WEST GERMAN STRIKE

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27426, 12 August 1954, Page 11

WEST GERMAN STRIKE

Pickets Clash With Police (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) . MUNICH, August 11. Police- used batons today in clashes with strike pickets outside nearly all big firms affected by the strike of 250,000 metal workers in Bavaria. The strike is now in its third day. Most firms asked for police protectipn for those willing to work. All police cars were immediately in action. Shortly afterwards the cars sent messages to headquarters to send more police to places where serious clashes seemed likely to develop. The clashes developed when the police tried to break the tight lines of strike pickets outside the factories and escort those willing to work to their work places.

Boos and whistles greeted employers who appealed to the strikers over loud-speakers to resume work. Reports from other factories said that fences were torn down, mostly by women who wanted to work and thus entered the factories from the rear. West German Ministers are meeting in Bonn to decide whether the Government should step in on the nationwide “wages war” which is threatening the country with Its biggest labour upheaval since pre-Hitler days. More than 4,000,000 workers throughout the Federal Republic are standing ready to join 200,000 or more already on strike in Hamburg and Bavaria. The Ministers are expected to decide whether the Republic should, as the employer, be represented at talks tomorrow in Stuttgart between local authorities and the Public Utilities and Transport Workers’ Union on the union’s demand for nation-wide pay rises.

The Chancellor, Dr. Konrad Adenauer, who is receiving daily reports on the situation at his holiday home near Baden Baden, has called the chiefs of the Government coalition parties to talks there later this week on the union’s claim for a bigger share in profits of the industrial boom. y “Political Character” Coalition sources at Bonn said Dr. Adenauer and other Coalition leaders felt that the pay campaign was assuming more and more a political character.

At, Hamburg, where 14,000 public utilities workers have been on strike for a week, the city government tonight faces a no-confidence motion by the Social Democrat opposition. The motion criticises its handling of the strike, which has stopped all public transport and severely reduced gas and water supplies, causing industrial plants to close. ' In Bavaria, where*the metalworkers’ strike entered its third day, clashes between pickets and non-strikers occurred when the Metal Workers’ Union adopted a tougher policy after reports that not all of its 236,000 members had stopped work.