(The following article was first published in the September 20 issue of the Belgian revolutionary-socialist weekly La Gauche. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.
Nearly everywhere in Europe, the vacation period is over for the workers and, consequently, for the bourgeoisie as well. Class battles have resumed on a large scale. The "October confrontations" have come sooner than thought.
Italy
In Italy the 10,000 workers in the FIAT Mirafiori plant in Turin gave the kickoff, exploding all the plans of the bosses and the trade-union bureaucrats. The other plants followed, and the management responded with a lockout, whose only effect was to broaden the confrontation.
But this was only a starter. The contract negotiations in the metals industry were broken off after they had hardly begun. The union representatives came out of their first meeting with the bosses to announce a four-day general strike.
The demands were set at a high level, after consultations with the rank and file (according to the unions, 1,500 rank-and-file assemblies were held in which 260,000 workers participated).
The demands included: cutting the workweek to forty hours; a wage rise of 15,600 lire [US$26] a month for skilled and white-collar workers; a major hike in the minimum wage (35 percent); and the right to hold meetings on company premises.
Observers estimate that if the workers' demands are granted, it will mean a 40 percent increase in labor costs for the company over a two-year period.
But the agitation is not confined to the metals industry. The building workers staged a one-day general strike (90 percent effective) and are expected to go out again. Other one-day strikes have been carried off by the brickmakers (September 19 and 27), the cement workers (September 23 and 24), the office workers in the gas works, business clerks, earth movers, postmen, and telegraph operators.
In short, one thing is certain. The
Italian fall will be a hot one, hotter than expected.
Germany
This is where the surprise came. The German unions had the reputation of keeping "their troops" in step (as Libre Belgique* wrote). And the bosses had nothing but praise for the desire displayed by the bureaucrats to improve the social climate. But this climate has just been chilled by a wildcat strike in the Hoesch factories (25,000 workers) in Dortmund.
IG Metall [Industrie Gewerkschaft Metall -the Metal Workers Union] was caught completely off guard by this strike, although the union has been considered to be one of the most dynamic, and highly sensitive to rank-and-file movements.
The Nouvelle Observateur's correspondent wrote that the manager at Hoesch at first wanted to call the police to put an end to the disorder but that one of his colleagues succeeded in convincing him to get a shop steward in-
*A Brussels paper known for its re actionary views. - IP
stead. But this was to no avail: "The union stewards themselves were outdistanced by the events."
September 2 was an important date for the German workers movement. First of all, it was the first time since '1928 that a wildcat strike has occurred in Germany. Secondly, the strike proved to be a detonator, showing that the spirit of the workers was not the one complacently described by the European bosses, and the sociologists and journalists in their service.
All that was needed for the Hoesch workers' anger to explode was for the company to announce a bigger payoff in dividends after refusing to grant a wage increase. The workers at Hoesch needed only to go out on strike for others to follow them, not only in the other affiliates of the same concern, not only in the metals industry but in related industries. Nearly a million workers took part in this movement, despite its "illegal" character, and also despite its condemnation by the Social Democratic ministers.
France
In France also the confrontation took place earlier than expected. The unions of the railroad workers were compelled to go along with a movement launched by the ranks. The workers began this struggle on a program of demands that would cost SNCF [Societé Nationale des Chemins de Fer Français- French State Railroad Company] dearly and endanger the "rationalization"
demanded by the government.
The climate is such (the conductors in Avignon, on going out, first occupied the train stations for severalhours) that at this writing the union leaders are not sure of getting the ranks to accept the agreements they concluded with the SNCF management.
And the railroad workers are not alone. It is likely that by the time this goes to press RATP (Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens - Paris Transport Company] will also be on strike. Moreover, a series of work stoppages are expected in the PTT [Postes Télé- graphes Téléphones-the governmentrun Postal, Telegraph and Telephone system] from September 29 to October
4. And the beginning of the high-school term has been disrupted by a monitors' strike.
Taken as a whole, these movements have exhibited a number of important features:
• The strikes today are being initiated essentially by the rank and file, and the union leaders are generally playing an inhibiting role. This was true in both Italy and Germany (where the union leaders condemned the first movements) and partially in France.
• The strikes are increasingly of a wildcat or "illegal" nature. This has been true for several years in England (according to a government report, more than 90 percent of the industrial conflicts are of this nature). This holds true for Italy and likewise Germany today.
The custom of giving advance notice has receded nearly everywhere. And the bosses as well as the governments do not dare take a hard line any more for fear that repression would end in a result opposite to the one anticipated, that is, it would extend the movement (the lockout at FIAT had this result).
• The workers are learning-in struggle-that fighting is much more profitable than negotiating. They are daring to challenge "collective agreements," and they find themselves better off for it.
The German metal workers went on strike right after the unions signed a new contract (the day after the contract went into effect). The agreement provided for an 8 percent wage increasein stages. By striking for a few days, they won a 15 percent rise and reconsideration of the contract.
• The scope of the movement is forcing the unions to toughen their stand. This is true in Germany where IG Metall had to demand a 14 percent wage increase in advance of contract negotiations coming up in the steelworks in November. It is true also in England where the Trades Union Congress rejected all government interference in contract negotiations.
But this development has been most marked in Italy. There, the workers are forcing the union leaders to negotiate under the pressure of strikes, and not to agree that contracts signed for entire branches of industry become binding on the shop stewards on the firing line in the plants. They are compelling their leaders to arrange constant consultation with the ranks.
Thus, the unions have had to agree to give official status to "united plant committees" (these committees already existed de facto in many plants where they had been organized by "leftists," at Pirelli in Milan, for example).
• It must be noted also that there is general agreement everywhere on viewing the agitation as the work of the "leftists." It is clear that at FIAT especially (where no union covers more than 5 percent of the total work force), the workers newly arrived from the south feel closer to the "movimento studentesco" [student movement] than the union bureaucrats.
In Germany the press has denounced the activity of the "extraparliamentary opposition."
"leftism." All of this, obviously, is not
Salutes Nixon by chance.
pair
MEANY: Not with hawks-with vultures.
At a time when congressional leaders and even businessmen are critical of Nixon's war in Vietnam, the president found an ally October 2 in America's top labor bureaucrat, George Meany.
Speaking at a national convention of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations in Atlantic City, Meany gave full support to Nixon's war policy.
"He [Nixon] is seeking peace by negotiation," the AFL-CIO president said, "and those in high places in our government structure who advocate unilateral withdrawal are not in any way advancing the idea of a negotiated settlement."
Meany's sentiments were echoed by Nixon's secretary of labor, George P. Shultz, who also addressed the convention.