BY CARL-ERIK ISACCSSON
STOCKHOLM - Some 4.5 million workers were registered as
unemployed in Germany in December 1997, a new postwar record.
The total number of jobless was up 200,000 from a month
earlier. As an average during 1997, unemployment also reached a
record height of 4.4 million, or 11.4 percent. Chancellor
Helmut Kohl, who had promised to cut unemployment in half by
the year 2000, admitted, "As it looks now it will not be
possible."
Despite an increase in exports from western Germany during the present upturn in the business cycle, the jobless rate there climbed slowly. In the eastern part of the country the growth in unemployment was much faster. In the West, 3 million people were registered as unemployed in December, 123,000 more than in November 1997 and 103,000 more than in December 1996. In the East, nearly 1.5 million people were registered unemployed in December - up 77,000 from a month before and an increase of 270,000 over December 1996. The population of western Germany is 65 million, compared to 15.5 million in the East. Overall unemployment stood at 11.8 percent in December 1997 as compared with 10.8 in December 1996. In the East, however, 19.4 percent were registered as unemployed. These unemployment levels add to tension already simmering over the government's austerity moves and attempts by the bosses to limit workers' wages, particularly in eastern Germany.
Since late October, hundreds of thousands of students across the country have been involved in protests ranging from student strikes to demonstrations involving tens of thousands in Berlin, Dusseldorf, and Bonn alone. Students are protesting the deteriorating conditions of education in Germany and the imposition of tuition fees, after decades of free university education.
Steelworkers in eastern Germany voted in late December to call a strike that was to begin January 12, with nearly 78 percent in favor. Steelworkers there now number 8,000, far fewer than before reunification of Germany in 1990. At the heart of the dispute is the employers' attempt to scrap agreements that were put in place after the reunification to incrementally bring wages and other working conditions in the East up to parity with those in the West.
These agreements were reaffirmed in 1993, after the bosses tried to renege on the pledges and were met with a strike by metalworkers in both the East and West.
On January 8 of this year, the IG Metall steelworkers union reached an agreement with the employers that will give the workers a 2.6 percent wage increase for January 1998 - March 1999. Workers will also get $180 as a lump sum raise for October - December 1997.
According to the German daily Die Welt, this will bring workers up to 80-83 percent of the wage level in the West. The paper quotes the head of the steel bosses association, Josef Fidelis Senn, as saying, "We are not satisfied. We have only accepted the agreement under the threat of a strike that would have threatened the existence of this industry." Die Welt reports that the wage offer in the agreement is 0.3 percent lower than the pact in place in the West, and in an editorial the paper expresses hope that the agreement could be a step toward breaking the links between wages of workers in both parts of the country. Hasso Duvel, the IG Metall union chairman for Berlin, Brandenburg, and Saxonia stated that this link has not changed. The 8,000 steelworkers are to vote on the agreement on January 12 and 13. It can be approved by a vote of just 25 percent of the workforce.
Public workers are also entering negotiations with wage demands above 4 percent.
Carl-Erik Isacsson is a member of the metalworkers union in Sodertalje, Sweden.