talks in Böblingen, commenting, “At least the trade union signaled a readiness for the first time to talk about the issue of volume on the question of working time.”
The financial daily Handelsblatt made clear what this meant. “This suggests that the flexibilisation of working time demanded by IG Metall will go in both directions.” This would mean that the trade union demand for workers to have the right to reduce working hours to 28 hours per week for a period of two years with a partial offsetting of wages would be transformed into its opposite.
While many workers would like to secure a temporary reduction in the workweek due to the…