Belgium: workers feel brunt of industrial recession | Unions have no strategy beyond ‘social dialogue’

On 16 September over ten thousand workers and trade union activists marched in Brussels against closures by Belgium’s last automobile manufacturer. In July, Audi’s announcement that it would downsize its factory met with an angry reaction among the workers. Two months later it announced the plant’s final closure with 4,000 direct jobs and 5,000 indirect, outsourced jobs to be lost. Given the magnitude of the closure the trade union response has been mild.

The workers have shown a willingness to fight. Upon hearing the news, the workers downed tools, and confiscated the keys of 200 finished and unfinished vehicles. Meanwhile, workers more broadly in Belgium have shown sympathy and a willingness to stand with the Audi workers. 5,000 workers marched through Brussels on Monday 16 September, shutting off roads to the European Parliament and burning tyres, while public transport workers came out in solidarity.

The only question is whether trade union leaders – in Belgium and in Germany – will actually play their proper role and channel this anger. To date, they have not risen to the task.

The industrial sector in Belgium is sick. Bankruptcies follow one another, layoffs are piling up, and production capacities are being downscaled. Manufacturing production has been in a clear recession for over a year. Growth was already declining in 2022, but the contraction intensified in 2023, reaching -7.3 percent, even dropping in the last quarter of year to -9.9 percent. This year, industry has continued its decline.

The industrial crisis across Europe is also being evidenced in the decline of activity of various ports, a major sector of the Belgian economy. Last year, the port of Antwerp, for instance, experienced its biggest drop in industrial production in forty years. Reflecting the decline in overland haulage, the Flemish industrial flagship Van Hool (a major manufacturer of buses and heavy trucks) also closed last year.

Furthermore, last August, BelGaN, a major microchip company, closed down after 40 years, a victim of the trade war between the European Union and China. Other industrial companies are operating at reduced capacity. They are waiting for a turnaround in the economic situation or... closure. From the closures caused by the trade war being waged by the EU, to the decline of the port and haulage sector, what this all shows is that Belgium is being ‘sacrificed’ by the slow down in the German economy, Belgium being very dependent on the good health of German industry.

Audi as the latest casualty

In early September, Volkswagen, the parent company of Audi, sent shockwaves across the business world by announcing that it was considering shuttering factories in Germany due to stiff competition from China. If it follows through with the proposal, it would be the first closure on German soil in the company’s 87 year history.

In early September, Volkswagen, the parent company of Audi, sent shockwaves across the business world by announcing that it was considering shuttering factories in Germany / Image: Andreas Fingas, Wikimedia Commons

Their objective is to reduce costs: management has declared its aim is to reduce spending by €10 billion by 2026. The company told workers it would need to cut up to 25,000 employees worldwide to meet its €10 billion goal. While initially hoping to reach that target through early retirements and natural attrition, it came up €3 billion short. This, we note, in a company that had an operating profit of €25.8 billion in 2023!

It was made clear that the Brussels Audi workforce is going to be the first to be sacrificed on the altar of cuts, after it was announced that the company’s flagship vehicle would no longer be manufactured there. It is clear that the German plants will be next. And yet, the German unions are presently focused on their demand of a 7 percent pay rise to catch up with inflation. At present, collective bargaining negotiations are ongoing, and if these negotiations break down, IG Metall has warned that workers could go on strike starting 29 October. 

The distress of the Belgian workers, however, has not appeared on the radar of the German trade unions. This is a serious mistake, as a defeat for the Belgian workers will make it easier for the company to come for German workers next, as it has made clear that it may well do.

Funnily enough, the leader of the UAW, Shawn Fain – recently elected on a left-wing rank and file ticket – who has been involved in an organising drive in the non-unionised VW factory in the US, was in Europe during the announcement of VW closures. His line was far to the left of any of the trade union leaders in either Germany or Belgium. Addressing the trade union tops, he said: “The 25,000 VW workers in Wolfsburg can save any plant, even Audi Brussels” and called for solidarity action! Although only in words, and far from the US where Fain has to transform words into deeds, he is absolutely correct.

And yet, even some so-called Marxist parties like the Belgian Workers’ Party (PTB/PVDA) are not putting forward such action. Hilal Sor who is a member of the Workers’ Party and is leader of the FGTB Metallos (Wallonia and Brussels socialist metalworkers union), had this to say: 

“The Chinese have implemented an industrial policy, whether we like the way they do it or not, that's another debate. They have implemented a very strong investment policy in the automotive sector by developing research and putting resources into research in order to have the best technologies. So, they have to come to us so that we can develop their research and their technology. These are capitalist choices to move production or to invest, which are not my responsibility, but what I'm saying is that Europe is not doing enough for us to have industrial production at European level.”

In short, he is saying that we need some sort of European protectionism following the model of massive public subsidies to private companies. But Audi Brussels has already received €157 million in subsidies since 2018! This has not stopped the company from closing the factory. These subsidies in reality are generous gifts for the capitalists. Calls to link the subsidies to ‘conditions’ on job creation, social dialogue, etc. have always been ineffective. Let us remind the readers that the Workers’ Party (PTB/PVDA) calls itself a ‘Marxist’ party!

Whilst the German trade union bureaucracy is unable to see beyond their own borders, the Belgian trade union bureaucracy is responding with vague complaints about the future and the need for more European Union money for industry.

An employers’ offensive

Our trade unions are not prepared for what is coming our way. First of all, they seriously underestimate the crisis of capitalism. They imagine that the market economy will quickly regain its balance. On this basis they hope that laid-off workers will quickly find new jobs as the demand for labour recovers. 

Furthermore, far too many trade union leaders swear by what they call ‘social dialogue’ – that is to say the belief in conciliation and partnership between the opposing social classes – and not, of course, class struggle. 

A manual published by the ABVV Metaal (Flemish socialist metalworkers' union) reveals this attitude. It is a guide for delegates in the event of restructuring. This document relies entirely on respecting the “rules of the game” between employers and unions to “limit the damage”.

The battle to unite both sectors of the workforce is therefore vital / Image: Vibhugupta, Wikimedia Commons

What is especially lacking in this document is a strategy for combat. The words ‘strike’, ‘struggle’, ‘balance of power’ (and therefore also changing the balance of power), ‘general assembly’, ‘workers' control’ and other basic concepts of the class struggle never appear. It is bizarre to say that we have heard more of those words from the UAW leader in a few days than from all the local trade union leaders over months.

Perhaps the worst part of the situation is that the company has been very successful in dividing the workers of Audi between those directly employed (and likely to receive government subsidies and big layoff payments) and those employed by the outsourced companies that have been without jobs since July. The battle to unite both sectors of the workforce is therefore vital.

What next?

Fortunately, some voices like that of the CGSP-ALR Brussels (municipal socialist trade union) have called for nationalisation and remind us that “Audi has made fabulous profits and receives public money. […] Audi, and VW before it, were able to pocket millions of euros in aid from the Region to ‘maintain and develop’ employment. They obviously did not keep their promises. We can add to this that the VW-Audi group is absolutely not in financial difficulty. This is what we can read in the Volkswagen Group press release of March 13, 2024: ‘In 2023, the turnover of the group (Audi, Lamborghini, Bentley, Ducati) increased by 13 percent to 69.9 billion euros.’”

They correctly recall the 2008 bailouts: “Let us remember that in 2008, our government was able to nationalise the banks to save the financial system and the richest. We must fight today to nationalise Audi, the only possible way to save jobs and the future of the region.” The other FGTB federations and the other unions must take up these very correct words! This is also the position of the Revolutionary Communist Organisation in Belgium.

The first principle that must be established is that workers should not pay the bill. This will require an offensive and not merely a defensive attitude on the part of the unions, both in their demands and in their methods of struggle. The immediate reduction of working hours to 32 or even 30 hours per week without loss of pay to counter the job losses must be at the forefront.

If the bosses claim not to have enough money, let us demand access to their accounts. We will be able to discover what they have done for years with the profits amassed from our labour. If a company threatens closure, let us demand its nationalisation under workers' control.

Among the methods of struggle, strikes and occupations must be put on the agenda once more. The trade union movement must broaden its horizon of struggle. The national demonstration “for the future of the industry” was a first step in this direction but it seems that this was not intended as the beginning of a fight but a boxed ticked by the trade union bureaucracy (in this case, by the lefts in the unions).

With a narrow nationalist outlook and trust in the capitalists and EU institutions the workers at Audi (and any other industrial firm) are the ones who will come out on the losing side. Only a militant, internationalist approach will stop this haemorrhage of jobs. It is time for workers to have a militant international trade union organisation that breaks with the illusion of social partnership and capitalism.

We need trade unions that understand that class struggle and not ‘social dialogue’ is what has achieved any meaningful conquest for workers anywhere in the world. We call on those trade unionists that share this militant approach to build such an alternative now!