BERLIN
100,000 march against cutbacks
By John Catalinotto
Tens of thousands of employed and unemployed
workers marched through downtown Berlin Nov. 1 from
Alexanderplatz to the Gendarmenmarkt to protest the
government's plan to cut pensions, unemployment insurance and
other social services. According to organizers, the crowd grew
as it went through the city, almost doubling in size to over
100,000.
Like the general strike in Italy on Oct. 24, this was a
strong response to the attempt by European Union bosses to cut
workers' salaries and living conditions. The current attack is
being directed especially against retired and unemployed
workers, but all working people are hurt by the German
government's so-called Agenda 2010.
All shades of the bourgeois political spectrum are carrying
out this anti-worker attack. In Italy, it's the rightist
government led by Premier Silvio Berlusconi. In Germany, it's
being done by the alliance of the Social Democrats and the
Green Party.
A coalition of the more progressive trade union locals with
the anti-globalization organization ATTAC-Germany, the Party of
Democratic Socialism (PDS) in eastern Germany and sections of
the peace movement called the Berlin action. Organizers
expected 20,000 participants, and said they were surprised and
excited when five times that number turned out.
Demonstrators held banners and posters and shouted slogans
that called the government program "the greatest attack on the
workers since the Second World War." While union banners filled
the march, rank-and-file unionists were critical of the
half-hearted effort that top union leaders had put into
building the event. The union leadership is historically close
to the ruling Social Democrats, just as the top leaders of the
AFL-CIO in the United States are close to the Democratic
Party.
Werner Halbauer of ATTAC-Germany told Workers World that
"the top union leadership had practically given up the
fightback against cuts in social programs over the summer," but
that resistance was stepped up in national unions representing
service workers, metal workers and teachers, as well as in some
local unions. "The mass of the demonstrators followed the local
unions, coalitions and anti-globalization groups," Halbauer
said.
Workers in most of Western Europe have enjoyed wage and
benefit packages and social security programs much superior to
those in the United States. Most of these were won during the
time when the capitalist West was in sharp competition with
socialist Eastern Europe.
Since the collapse of the East European workers' states in
1989, the capitalist class in Western Europe has opened an
attack on workers' living standards. After chipping away at
wages and company-paid benefits year by year, they are now
getting the capitalist governments to cut social services and
insurance. Pensions are under attack throughout Europe, leading
to giant strikes and protests in France, Italy, Austria, Spain
and Greece--and now Germany--with nothing settled as yet.
In an attempt to wring more profits from a highly productive
labor force, European capitalists want to push social benefits
down to a U.S. level.
The struggle against social-service cutbacks will continue
to be a major theme throughout the coming months in the
European Union zone. As one speaker said from the podium in
Berlin: "We are many, and we're coming back."
Halbauer, too, was optimistic regarding future developments.
"We are experiencing in Germany the beginning of a new
extraparliamentary movement," he said. "Seattle has finally
come to Germany."
Reprinted from the Nov. 13, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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