BY DAG TIRSÉN

STOCKHOLM - Tens of thousands of workers demonstrated and held spontaneous work stoppages May 10 in cities across western Germany, protesting a proposed wage freeze for public employees. According to the public employees union, OTV, government offices and services such as garbage collection were temporarily at a standstill. Wage negotiations for 3.2 million public employees are presently taking place. OTV has demanded a 4.5 percent raise.

The proposed wage freeze for public employees is part of a "program for growth and employment" consisting of $32 billion in cuts in social services announced April 25 by German chancellor Helmut Kohl. The German economy has suffered a downturn over the last half year. The government is now projecting a mere .75 percent growth in gross domestic product in the first half of 1996, down from earlier forecasts of more than 2 percent.

"The changes proposed by the government are the only road to strengthen the economy and industry to create more jobs and in the future secure the social system," Kohl stated. Some 4.5 million workers are presently unemployed in Germany, about 10 percent of the workforce.

The government wants to lower sick pay from 100 to 80 percent, raise the retirement age from 60 for women and 63 for men to 65 for both, postpone a previously pledged increase in child allowances, and freeze wages for public employees, as well as enforce other cuts affecting students, the unemployed, and workers depending on welfare.

Other recommendations, however, such as one unpaid sick day, raised by Finance Minister Theo Waigel in parliament in early February, are not part of the proposal.

Some 40,000 people assembled in Bonn April 28 to protest the dismantling of a law regulating business hours for stores and shops. The labor movement fought for these hours - which are more restricted in Germany than in most other countries - to limit evening and weekend work.

Klaus Zwickel, chair of the metalworkers union, IG Metall, threatened to strike if the government did not take back the proposals to cut unemployment benefits and sick pay. The relatively high level of sick pay in Germany was won after a strike by the metalworkers in 1957.

At the traditional May Day demonstrations, many trade union officials spoke out against the cuts. "This proposal will build a new wall in this country, one between rich and poor," said Dieter Schulte, chairperson of the German trade union federation DGB, speaking in Berlin. Many of the May Day demonstrations were smaller than usual, however.

Schulte complained that the government had not taken the hand offered by the union officials, referring to the "alliance for jobs" discussed at a meeting of the unions, the employers, and the government in January where labor officials promised to hold back wages in exchange for promises to cut unemployment in half by the year 2000. His speech was met by protests by some participants.

On February 12 more than 4,000 metalworkers and retirees had protested attacks on early retirements. Workers have had the right to retirement with 90 percent of their wages at the age of 60, and at an earlier age in the steel industry.

The following evening, representatives of the government, unions, and employers signed an agreement to increase the early retirement age step by step. "The alliance for jobs has passed its first test," was Schulte's comment at the time.

On May 1 the Bremer Vulkan shipyard company announced it would file for bankruptcy for two shipyards in Bremen and Bremerhaven, two cities in northwest Germany where unemployment is a record 15 percent. Six thousand workers demonstrated outside the gates of the shipyard that day. Some 2,500 had marched from the city district of Vegesack.

Bremen mayor Henning Scherf said he still hoped for some kind of solution to the shipyards in that city. His words were met with boos and whistles.

The shipyards in Rostock, Wismar, and Stralsund in eastern Germany, which for some years belonged to the shipyard company in western Germany, are not affected by the bankruptcy. They have temporarily been taken over by the federal government and the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, where they are located.

The governmental coalition in that state, made up of the Christian Democratic Union and the Social Democratic Party (SPD), is falling apart over how big a portion of the costs the state should pay as opposed to the federal government in Bonn.

In a further setback to the Kohl government, the prime ministers of all 16 state governments in Germany rejected the federal government's proposals in mid-May, saying these put too much of the burden of the projected cuts on state and local budgets.

Carl-Erik Isacsson and Catharina Tirsén are members of the metalworkers union in Sodertalje and Stockholm, Sweden.  
 
 
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