BY CARL-ERIK ISACCSSON AND CATHARINA TIRSÉN
STOCKHOLM - Twenty thousand workers demonstrated February 22 in the German port of Bremerhaven against the threatened closure of shipyards by Bremer Vulkan, the country's biggest shipbuilder. Workers also occupied the company's shipyards both in Bremen and in the eastern city of Stralsund.
"Even if the board of directors decides to shut down the shipyard, we will continue working," declared Lothar Brau, 39, who has worked at the shipyard for 15 years and has no hopes of getting a new job, to the Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet. He and other workers were blocking the gates to check all trucks leaving the shipyard to stop machinery and materials from being removed.
Bremer Vulkan applied for protection from its creditors February 21 to avoid bankruptcy. This comes at a time of downsizing and profit losses for other German companies such as Grundig, Deutsche Aerospace AG, AEG, and Daimler-Benz.
Unit labor costs in Germany have risen 22 percent since 1990, compared to a 10 percent drop in the United States in the same period, according to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development. This is one indication of how far the German capitalists lag behind their U.S. business rivals in cutting workers' wages and social benefits.
Unemployment, privatizations
Meanwhile, unemployment in Germany has reached a
post-World War II record of 4.2 million, or 10 percent.
Bremer Vulkan is the biggest industrial employer in the east German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and one of the biggest in the west German city-state of Bremen, where unemployment reached 15.2 percent in January. Schools, theaters, and museums in Bremen are decaying or being closed down in the name of reducing the state debt.
Before the privatization of the Bremen shipyard in 1986, the city had been the largest shareholder in the company. Under the chairmanship of Friedrich Hennemann, former state secretary for economics of Bremen, the company launched a big expansion plan after Germany's reunification. It bought up the previously state-owned East German shipyards in Stralsund and Wismar at a time when German shipbuilding was already facing increased competition from Asian and Scandinavian shipbuilders.
Bremer Vulkan received $586 million from the European Commission earmarked for investment in the former East German shipyards. The European Commission now demands the money back, charging that $415 million never reached the shipyards in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern but was redirected to company operations in western Germany.
The Treuhand, the government agency that was in charge of privatization of nationalized companies in the former East Germany, had been "reluctant to criticise publicly Bremer Vulkan's activities in eastern Germany lest questions were raised about the Treuhand's privatization methods and the use of subsidies," the February 22 Financial Times reported.
The Bremer Vulkan group expects losses of $690 million for 1995 in addition to its unpaid bank loans of more than $965 million. It also needs $1.5 billion for 1996 to pay its bills. German economics minister Gunter Rexrodt stated, "Anyone who thinks he can restore the company to health with fresh money from Bonn is mistaken."
The company's threats of closure have sparked protests by workers in a number of cities. On February 20, thousands of shipyard workers demonstrated in Bremen. Two days earlier workers began an occupation of parts of the shipyard there.
Protests in east and west
On February 21 schools, shops, and banks were closed in
Vegesack, a district of Bremen, as 6,000 workers and others
demonstrated at the main square. Another 2,000 workers in
Bremerhaven, 30 miles from Bremen, occupied that town's train
station for an hour.
On the same day the Volkswerft (People's Shipyard) in the city of Stralsund, in the east, was occupied by the workers. And in Rostock, also in eastern Germany, where the company owns two non-shipbuilding subsidiaries, Dieselmotoren and Neptun Industrie, workers protested as well.
According to the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the prime minister of the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Berndt Seite, called for calmness and promised "new viable concepts" for Bremer Vulkan.
Harald Ringstorff, minister of industries in the same state, denounced the protesting workers, saying their occupation was "completely exaggerated." Ringstorff also criticized the board of directors in Bremen, demanding that the diverted $415 million from the European Commission be paid to the shipyards in eastern Germany.
Meanwhile, 20,000 workers demonstrated February 22 in Bremerhaven. "To hell with Europe," one young shipyard apprentice told Svenska Dagbladet, saying he did not expect to get a job after his training. He blamed the banks and the politicians too. "They are just lying and forget about us," he stated.
In the state elections in Bremen last year, the rightist party German People's Union (DVU) received 2.5 percent of the vote. In Bremerhaven, where unemployment is even higher, the DVU got almost 6 percent of the vote and won 3 of 48 seats in the local assembly.