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NEWS & LETTERS, August-September 2004Our Life and Times by Kevin A. BarryCapitalist offensiveThis summer, European capital has gone on the attack against labor, rolling back hard-won gains in the work week, pensions, and wages. This offensive has been centered in Germany, the region’s largest economy, with a $2.5 trillion GDP and where unemployment has stood at over 10% for more than a decade. In June, the Siemens conglomerate set off shockwaves when it forced workers to accept the 40-hour week without any increase in pay, up from the 35-hour week they had won over the past two decades. Siemens obtained these concessions by threatening to move 5,000 jobs abroad. Siemens will also eliminate the year-end bonus of one-month’s pay. It brags that it has now reduced its labor costs 30%. In July, Daimler-Chrysler demanded concessions, taking on Germany’s strongest union, IG Metall. After the company threatened to move 6,000 jobs abroad from its Sindelfangen Mercedes plant, which employs 40,000, some 60,000 outraged workers from around Germany struck for two weeks. In the end, IG Metall agreed to cancel a 2.7% raise for 2006, to reduce break-times, and to increase the workweek for 20,000 research and development workers to 40 hours. The only concession was a promise of no layoffs until 2012. Capital is taking advantage of several trends. It has easier access to cheap labor due to the expansion of the European Union, with labor costs in Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia averaging only 20% of those in Germany. The Social Democratic (SPD) government of Gerhard Schroeder has embraced "flexibility," i.e. concessions to capital, as the key to an economic turnaround. This has led to a leftist breakaway from the SPD. IG Metall suffered defeat a year ago when it pulled metalworkers in eastern Germany out on strike for the 35-hour week, as against the 40 hours they are still forced to work in that region. The union came under severe pressure from capital, the mass media, and the government, as well as the lack of sympathy by westerners for their eastern colleagues. For the first time since 1954, IG Metall had to call off a strike without obtaining any concessions. Similar rollbacks have occurred in France, with one plant adopting the 40-hour week and the rightist government talking of repealing the nationwide 35-hour week gained a decade ago. Even in Norway, the world’s third oil exporter, where a weeklong oilworkers’ strike issued a strong challenge to efforts by Exxon-Mobil and Shell to roll back wages, working conditions, and pensions, the outcome of negotiations is uncertain. |
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