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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted
from the Aug. 15, 1996
issue of Workers World newspaper
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Workers across Germany are continuing to mobilize against government and big-business plans to cut basic social benefits and working conditions.
One front in the battle has been working hours for retail shop workers. Legislation passed last November allows shops to stay open longer. Now bosses want to cut pay for night work.
Unions are demanding protection for workers who have difficulty working the later hours.
Negotiations between the white-collar DAG union and the HBV trade, banking and insurance workers' union on the one side and the retail bosses on the other stalled in late July. Unions then mounted a campaign of targeted one-day strikes against stores on the eve of the big sales season in August.
On July 26, shop workers struck in Hamburg, Berlin, and Bavaria, according to a July 26 Reuter report. "Whoever plays for time and delays the talks shouldn't complain when the patience of shop workers finally snaps," said HBV leader Margaret Moenig-Raane.
Finally, on Aug. 6, the union settled a contract with the retail industry. The contract sets a compromise wage raise of 1.85 percent. But the workers won the right to be exempt from longer hours under certain circumstances, according to Reuter.
While the shop workers have settled, German bosses are fighting to lengthen the work week for all workers.
After years of struggle, German workers have the right to an average work week of 37 hours. Now the Federation of German Chambers of Commerce are pushing for a 40-hour work week as part of all upcoming contract negotiations.
Unions reject the proposal. "We will not cooperate with such a nonsense idea," said Klaus Zwickel, leader of the IG Metall engineering workers' union.
In the face of 10-percent unemployment across Germany, some union leaders have hinted they might make concessions. "Our main goal is the creation of new jobs," said Herbert Mai, head of the OeTV public-service workers' union. "Therefore we must be ready to accept a shorter working week with lower pay."
The current contract negotiations take place in a political climate of cutbacks and restructuring, led by Chancellor Helmut Kohl's Christian Democratic Union. The CDU-dominated government is trying to cut public spending by $34 billion and social security by $14 billion-all in 1997 alone.
Among the proposed cuts are job-creation measures in eastern Germany. Even members of the CDU have protested these cuts, saying that it would double unemployment in the east to 30 percent. The government has spent billions of marks financing the incorporation of the former German Democratic Republic's socialist economy into capitalist western Germany.
The German Trade Union Federation (DGB) announced that it will hold a mass demonstration against the cuts on Sept. 7 in Berlin. On June 15, some 350,000 workers came to Bonn in response to the DGB's call for protest against the cuts.
"We must yet again make clear that we consider the dismantling of the welfare state an attack on our democracy and that we will not accept it without resistance," the DGB said.
The demonstration's main slogan will be "A Majority for Work and Justice."
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if source is cited. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@wwpublish.com. For subscription info send message to: ww-info@wwpublish.com. Web: http://www.workers.org)