WEST GERMAN UNREST

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28539, 19 March 1958, Page 13

WEST GERMAN UNREST

Threat Of New Strikes

(Rec. 8 p.m.) BONN, March 17. West Germhany tonight faced growing industrial unrest as workers pressed wage claims.

A union announcement said some 350,000 public service workers will stage a protest strike on Wednesday. The token strike by public service workers—excluding police, fire brigades, health and funeral services—follows the breakdown of talks for wage increases.

Simultaneously the wages committee of the Metal Workers’ Union, acting on behalf of some 200,000 workers, announced the final failure of three months of negotiations for pay increases. Wage negotiations for textile workers in Lower Saxony and Bremen, where about 7000 are on strike, will be resumed tomorrow. Some textile factories have been on strike for more than nine weeks.

In the Ruhr 180,000 steel workers are standing out for 8 per cent, wage increase.

In Stuttgart the Transport Workers Union announced after unsuccessful negotiations that a very serious situation had arisen. German postal workers are also demanding a 10 per cent, wage increase. About 60,000 Germans employed by the N.A.T.O. forces are asking separately for wage increases which have been refused by the Allied armies representatives. The “Manchester Guardian” correspondent says the possibility of a steel workers’ strike is very much the most worrying feature of the situation since it seems imminent and could have damaging results. The five-day truce will end on March 19 after which the union will be free to call a strike. Tbe union believes a major wage increase is justified both by the large profits made last year by the leading steel firms and by increases in the cost of living. Germans are notoriously unwilling to strike and this may dissuade the unions.

The general feeling in the country is that the increases in the cost of living have so far been kept within bounds.