STRIKES IN GERMANY

Press, Volume XCII, Issue 27750, 30 August 1955, Page 11

STRIKES IN GERMANY

Cycle Of Wage

Demands

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, Aug. 28. “Some workers in Hamburg, Kassel and Luneburg have jumped the gun on wage negotiations and thereby set off the first large-scale unofficial strikes which Germany has seen since the war,’’ says “The Times’’ in a leading article.

“This development cannot entirelv be laid at the doors of the Communists, although their agitators have been hard at work in the industries affected. “Part of the explanation, doubtless, is the traditionally militant attitude of shipyard workers. But in Hamburg lately increases in cost of rent, transport, gas and water have impinged on the workers’ budgets and acted as irritants, and in Kassel the revision of the wage structure has had the same effect.

“The present strikes are, however, symptomatic of a more profound change in German industry. In the years immediately after the war it was tacitly agreed that labour, like every other section of German life, must concentrate on the single task of reconstruction, and that investment must have the first call on profits. “By 1954 the battle for reconstruction was won. German industry was booming, and labour was in a position to stake its claim for a larger share in the country’s prosperity. “Its position to claim an increased share is today even stronger. Nowhere is the new prosperity more apparent than in the shipbuilding industry.

“It does not require much agitation for labour, unofficially or officially, to take advantage of the situation. After years of relative stability the Federal Government and industrialists are gloomily lopking ahead to an annual cycle of new wage demands, with or without strikes, which they had hoped might be left a prerogative of Britain.’’