The Struggle of GM-workers at Opel Bochum

Contribution by Wolfgang Schaumberg (union activist from Opel, Germany) at the Netherland Social Forum, Amsterdam, 27.11.2004

I think the main problem is, from my experience having worked for 30 years in Opel in Bochum, that we cannot put our hope in the ´union´ as they haven’t organized us at a European or worldwide level to fight against the power of the multinationals.

I will start with the struggle we had in October, in Opel in Bochum. I won’t tell you all the history, but will start with a GM press release of Opel from 14 October 2004: ‘General Motors Europe today announced its intention to reduce its annual structural costs by an estimated 500 million euros by 2006. The plan calls for a reduction of the workforce by up to 12.000 over the next 2 years with over 90% in 2005. The company will immediately begin consultations and negotiations with the employees’ representatives of the plant. “GM Europe has undergone significant change and restructuring in the last 3 years with the support of both our workers and the respective works councils”, said Henderson, Chairman of General Motors Europe, ”We anticipate working constructively with the work councils to arrive at a creative solution to our current challenge”.’

It was the end of a workday when my colleagues heard this press release. Their response was ‘This is enough’. For months GM has threatened us with the demand of new concessions. There was a broad debate within the workforce over whether or not we should do something against this kind of blackmailing. In response to this press release, work on that Thursday afternoon shift was halted. The so-called wildcat strike went on for nearly 12 shifts until the 20 th of October. At first it was a question of honour. The people said ‘we have had enough; we don’t want to build cars for you if you are going to continue blackmailing us in this way.’ There was an announcement that 4.000 jobs would be slashed in the Opel Bochum plant. Now there are 9.600 people and nearly half of whom are at risk of losing their job.

You may have many questions about our struggle in Bochum. For our discussion now, the question of international solidarity is the most important one. We received a lot of international support for our struggle. More than 2.000 resolutions in solidarity arrived at the desk of our work councils and the leadership of the union shop stewards in the factory. On the 19 th of October, there was a European day of action at all European GM-plants. More than 50.000 General Motors employees made all different kinds of protest against the management’s plans. The leadership of our work councils in Opel-Bochum said, before the strike began, that we should wait with our actions till next week, and that as of Tuesday the 19 th we would have common actions in all of our plants in Europe. But we, in Bochum, haven’t had good experiences with this way of protesting. Since 1993 there was one contract after another demanding concessions from us. I was a member of the workers councils for 25 years, in opposition against these kind of concessions. But more or less, the majority accepted what our leaders in the workers council and in our strong union IG Metall (with more than 2,5 million members in Germany and more than 80% organized in our plant) said, that there is no other way than to give concessions. So there have been times in the past when the Bochumm workforce had tried to say no to these kind of setbacks and there were several actions, not organized by the union, but by a lot of the shop stewards. You must know there are 37 members in the work council and they are all free of work. More than 500 shop stewards are elected by their colleagues and they have to work on the line, in the departments. We discussed for quite a long time how we were going back and giving concessions and in which way we could give more hope to our families and our children. 25.000 people came to the demonstration in Bochum on the 19 th. That has never happened before. A strike of 11 shifts did not take place in any other city either. Perhaps strikes of one hour took place in England or in Antwerp. In Russelsheim. People came from Mercedes in Stuttgart, Mercedes in Bremen and Porsche in Stuttgart to demonstrate with us. If you see how many people came up to us and said, ‘you are headed the right direction, we must fight back against this way of playing us against each other.’ There were solidarity resolutions from nearly all over the world - from Canada to Brazil. There was a one-hour stop of production in the GM-plant near Sao Paulo, in San José dos Campos. If you see all of this, and the kind of discussions developed during that time, than I think, we, the workforce of Bochum, did more for the development of international solidarity than all the words we hear by our leaders.

Normally, you can say we are very well organized, in Europe, in Germany, in IG Metall. We have more than 7 million members in the German Federation of Unions (DGB). We are millions strong in the European metal workers federations, with it’s central in Brussels, we are even more with 22 million organized in the international metal workers federations, with IG Metall, UAW and all the big unions of the world. But what are they doing? What are we doing in these good organisations? In the ICFTU, on a global level, there are more than 150 million people organized, people are members of unions all over the world. If the Chinese federation would be a member of the ICFTU, the International Confederation of Trade Unions, than over one million organized people more would join. But what do they demand, our leaders? First, they demand decent work, to improve working conditions worldwide. OK, that’s a good demand. The second demand is that of codes of conduct. “We want all the multinationals to underline a contract to stop child labour, to allow unions to improve the working conditions.” That’s a good demand. The third is we want work councils, European works councils and worldwide works councils, to improve democracy on the plant level. That is a good demand. But decent work is always connected to an idea of a decent wage work. They will never discuss, and they do not want us to discuss, that the majority on the global level are forced to sell their ability to produce, to work, to the owners, to the small minority of the owners of the factories, and that it is not by nature to organize the products for our life in this way. They don’t want to have that debate on Codes of conduct: It is always connected to the idea of fair market economy, of fairer conditions of competition. It is not discussed and they don’t want to discuss whether it is possible to have fair competition in a capitalist world. And if they say we want work councils all over the world. What kind of democracy is it? We know this kind of worker representation. That means, ‘You go off and work and we will take care of your interests.’ It is a kind of administration; a kind of legal regulation of the contradiction between capital and labour. Not a place where producers and consumers could organize their life together. I will stop here and talk about what we can do for a better future later on. Thank you.