labournet.tv presents
"The time of life is short.
An if we live, we live to tread on kings" (Shakespeare, Henry IV)
The Opel-GM plant was set up in Bochum in 1962.
It was the biggest GM production plant in Europe.
In 1980, 22,000 people worked there.
Extreme work pressure, extreme work pressure...
In 1972, an oppositional unionist group was formed.
GoG.
"Group of oppositional unionists"
They expressed what I merely thought.
Such images from Bochum have been a thorn in the Detroit managers' flesh for years.
No unionist can sign this because it goes beyond human limits.
We used all the lockers like letter boxes.
We were standing nose to nose.
"You have done this to me once. Just once.
You are a unionist? You are an asshole but no unionist!"
That was really cool!
We know, without fun there is no revolution!
Air to breathe
40 years of opposition at Opel-GM in Bochum
They are people from KPD, from KPD-ML, from the Green Party,
extreme left social democrats, who come together in unity
and are against all decisions and plans.
My name is Wolfgang Schaumberg, and I worked at Opel-GM for 30 years.
I was hired as a warehouse worker, that was 1970.
In 1972, I was the co-founder of GoG.
My name is Uwe Lübke, and I started to work at Opel in Bochum in 1965.
My name is Rainer Jansen, and I am 72 years old.
I was employed by Opel from 1969 until 2003.
I started to work at Opel in 1981.
My name is Jürgen Schwartz, and I am 55 years old.
I was employed by Opel in Bochum for 24 years.
The last 16 years, I was a member of the works council.
I liked the atmosphere and the work more
than the atmosphere in that union body,
that was so set in its ways that you had the feeling
everything was predetermined anyway.
And if you open your mouth then you get a beating.
When GoG was founded, the situation was characterized by mass strikes.
In France, 9 million workers went on strike in 1968.
In West Germany, hundreds of thousands of workers
took part in wildcat strikes in 1969 and 1973.
There was also a revolutionary youth movement at the end of the 1960s
which tried to get close to the factory workers.
Everyone talks about the weather. We don't.
What the workers need is not a false peace with capital
and some well-paid posts in the supervisory board,
but a consistent struggle and a clear front against the exploiters!
For many young people who were politicized and radicalized
it was a matter to orient oneself towards the working class,
the industrial workforces (for them that was the same thing).
And they focused their politics on that.
And many entered the plants like me and many others too.
At the time, we wished to be able to initiate
a revolutionary movement here in West Germany.
In 1968, there was an offensive in all western countries,
in Italy, in France, in Germany...
... there was an offensive everywhere...
... in Spain, as well.
Offensive means that there was a feeling in the society and in the workforces
that we can make offensive demands
because, in the balance of power, capital is in a weaker position.
Several thousand younger comrades turned up in front of the plants
with similar ideas and distributed leaflets and so on.
In order to give an idea of what the atmosphere was like:
When we distributed leaflets in front of the factory plants
our own "Bochum Workers' Paper" and leaflets of the GoG,
sometimes 3 or 4 organizations stood in line at the Opel gates.
They wanted to have the leaflets, they reached out for them.
They were eagerly read in the plant,
and sometimes they were discussed and there were arguments over them.
When we made the first leaflets, at the end of 1971, we called for a meeting
to prepare for the works council elections 1972.
This meeting was attended by 4 colleagues from the plant
who also had originally gone through a communist education
and who were willing to make contact with us.
At that time, more than 2,000 people from Spain worked at Opel.
Among them were comrades who already had a communist orientation in Spain.
So the first assembly was attended by a bunch of people from Opel
but the large part of the audience and supporters came from outside,
from the youth movement and the student movement.
The first time I took part I hardly understood anything.
People talked about "the proletariat", - and I had no clue.
After that I didn't attend meetings for a while.
A colleague came and asked, "Don't you want to come anymore?"
I told him: "I don't understand a thing of what you talk about."
Until a colleague said: "Then you have to do things your way,
and the students need to learn your language!"
That worked out, and we had our way.
Later, more and more of the students disappeared
so that only colleagues were left at Opel.
I trusted them straight away,
because if there were any problems anywhere,
even with the manager, they did not just say "please, please"
but went there and weren't afraid of the confrontation.
GoG was an expression of the attempt
to consistently take the interests of the people seriously
and not to say as a delegate, "just carry on working, I will solve this for you"
but to include the colleagues in the action.
People also heard, "just take sick leave, or just come late to work"
and such things... or even sometimes "do something else".
all that is possible.
If you know certain people all that works.
And many people did actually participate.
In 1972, GoG participated in the works council elections
on 1 of 10 oppositional lists.
The ground in Germany was somehow ready for this.
There was even the RAF,
there was a situation with an optimistic political spirit,
and people weren't prepared to put up with everything anymore.
And that showed clearly at Opel.
GoG got 2,000 out of nearly 18,000 votes and won 5 seats in the works council.
In 1975, they got even one third of the votes and won 12 seats.
A sensation!
The workforce actually felt that, in everyday life, we tried hard
and that we voiced critique during staff meetings
and ideas that led to very tough disputes,
but the people noticed on which side we stood.
Until then, works councillors only sat and hid in the office
and did a more or less lazy job.
When doing the works council job, we went out amongst the people.
We forced them to come out of their offices.
That's why they hated us.
We made a completely different kind of politics.
We were with the people on the site so they saw us daily.
This way we were informed about what happened both in Plant 1 and Plant 2.
I have always liked that, the flow of information.
Before the works council had never released anything.
And through people who were close to our members in the works council
information was shared, often which we were not meant to receive.
They always had plans to reduce the workforce or speed up work.
There was always something going on.
At first, that was always discussed "confidentially" in the works council,
it was not meant to reach the workforce.
But we did not comply with that.
The confrontation between the old works councillors and us
became more and more intense because of that.
Points of conflict were, on one hand, our leaflets
and, on the other hand and from the start, the staff meetings
where we had hot debates starting in the 1970s.
With just a few people we were able to dominate the staff meetings.
The head of the works council said in one interview at the time:
"They transform the staff meetings into 8 hour assemblies.
If the lawmakers had known that, they would have limited them to 2 or 3 hours."
Their radicalism and their success at the works council elections in 1975
made many curious about GoG.
At that time, I was a member of a small socialist revolutionary organization
that was called GIM, Group of International Marxists.
Once a week, we organized a book stall at the university.
At that book stall, we always prominently placed a big pile of a GoG brochure.
GoG had written that brochure around 1975.
That was a great brochure that explained to people
who had absolutely no clue about labor activism inside the workplace.
It was written in an energetic, not at all sectarian, and well articulated way.
It was really good, and we always had such a pile of them at the book stall.
The students were really interested to know what happened in these big plants.
They had not known anything about the big plants before.
Only through us did they learn that the factory is not a black hole
but that there are people who work there.
What is happening to those people?
That is what we spread.
At the beginning, we lived in a squatted student home in Frankfurt, Rosswitzheim.
One morning, I entered the student home
and there was a big newspaper clipping on the wall
about the speech of a colleague from Opel in Bochum: Andres Lara.
It was the printed speech from a staff meeting.
After the speech, it was decided to dismiss him.
I still remember today how I stood in front of that speech,
and how it expressed exactly what I felt.
It was a speech that addressed equality in a good way
as well as the demands the union always makes: percentage raises.
Why don't they demand a certain fixed sum?
Why is such inequality permanently reproduced
amongst colleagues so that who has more also gets more?!
That was one thing, and the other thing was
that it also talked about an oppositional group
that supports these notions.
With our Spanish colleague, Andres Lara,
we experienced something during a staff meeting.
The place was packed, with several thousand people present.
Suddenly we heard chanting, "Lara, Lara..." that came closer and closer.
And then Andres Lara came.
The Spanish colleagues had had a separate meeting,
and Andres Lara came with 500 or 600 of the Spanish into our staff meeting,
and they walked up to the front and the speaker's desk,
chanting "Lara, Lara...!"
Then there were disputes up there:
"You have to wait until it's your turn!" there were whistles and such.
Finally, he was able to speak.
And that was an experience that still makes me shiver.
First he spoke Spanish and an interpreter translated,
then he moved the interpreter aside
and spoke German which he mastered well already.
You could have heard a needle drop.
It was great how he explained that they would prefer to work in their home country.
"We come from Andalusia in southern Spain, but there was no work.
As a peasant, you could only earn very little.
Then they asked us to come to Germany,
and they looked at our teeth,
and they sold us like slaves there.
Now we are here, and we are put under pressure here.
This is not what we originally wanted, and this is, in fact, no life.
Our country would offer enough possibilities,
but capitalism does not allow that there, either."
Off the cuff, he described his situation
and why they ended up here and that it is not their life goal either
to stand at the assembly line in Bochum.
He got a big applause when he said we have to resist against all attacks together.
Then he was handed the dismissal without prior notice.
So he was fired then.
Shortly after, he returned to Spain.
Even today, that experience still makes me shiver.
Then I drove to Bochum and met two sympathizers of GoG
who were part of the solidarity committee.
They were pretty inspiring.
What I got at the time was that they were people
who were very close to me in terms of their social context.
I felt that they weren't just such super intellectuals
who only talk about Marx and revolution
but people who had a certain knowledge, on one hand, on Marx
but, on the other hand, they also had created a social connection
so I could imagine to work with them.
They said that the group of Opel colleagues met regularly every week,
but also that there was a second group that met "around" the first one,
the solidarity committee, where people took part who wanted to support them.
It was similar to a party structure, and that was normal at that time.
I knew from my experience with party structures
that these relationships were rather instrumental.
The people from the party were leading the group.
They knew how things had to be done
and the "stupid" workers were treated like kids.
They had to be enlightened, with Marx or Lenin or anybody.
And, from the very start, that wasn't the case there.
The struggle for the demands of the colleagues from abroad
Opel in strike! 300 marks cost of living bonus!
Strikers are a roaring and rampaging mob! Reinstatment of all dismissed colleagues!!!
GoG declared its solidarity with the colleagues from abroad
and fought for the reinstatement of sacked militant works councilors.
The supporters translated GoG leaflets into Spanish and, later, into Turkish.
At the time, I was expelled from the IG Metall [metal workers union]
together with several others from GoG.
The reason was that I had been
a candidate on the oppositional list at that time
and not on the official list of the IG Metall.
There was a nationwide campaign of expulsions from the IG Metall.
Most often the accusation was "anti-union organization."
They could not accuse us of that.
In our case, it was simply said that our attempt to establish an opposition
inside the IG Metall was an attempt to divide the union here.
Then I had the trial,
and I simply said
that if those right-wing works councillors continue to act like that
and follow their business and not engage in activity at the workplaces
then I will run on the oppositional list again like before.
Wham! Next was my death sentence. "Get out! Bye bye!"... and fuck them!
They only want to keep up the competitiveness of the German companies.
That is the central goal, and there is no way around.
And everything else is "damaging the union".
That is the fundamental policy.
And that is necessarily contradicting the workers' interests.
IG Metall did not just expel the left.
It also produced black lists for the companies
in order to make sure that the companies don't hire "troublemakers".
50 percent of the workers at Opel in Bochum became disabled
before they reached retirement age,
and a significant number of them died before the age of 60.
GoG fought for decades against the patronisation and persecution
of colleagues with health problems.
From the start, the top of their leaflets
showed the demand for the reduction of the daily working time.
The group followed this line of struggle for 25 years.
That was always a central topic: the working time must be changed,
and a big part of the workforce stood behind that demand.
What do you think about the demand for a 35 hour week?
That would not be bad for us.
But who knows what comes next?!
And when it will come, nobody knows either.
But the employers claim that this demand of the IG Metall
would ruin the German economy.
I don't believe that. I think, that is a bit exaggerated.
It would be easily possible.
Would you go on strike for the 35 hour week?
Yes!
When the movement for the introduction of the 35 hour week,
that reached its climax in 1984,
had pushed through the 35 hour week in 1995
GoG finally saw the opportunity to enforce its old demand:
8 hours shifts including a paid break of 30 minutes.
But instead of a reduction of daily working hours
the works council still wanted to introduce non-working shifts.
There were tough conflicts even between the shop-stewards.
We even insulted some of the shop-stewards.
"You assholes just want non-working shifts to be able to work longer
and to come to work on Saturday and Sunday!"
And we put up a fuss!
We threatened them with poles.
"Then there will be a rampage here!"
It was a narrow decision but we pushed it through.
That was the biggest measurable success for us.
Before, the working hours lasted from 5:45 a.m. to 2:15 p.m.
and 2:15 p.m. until 10:45 p.m.
We changed that, thank goodness, after pressuring for a long time.
We felt that physically and firsthand.
It was such a relief to start at 6:00 in the morning
and to finish work at 2:00 in the afternoon,
or to start at 2:00 in the afternoon and finish at 10:00 in the evening.
45 minutes earlier!
I would have never expected that this would be such a big difference!
That was the last boost where a noticeable life improvement
was successfully won through the struggle.
The successful struggle for the reduction of the working time remained an exception.
Basically, most of the struggles between 1975 and the plant closure in 2014
were defensive struggles.
I will try to explain that using a simple example.
For instance, the spontaneous strike wave in 1969 and 1973
happened while it was steadily going uphill, with capital growth,
and as a result we could also fight for and win larger portions
if we were brave enough to do so.
That was the starting point, the base
for this kind of oppositional class struggle that developed at that time.
But capitalism develops a dynamic of intensifying crises,
that take some time,
such a cycle takes about 10 years,
maybe a bit less or a bit more,
but those crises regularly return,
and they become much more severe.
Here in West Germany, after the post-war boom, the first crisis hit in 1966.
It was small, and unemployment disappeared again fairly quick.
After the crises of 1974/75, unemployment stayed.
In the crisis at the beginning of the 1980s it doubled.
I became unemployed, too, and suddenly
I was in a completely different situation.
I was unemployed for 2 years and did not get anything!
More than 2 million were unemployed.
That completely changed the situation.
Especially, within the industrial labor force
it became obvious and visible
that there was no security,
and that it was not always going uphill!
We had such crises around 1978 and 1979
where the dismissal of 2,000 people was discussed
and where it was not about "Let's get rid of capitalism!" anymore,
which was still our answer to that,
but the colleagues were saying "We want a job! At Opel!"
I think, at that time things began to change.
The students were more interested to follow their career.
The insubordination had disappeared.
In the whole of West Germany, there was a different political situation suddenly.
Also the voting for the CDU [conservative party], it all happened at once.
Opening of the Opel-GM plant in Eisenach [former East Germany] in 1990.
Production at Opel-GM was rationalized and the assembly line's ran on prolonged time.
Parts of production were outsourced
and team work was introduced:
everybody should think about how productivity could be increased.
And in this way the night shift was introduced at Opel in Bochum in 1990:
At the moment, we have an empty plant in Antwerp
that we could reopen.
But it is a better solution and one that safeguards the local plant here in Bochum
to introduce a night shift here.
The chairman of the works council Breuer (IG Metall)
did not put up resistance against such threats.
We know that General Motors is proceeding in the following way:
Investments get redirected when problems arise in this or that country
operation times of the plants get extended, or other things.
And in that case, the shirt is closer and we have to bite the bullet.
For GoG such an attitude was like surrender.
With wage sacrifice one does not save any jobs.
That is an old experience of the workers' movement.
So that has never worked, in your opinion?
No!
We give in to the sacrifice,
and the jobs are still cut
and we're promised that the ones that are left have modern working conditions
that the rest are safe, for sure.
Then the next round starts and we are told we have to reduce from 12,000 to 10,000
but those 10,000 are safe, for sure!
We realize that if we follow that logic
and if we back it up as the only alternative possible today,
as if it were a natural event,
then we help with cutting jobs.
Instead of sacrificing, the members of the opposition ask the workforce to resist.
They are even willing to accept the loss of voters.
By the end of the 1980s, the opposition had only 4 members left in the works council.
The people from GoG took this position outside the mainstream
not only because they were not corrupt.
It was also connected to their political education.
They had discussed every week since 1972,
Since the 1980s, they even organized one week of "educational leave" every year.
At that time, there was the possibility of the so-called "educational leave"
that people could leave the plant for one week,
still got paid, and could learn more skills during that time.
The first 20 years at Opel were like working away by yourself,
not positive, not negative,
and once in a while we even got a wage increase, and that wasn't bad.
But, after 20 years, when the pressure steadily increased,
I took part in an "educational leave", and I was happy that every year
I was able to get out of there for 5 days, and the employer had to pay for it.
My first "educational leave" was with IG Metall, and I said I'll never go again.
Then the colleagues persuaded me to go once again.
We will go with FESCH [an association].
I did not know what that was.
But I said, okay I will go with you.
It was as if you enter the normal world.
There was no pressure during the educational leave.
It was always great.
Through those educational leaves you got more self-confidence.
And every year that built you up a bit again.
When the political tails off a bit through private life,
I am looking forward every year to the educational leave
because I see everyone here again.
Before, I liked it even more
because there were also people from other companies.
That was even nicer and even more interesting.
You learned a bit more, you could look outside your own box.
So sometimes you would say: "Oh, that is the same in our workplace!"
Or: "What have they done against that?"
And then you tried to be braver in the plant and open your mouth
and to change something.
The people from GoG then went to France together.
We visited companies, like Alstom, for instance,
that were occupied.
My idea was that the group from Bochum learns about experiences.
For instance, when we visited Alstom, I think it was 1987,
the whole plant was occupied and was organized by the workers themselves
for one or two weeks.
So it was about learning from an experience that went beyond
the daily horizon in Bochum.
That was one aspect of the things I initiated.
The second part was to see other worlds through these visits.
For instance, there was a movement of "sans papiers" in France at the time,
of people without papers.
So we went into such dormitories
to meet African migrants, and suddenly there were discussions
with similar people who existed in Bochum, too, but they did not know them there.
For sure, that changed the colleagues who took part in them.
We could see how much it meant to them, even to go to the Philippines
to meet an armed liberation group!
That's the fundamental difference between them and the classical union activity, where,
the bureaucracy, the top union leaders
get a first class ticket and fly to somewhere in America
and meet at conferences, but the workers have nothing to do with that.
In 1993, the first "Paper to Safeguard the Local Plant" was pushed through in Bochum.
In that Paper the workforce pledged a wage sacrifice
and to increase productivity by 30% in the next 3 years.
So we heard some people from the works council.
Let's hear others who criticize the Paper.
Yes, for sure, the Paper says: "productivity increase."
"Productivity increase" means to either produce more with the same team
or to produce the same amount but with a reduced team.
That means for this region less jobs, that is a fact!
And look at how many people are unemployed outside.
Socially, we can no longer accept that.
That we just look on as jobs continue to be cut in our plant.
We are organized, we have the chance to fight against this.
Who helps those people outside?
Power relations are just like that.
They have the power.
We have to try to soften down what they force upon us
as much as possible, for the colleagues and for us,
so that we can live with it.
I would have preferred to go to the streets.
Even if I would have gotten just 60 percent,
the normal Christmas money,
and the Paper would be off the table, that would have been the better solution.
What would you have gained?
...my personality?! I don't really know how else to express it.
I would have shown that we can go to the streets and also accomplish something,
and that we don't always give in.
I don't want to discount the performance of the works council from Bochum.
I also believe my colleague, that the works councillors fought like lions,
but only at the negotiation table!
Just the fact that the Bochum workforce announced that they would strike if necessary,
or would down their tools,
resulted in improvements in certain parts oft the Paper.
So management made concessions
although the struggle never really started.
I think there was a situation 3 weeks ago when the workforce was prepared
to fight against this paper.
But how do you feel now that this will be presented to the public in two days?
For me, the key point is, yes,
the connection of the Christmas money to the sickness rate,
but more worrying is that according to the Paper the works council is compelled
to collaborate in increasing productivity.
Could you explain that?
Yes, according to the Paper work teams should be formed
with the task to produce a 30% productivity increase
in the next 3 years.
For me that's alarming because in this way we support the employers' propaganda
that the workforce and the working population would be only cost factors,
and that the costs of the employees and the collective bargaining of the unions
would be responsible for the crisis,
and that through sacrificing a part of the wage or other social benefits
we would be able to get out of the crisis together with the employers.
That is nonsense.
Between 1993 and 2010,
the workforce in Bochum was reduced from 20,000 to 5,000
Despite the fact that it agreed to Saturday working hours,
night shifts, and wage cuts.
However, many attacks were also successfully warded off.
For instance, when the exhaust pipe production was going to be outsourced.
There was a heated debate over 2 or 3 weeks
about what we can do.
Then we heard that the decisive meeting was going to happen very soon
between management and the works council.
Someone had informed us about that.
Then we decided that we will go and "visit" that meeting.
It took place in the D1 building.
We managed to persuade nearly 100 people to come.
Back then, the exhaust pipe production was really big.
Nearly 100 people in their working clothes, directly coming from work,
walked into the D1 building.
We opened the door, and they all sat there.
Chairman Breuer, the managers...
... cookies and coffee on the table and so on.
Only later I noticed the white carpet
that was 3 cm thick and covered the whole floor.
We had decided earlier, that we will not start a big discussion
but that we will give an ultimatum
until when the outsourcing plans have to be off the table.
So we presented our issues, and they all dutifully nodded and nodded.
Then we left the room, and from the corner of my eye I noticed
several colleagues who, before they left the room,
stamped and wiped off their heavy working boots on the white carpet.
And I thought to myself: "Oh, wow!"... That gave me a kick.
In the end, it was relatively successful, I cannot remember the exact result, though.
But it is one of those things I will never forget, the preparation,
the implementation, and how relatively disciplined it was,
except that stamping and brushing off on the carpet.
It was a really good thing.
I still remember in one year in the 1990s we counted,
we organized 11 actions, bigger ones or smaller ones.
We went in front of the D1 building, maybe just with 200 or 150 people,
that did not matter.
Sometimes we managed to make someone come down who told us:
"Come on, go back to work quickly!"
But in that moment the people were on the lawn demanding: "We want this and that!"
In the 1990s, as the companies began
to play off the production plants in different locations against each other,
the GoGs' operating field expanded.
Then charts appeared at the assembly lines
where you could see: 100% wage at Opel-GM, and for the same work,
you got someone in England for 78%,
in Spain for 67% ... it went down to 12% in the plant in Mexico.
I think, we have to approach the problem
that we don't allow to be forced into this spiral
of competition against workforces of other auto plants or other locations,
like Rüsselsheim or Antwerp, and be played off against each other.
Instead, we have to reach a point some time
where the policy of the works council, the so-called "location policy,"
gets dominated by central unionist demands,
and we, together with our union, proceed together,
with the VW workforce, with the Ford workforce, and with other workforces,
ultimately, not just here in Germany but world-wide,
in Antwerp, in England, and in Spain.
In the 1990s, GoG began to organize trips to GM-plants elsewhere
through it's own initiative.
In 1993, they went to Zaragoza (Spain).
Inside the unions, we needed to make sure that egoistic ideas of
national protection, trying to keep the plants in one's own country
were left behind.
When dealing with multinational companies, we need to start forging alliances
as soon as possible and as much as possible,
also with the other nationalities, in order to coordinate common strategies,
in order to stay in contact.
What do they try in your plant, what do they try in our plant?
We need to mutually share that.
In 1995, GoG colleagues went to Liverpool.
I am keen to know, how in England, in contrast to us,
things are produced, how the workforce is composed,
what kind of political aims the union is following,
and how the union is rooted in the plant,
whether they are more ready to fight than in our plant,
or whether the workforce is also relying on social partnership
like in our plant, where it is more and more like that, unfortunately.
An important question concerned the absence of employees
because of sickness or other reasons,
because, at that time in Germany, employers and the media had started a campaign
against those who "skip work" (so-called "Blaumacher").
It is interesting, what you said about having similar problems in Bochum.
Because the company tells us that we have had the highest rate of absenteeism,
and Bochum wouldn't have any problems with that.
They say, your rate of absenteeism was 3 or 4 % at the most.
We hoped to be able to establish a network
of GM-colleagues in the whole of Europe.
Today, we all know that it did not work out like that.
Otherwise, we would be at a completely different point.
But it did not happen.
It failed, but nevertheless, that was the plan and that's what we were working at.
In 2000, the Plant No. 2 in Bochum was going to be outsourced.
This was about 3,000 jobs.
The workers achieved that the colleagues had to be employed
under the same conditions as the core workforce.
Plant No. 2 was going to be outsourced back then.
and, basically, that is what happened.
And the issue had already been settled with IG Metall.
There was a provision safeguarding the existing standards for 5 years.
And, after that, everything would have been possible regarding the workforce.
The mood was simply, we cannot put up with that.
If a whole plant, like Plant No. 2 in Bochum-Langendreer,
if it is outsourced like that,
then that is not their final move.
Then one department after the other will follow,
and at some point the workforce will be very divided,
and people will work for 20 different companies.
The mood was: one company, one workforce.
And then there was the gathering in Plant No. 1 for all 3 plants.
Everyone came together at 2 p.m. in Plant No. 1.
10,000 people were there.
You have to imagine, the gathering that took place outside,
between two big factory buildings, between D3 and D4.
A provisional speaker's stage was built.
There was a truck with a load bed
that was placed sideways between the two factory halls.
We from GoG, Roland, Uwe, me, we were prepared, we went up stage
and gave our speeches.
It was a great feeling!
You stood up there on the truck and, just imagine,
there was this corridor between two halls,
and you see heads, heads, and more heads,
with no end, a mass of people as far as you could see.
Along the whole corridor: people!
... all the way to the plant gate.
I had to swallow first and then thought: Man, that is great!
That we managed to organize something like that,
and the whole workforce took part!
That was a good feeling for me.
And you realized, okay, there is solidarity among the whole workforce.
I just thought that was great.
In October 2004, the news spread that 4,000 people were going to be dismissed.
One of the most important wildcat strikes in Germany's postwar history began.
I brought pork sausage and bread rolls, in solidarity with Opel.
[Minister of Economy, SPD] I understand it, but I still think
it is wrong what happens there.
It has to be said clearly what is right and what is wrong.
The people could remember the successful experience of 2000.
It was also an experience of dignity and of relative power
that they still remembered.
In 2004, they faced the next massive threat of job cuts.
And, again, the general works council started negotiating
while the workforce, through the shop stewards,
said that it did not agree.
Out of 10,000 jobs, suddenly 4,000 jobs were subject to negotiation,
40% of the workforce.
At first, that was a shock!
Many colleagues said openly, it doesn't work that way,
we have to walk out once again.
Yesterday, during the "info hours", it was announced
that 500 people will have to leave next year.
Today, it was suddenly about 3,000 in Bochum next year.
That's every third job.
That is brutal, that is more than brutal.
We just can't put up with that.
We wanted to keep what we had, because we thought
that we had sacrificed enough in all these years.
I cannot remember how many factory agreements were finalized,
each with agreed sacrifices, and each time with promises that
if you sacrifice then it will get better.
What happened was the exact opposite,
except the sacrifice was legally committed.
I think, most colleagues said: Enough is enough!
The ballot at that time was clear:
All shop stewards from the Final Assembly
have unanimously supported this action.
And that is exactly how we have to approach things here.
We decide how this goes on, for how long,
and what our aims are.
We occupied the gates with fork lifts
so that no truck could enter or leave.
Around the clock, we were in the plant,
all shifts, and we took turns as one shift received the other.
We swapped, and then the others went home.
We arranged an information round every few hours
where the latest news from the media was given
and the latest news from those who were negotiating,
that is, the works councillors in the negotiating commission.
Then there was always a debate on the cart.
After a works councillor updated us, someone from the workforce went up
and said: "Well, that is not enough for us!"
In the evening news it was said that
in Bochum a workforce went on strike without any control of the unions.
Day 5: The tone got rougher. A management flyer asked the early shift
to return to work by Monday.
On the weekend, the Opel executive board had declared
it could also close the plant in Bochum altogether.
Everyone anxiously awaited how the early shift
will vote on continuing the strike on Monday.
Have you heard that?
No!
They stand up united!
Production will still not start today.
What is taken to the negotiations in R�sselsheim today is that
we still insist that the compulsory redundancies are withdrawn
and that the colleagues here in Bochum will have a future.
We continued the strike until Wednesday.
On Tuesday, the union called for an international day of action
in those countries where Opel-GM has plants.
It was the usual game: The political class met there, the church, priests and whoever.
In Bochum, a long procession was organized from the Opel plant to the theater.
And there they ranted against what the employers were doing.
But none of those people supported the strike.
Starting with the Chief Minister Steinbrück of Northrhine-Westphalia,
the Minister of Labor Schartau, the Mayor, what's her name again? Ottilie...
... all of them were against the strike.
That was also a good thing, because that was one of the few moments
where workers organized themselves
and also led a strike, a walkout,
formulated demands against the unions,
against the works council,
and against the political class and the large part of the political public.
It was already crumbling, and we need to be honest about that.
After 3 or 4 days, the first voices could be heard:
"Who will pay us for that?"
IG Metall? You couldn't hope that they give us strike pay.
Nothing is coming from them.
Then, on the sixth day, the decision was made:
We cannot cancel the strike just like that!
Because there was still a part of the workforce that said we need to continue.
We need to keep it up for some more days.
Because, through our strike in Bochum, production in plants elsewhere
had come to a standstill.
At the time, Bochum was a "component plant" that supplied other plants.
R�sselsheim got parts from Bochum, Antwerp, Ellesmere Port in Liverpool
were supplied from Bochum.
Through our strike, they had to stop working.
They had to send people home.
Of course, that was giving us more fighting power,
knowing that the longer we manage to hang on
the more we step on GM's feet because we disrupt their creation of value.
They had tried a bit to increase their stocks in 2004,
and they did not need to close down whole plants.
(We have to reduce those 6 days by 2 as that was a weekend.)
Still, it was clear to us, that if we strike for one or two weeks
some, back then, still had a vision of 3 weeks and more
then we can put enormous pressure on GM
in order to push through our demands.
But that's not what happened.
The works council organized a ballot.
In the "Ruhr Congress", at 11 a.m., the workforces of all 3 plants come together.
The employees are anxious.
For the first time in the history of the plants in Bochum
they are asked to vote on the end or continuation of a wildcat strike.
Obviously, the works council is also not sure what the majority wants.
That's why it does not allow an open debate.
It forces the staff to decide between negotiations or strike.
The question reads:
"Shall the works council continue to negotiate with the management
and work be resumed? Yes or no?"
The tactics of the works council work:
4,600 Opel workers want to return to work, 1,700 don't.
What's left is a bad aftertaste.
Now Antwerp stands still, R�sselsheim cannot produce anymore,
so we are leading 2:0, and now the best players are taken off the field.
After the ballot, you sat there in the hall
thinking: "My gosh, what a load of shit!"
We brought the whole of Europe to a standstill,
and the workforce votes and goes back to work?!
Usually, there are always microphones on the floor in the hall
so that colleagues can leave their seats and go there
to ask questions and join the discussion.
But there were none there.
There was only the microphone on the stage where the works councilors sat,
and later the way up there was cordoned off by the plants' security guards.
The right question would have been: Do you want to continue the strike
to put pressure on the negotiations, or do you want to stop?
That would have been the right question.
But it was asked in this other way.
My critique is that, at that moment when it happened,
GoG and other groups that wanted to continue the strike
were not capable of intervening.
Maybe they were surprised or did not have the guts,
but it would have been the right thing
in a situation where they say it is forbidden to discuss
to just ignore that and to offensively say:
In this situation, we don't accept this ballot question.
It was only afterwards that it was criticized.
I think, that was one of the weaknesses in that situation.
And that is important also for other conflicts.
There are always these situations, for instance, during strike movements,
where it is important to intervene immediately,
also in the assembly,
and where you have to break certain rules, of course.
For instance, when someone says you cannot speak now.
There are situations where the door has to be kicked in.
Would it have been possible to prevent the job cuts
if we had been able to continue the strike for a few more days?
We don't know.
But, I think, we could have demanded concessions from GM, for sure.
If the whole of Europe cannot produce anymore
then even for a company like GM things become very expensive.
I would have expected a lot more solidarity.
I know a lot of groups, at Mercedes and elsewhere,
who are involved in similar activities as GoG,
and I would have expected more from those groups.
Why did that not happen?
For me, one point is that something was missing.
A structure that would have said we don't just go to Bochum,
like, for instance, those from Opel in Rüsselsheim,
but we organize a solidarity action in Rüsselheim itself or something like that.
That is part of the weakness of some groups,
that in the course of their activity in the works councils
they transform themselves from an active collective with roots in the workforce
into mere works council groups.
And with that transformation the readiness to fight gets lost.
IG Metall would have had the structures and possibilities to make sure
that the strike gets extended to other plants.
Why didn't the union do that?
The unions do their part by thinking in a national framework.
When holding soapbox speeches they might preach internationalism
but otherwise they focus on the competitiveness of the German economy.
Instead, it would have been possible to organize the colleagues
internationally, that is, in the whole of Europe,
in order to call for a strike against the company in the whole of Europe.
Something like that would be conceivable.
After all, IG Metall is in the International Metalworkers' Federation
and the strongest force in the European Metalworkers' Federation,
and "possibly"
I say "possibly" because ideologically it cannot and doesn't want to
it would have the organizational power to organize something like that.
And many people dream about that and think
that a union exists in order to do that.
Basically, that is the sense and purpose of it,
if you have such a committee and you have the possibilities,
and everything is already in place,
interpreters and everything.
In reality, that is completely beyond the horizon
of how IG Metall understands union activity.
You meet at conferences, in committees,
and you claim that one should act in solidarity
between the different countries and companies.
But, in reality, the majority of the works councils follows the slogan:
"The shirt is closer to me than the skirt!"
And in every plant, when it is about producing engines, for instance,
they try to get as much as possible for their plant.
People sat together there who watched each other suspiciously
to see who gets what kind of investment and who doesn't.
Therefore, such a dynamic can only come from a different type of union.
One that starts by saying that the foundation of the union movement,
one that also has an idea of a different world,
is that the colleagues themselves start mobilising.
In our book, we called that "self-empowerment."
And then the others, who are affected, do the same,
like solidarity strikes.
In that case, within 2 weeks the balance of power in Europe
would have changed so that GM would have had problems
if it had made no concessions.
The point is, that many people who have different ideas about union activity,
then take an approach,
in the form of a leaflet or whatever,
by pulling their shirt open and saying: "Here I stand and I have no other choice!"
And that they say: "But now IG Metall should..."
... that's what Wolfgang always says, too.
In reality, we know, unfortunately, that it is the actual function
of IG Metall to be the way it is!
That is disillusioning, sometimes
and could lead to paralysis!
The board of the IG Metall made an agreement with General Motors
to sacrifice Opel in Bochum so that the rest of the German plants
will continue to get production orders.
And that's what happened.
A "social collective agreement" was signed that practically sealed the plant closure.
At that time, 3,000 to 3,500 people were still employed at Opel in Bochum.
That was the workforce that was still left.
Basically, you can say that with the help of the IG Metall board
the plant was successfully wiped out.
Despite the structural disadvantage to be represented by a union
which is doing the business of the company,
through the strike the workforce managed to win some money, at least.
A lot of money.
Opel-GM had to pay the highest compensations
ever paid by a German industrial company.
Sometimes, people aren't active because they know
it wouldn't lead anywhere anyhow.
Because they think they are powerless against the bureaucracy
and the existing power structures.
"As a 'little man' you have no say,
and they do what they want anyway."
So it is necessary to create opportunities for them to realize that they are capable,
to tell them: "It is possible, you just have to move your ass!
Come here, come here, go there,
and we discuss and find ways and possibilities to make it work!"
"For a unified class struggle union movement"
We are screwed! We are screwed! We are screwed!
What have the Americans done? What have we done?
We closed the door in front of us!
Yes, that's what happened!
But we are still here?
We are still here? For how long? Until 2016, and then?
What shall I do then?
I built a house and all that!
What am I supposed to do then?
You talk shit here!