GESTREKT
more strikes break out each day the west it was 58 per cent.
But no effort is being made to preserve or integrate this productive capacity. It is being destroyed. According to a survey carried out by the Ifo Institute of west German investment in east Germany in the past year, 70.3 per cent went into marketing and distribution, only 17.7 per cent went into production.
The organisation which is now responsible for east Gross National Product 1990 ERMANY 22% 17% A 15% IA 12% AVIA 10% 5% SLOVAKIA 3% Germany's 8,000 state enterprises has a single mandate - to privatise.
Renovation, upgrading, or the formulation of economic strategy are not part of its mandate.
To date, only a few hundred small enterprises.
have been sold. The rest are facing closure during this year. According to a report in Der Spiegel, the ministries in Bonn expect only 20 per cent of east German industrial capacity to exist by the end of 1991.
The effect on unemployment is dramatic. The official figures are 757,200 unemployed and 1.9 million placed on short time (effectively unemployed) - hence the recent wave of unrest.
According to employers' conservative estimates, layoffs are threatened this summer in the steel and. metal industry (540,000), the chemical industry (150,000), textiles (160,000), mining and energy (150,000), agriculture (400,000) and in the public sector (700,000).
Collapse
February saw the collapse of the airline Interflug with a loss of 2,900 jobs (bad for the workers but good for Lufthansa). By the end of this year, unemployment is expected to go as high as 4 million (out of 9 million). As a proportion of the population (16 million) this is higher than the 6 million jobless that helped bring Hitler to power in 1933.
One of the consequences of this destruction of productive capacity and increasing unemployment is the crisis in social services and in local government. Frankfurt on the Oder is a small town of 90,000, twinned with Mühlheim in the West, which is twice the size. But whereas Mühibeim raises 110 million marks in local taxes, Frankfurt's tax income is 6 million. The taxes raised from business in Mühlheim amount to 90 million marks, in Frankfurt, to 1 million marks.
An industry outside Frankfurt once employed employs 1,300. The works Small wonder then that 'disillusioned' with the promises of October 1990. and media the problem is expressed as a debate about fund public investment and promising no tax, increases.
The SPD, whose strategy would hit them in the pock› et, just repeat 'I told you so'. The German trade union likely to sanction, would secure only a few hundred limited number of jobs by paying the workers' wages for up to three years. But none of these measures address the nature or scale of the problem.
To preserve this productive capacity, to improve the infrastructure and to make use of modern technology (unavailable previously because of Western currency and trading restrictions) would require an overall plan and, under the present market conditions, a large degree of continued public ownership. But this is incompatible with the framework, agreed by all parties, of radical liberalisaI told you so' SPD leader Lafontaine tion and privatisation. Even the PDS, the most radical party with a base in east Germany, avoids any mention of planning in its economic programme.
Strikes
Many young skilled workers are moving to west Germany. According to estimates of the BDI (the employers' association); there will be about half a million workers ex-GDR working in the west this year. majority this is not an option.
Throughout February. and March there have been increasing reports of strikes and demonstrations by workers threatened with unemployment. Most of the ex-state industries have been kept running with the help of government subsidy. But at the end of June this runs out and many will have to close.
On 20 February there were strikes and demonstrations by 53,000 workers on the Baltic coast against job losses. On the same day there was a strike by 35,000 workers in the steel industry. These were followed by demonstrations numbering hundreds of thousands at the end of March in Leipzig and elseSimilar strikes and protests elsewhere are being reported almost daily as workers realise the scale of the economic disaster that threatens them. Though the ideological disorientation resulting from the collapse of the old state-planned economy and the lack of clear alternatives to market liberalisation have weakened resistance, unions such as IG Metall now appear to be playing a role in an increasingly widespread fightback.
Those that believed that the workers of Eastern Europe would accept relegation to 'third world' levels of poverty without a fight should now think again.
wage increase of just 20% to retreat in the face of widespread action by Ukraine and Vorkuta spread ing down steel plants and pathy strikes. Solidarity raltion and chaos if the miners' their victory and continuing - was The miners strike has demands, expressing the inrather than any of the facA Socialist pamphlet • Socialist Outlook PO Box 1109, London N4 2UU
Socialist Outlook April 9th 1991 Page 6 •
' Socialism After i Stalinism