Wildcat strike at the Bochum Opel plant (Germany) - Six days that shook General Motors

A wildcat strike of the workers at the German GM/Opel plant in Bochum (Ruhr) raised the hopes and enthusiasm of many trade union activists up and down the country and shook the GM management as well as the political and social establishment in Germany. Yet after six days, when the strike really began to bite and lack of supplies had led to a standstill at other GM factories in Europe, 70% of the workers decided to return to work. What are the lessons that we can draw from this spontaneous outburst?

The workforce at the Bochum plant has always had a reputation of being more militant than their brothers and sisters in other German Opel plants. When the official news about GM plans to cut the workforce in Germany by over 10,000, and by 4,000 in Bochum alone, spread on October 14, the workers there downed tools and assembled to discuss what is to be done. This was a magnificent expression of the capacity of the workers in Germany to bring about spontaneous movements and in itself raised the class conflict to a higher level, retying the knot of the “wildcat strikes” in the 1970s and the movement of steelworkers in the 1980s and coalminers in 1997.

Due to modern just-in-time production, other GM factories such as Antwerp (Belgium) and Ellesmere Port (UK) quickly ran out of their supplies of axles and exhaust pipes, which are produced in Bochum. The GM managers understood that this was going to incur enormous losses to the company, and European GM boss Henderson threatened to close the Bochum plant if the strike was not immediately stopped.

A seemingly unstoppable and uncontrollable strike movement stunned the ruling class. This led to the formation of an XXL strikebreaking conspiracy which included all sorts of politicians, media, bourgeois “experts” as well as the union apparatus. Wolfgang Clement, SPD deputy chairman and Minister of the Economy and Labour in Schröder’s cabinet, boasted about his family roots in Bochum but could not even spare a free minute to pay a visit to the striking workers in his hometown. Instead, he used the platform of a popular Sunday night talk show on Channel 1 to call for an immediate end to the strike.

The IG Metall union apparatus and the majority of the local works council did not move a little finger to support and extend the strike, arguing that wildcat strikes were illegal. Yet generations of IG Metall activists have been taught in trade union schools that legal questions in the final analysis are questions of power and that the labour movement throughout its history often had to fight for improvements and the establishment of new laws by breaking the old legality. With a bit of imagination, clever union lawyers would have found legal means and ways and devices to professionally organise and expand an “illegal strike”. But given the fact that the union apparatus is now seeking a new flirtation with the Schröder government, from their point of view the strike had to be derailed as soon as possible.

On the other hand, the Bochum strike found an enormous echo and raised a lot of enthusiasm not only amongst car workers or workers in the Ruhr, but nationally. It showed for a few days that workers fighting for their own and their region’s future would always get lots of solidarity and sympathy not only from other workers, but from the middle classes as well. This type of “social protest” is potentially more effective than even the big protest demos of unemployed workers in August and September.

Many delegations from other workplaces and members of other unions visited the striking Opel workers and appealed to them to continue their struggle. Car workers from Porsche, DaimlerChrysler and VW plants up and down the country travelled to Bochum to take part in the demo scheduled for October 19. Yet why is it that only one day later, on October 20, a majority decided to go back to work immediately?

The Opel workers have demonstrated that a militant workforce can maintain a spontaneous struggle for some time even without clear structures of leadership and organisation and shake a corporation like GM. Yet when I contacted activists in Bochum and offered help to translate and spread an appeal by the local strike committee internationally, I was told: there is no strike committee. Behind the curtains, the union apparatus did their utmost to get the strike finished as soon as possible although they could not openly spell this out for fear of losing hundreds if not thousands of members. So their tactics were to wear out, financially “starve” and demoralise the strike activists, stressing that the union could not pay any money to the strikers. They knew that many workers have debts and mortgages to pay and could not afford wage losses for too long. They knew that the union left locally and nationally was not in a position to enforce the official payment of strike money or else build a national solidarity fund overnight. They are aware of the fact that many of the former left-wingers and militants on the shop floor have been either demoralised, retired or absorbed by the apparatus over the past few years, thus leaving behind an enormous political vacuum.

Against all experiences and rich lessons of the labour movement, the right wing leaders argued that a strike would undermine the bargaining position in the negotiations with GM management. Klaus Franz, chairman of the all-German Opel works council criticised the striking Bochum Opel colleagues for being “selfish” and also called for an immediate end to the strike. In the Bochum rally on October 19 which was organised by IG Metall and the local works council, speakers from the union apparatus and the moderate works council majority as well as the local Lord Mayor and some representative from the church (who was the most radical one on the platform!) hammered home the main slant: we have some sympathy for your anger and spontaneous strike but it’s time to wind up now! None of the militant rank and file strikers was allowed to speak nor was the representative from the Porsche shop stewards in Stuttgart, a left-winger, allowed to deliver a message of solidarity.

The Bochum October strike revealed that the union left was not in a position to build an alternative structure, establish a national solidarity campaign quickly and raise the necessary funds to give even the more vacillating Opel workers confidence and determination and stamina to continue the strike until Christmas if necessary. The lack of solidarity strikes in other German Opel plants represented a decisive problem. The Bochumers felt left alone especially by the workers in Rüsselsheim who were and still are under the firm control of the above mentioned Klaus Franz, an ex left-winger and old companion of Joschka Fischer (who is now Germany’s foreign minister). Like his counterparts in other motorcar companies such as Mercedes or Porsche, Klaus Franz has fully swallowed the capitalist logic that painful sacrifices were necessary to save “our enterprise” and restore the company’s competitiveness.

Twenty years ago, IG Metall united steelworkers from different steel corporations into big national demonstrations and even demanded the nationalisation of the steel industry at the time. Now it looks as though the union apparatus is not willing to or not capable of presenting a united strategy and programme for all car workers to prevent a sharpening of the economic war between the different corporations at the expense of the workers. Twenty years ago many IG Metall activists were inspired by the alternative plans of the British Lucas Areospace workers and discussed possible alternatives and socially useful production in shipyards and arms factories. All these things, which are more relevant today than ever before, seem to have been forgotten.

Back to the October 19 day of action in Bochum: The trade union officialdom did what they could to exhaust the workers. Whereas everybody else who had turned up in solidarity was present at 11am to listen to the announcements and letters of solidarity read out at the Rally, the strikers themselves did not arrive until 12 o’clock after an hour’s march and were obviously rather marginalized in the rally by then. I spoke to some shop stewards there who were a bit tired from the march and clearly felt that the trade union apparatus was manoeuvring to get the strike off the agenda. They clearly smelled some form of betrayal and sell-out in the air.

One day later, on October 20, the union apparatus and the moderate majority in the works council finally succeeded in getting things back into their hands again and burying the strike. They organised a mass meeting that a vast majority of the blue-collar workers attended. In that meeting there were only three speakers: the works council chairman and his deputy and the local union secretary. All of them advocated ending the strike immediately. Yet the provisional results of the negotiations presented to the workers were extremely meagre: In the talks between IG Metall, the German Opel works council and the Opel managers, there had been general agreement to try and make the German Opel plants, “so competitive that their future beyond 2010 might be guaranteed”. They had also agreed that solutions were to be sought to possibly prevent compulsory redundancies. In other words: the workers’ representatives and union leaders are prepared to accept massive wage cuts and job losses for the sake of “competitiveness” and accept the bosses blackmailing that “high wages cause job losses”. This scrap of paper was not worth more than one sheet of toilet paper, an angry worker commented to me.

The bureaucracy had prepared ballot papers on which the workers were asked if they were in favour of negotiations and in favour of returning to work. Although many were in favour of negotiating and striking at the same time, there was only one choice on the ballot paper to vote “Yes” or “No”. In the end, 70 per cent voted yes and a hard core of 30 percent voted no.

After any strike in Germany, traditionally the unions would always lay heavy emphasis on a non-victimisation clause in a new contract to make sure that the employers would not victimise and harass the most militant strikers and union activists. Not so in the case of this Bochum strike, although there were clear indications that some foremen and managers would certainly try to victimise some of the radical activists afterwards. And this is what happened. Only a few days later, two activists were sacked for allegedly having “pressurized and harassed” strikebreakers during the strike.

Many union activists are asking themselves: was this the end of everything? Certainly not, since big business will continue to take away from us all the gains achieved and fought for over decades. In this way, the Bochum October strike was only the beginning of a new period of enormous class conflicts. Nobody is born as a hero, and we all would prefer a cosy life free from conflicts, but the bosses will not let us live and work in peace. There is no choice but to stand up and fight.

We must not dream of the good old days of social partnership but face up to the challenges. Struggles like the Bochum wildcat strike put everybody and every idea to the test and mercilessly show who is standing on which side of the barricades. It is essential to draw a balance sheet of the strong and weak points in this struggle, draw the necessary political conclusions and create the necessary structures to make sure that next time we will not be outmanoeuvred, fooled and tricked by a strike-breaking conspiracy again. Everyone of us, wherever we work, could face similar conflicts in the future. Are we prepared for this? It is absolutely insufficient to hope that things will automatically turn better and that the colleagues will automatically know what is to be done at the right moment and get things done spontaneously. Militant rank and file members have to establish an organised counterweight in all trade unions. The struggle must start as a political struggle in the first place. For any serious fightback it is absolutely essential to break through the constraints of capitalism and to oppose the logics of cutting jobs and cutting wages to restore profitability and “competitiveness”. We must be opposed to economic and trade wars between nations and companies that will only undermine the labour movement. We must reject the reformist idea that this time we will make some concessions and then return to the good old days of the 1950s and 1960s. We must advance and above all properly explain the slogan of workers’ control and nationalisation as the only progressive alternative. We must firmly oppose even the sacking of one worker and the shutting down of one factory and the dismantling of any machine or robot.

Bochum shows that even in a factory with fighting traditions the active minority of conscious militants will only succeed in winning over the wavering and indifferent majority of their workmates if they are well prepared and organised, know what to do in the decisive moment, show audacity and advance the political slogans that provide a clear perspective for victory.