GERMANY :"Participation" in Unemployment

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Tinue. With unemployment now at 4½ per cent of the labour force, the announcement on July 14th by the highly respected IFO economic research institute that unemployment will continue to rise at least until November has added another touch of gloom.

But unemployment is simply the result of the German SPD 'Labour' government pursuing the same policies that Healey and Wilson are now attempting to inflict on the British working class - seeking to bring down the rate of inflation through massive unemployment and cuts in workers' living standards.

In the midst of lengthening dole queues, Chancellor Schmidt proudly boasts that he has brought down the rate of inflation from 7% in February to 6% in May.

At the same time Schmidt is using the increased terrorist activity in West Germany as a pretext for extending the apparatus of police repression and surveillance in preparation for mounting working class resistance to unemployment.

It is in this context of rising unemployment and a Labour government moving continually to the right, that the question of workers' control raises itself in West Germany.

'Joint' Decision Systems of 'joint decision making' abound throughout West German industry both at the level of the firm itself and at the plant level where joint participation' works councils vomprising unions and management exist. Experience in West Germany, therefore, exposes the whole nature of schemes for worker participation such as those embodied in Wilson's Industry Bill in Britain.

The widespread existence of worker participation in West Germany is an expression not of the strength but is a weakness of the German working class.

The post-war 'economic miracle' of a rapid rate of economic growth in West Germany was based directly on the political defeats inflicted on the German working class by Fascism.

Throughout the period of the Nazi regime wages were driven downwards. The total destruction of independent working class organisation by the Nazis made this possible. After the war, however, the massive destruction of German industry through allied bombing coupled with the historic defeats of the German working class together with the extension of massive credit by world capitalism to finance 'reconstruction' laid the basis for ą restoration of capitalism with a high rate of economic growth.

Although the allied military in West Germany immediately after the waI West German unemployed dismantled the trappings of the Fascist state apparatus and restored free trade unions, the development of works councils and joint participation • schemes was an attempt by the bourgeoisie to continue a vital aspect of Fascism -the tying of the working class to the state and the ruling class.

The fundamentally anti-working class nature of the worker participation systems can be clearly seen in the existence of severe penalties for the revelation of 'business secrets' by worker representatives. (This is an important aspect of Wilson's Industry Bill proposals in Britain). Clearer still is the fact that workers elected on to the local works councils are prohibited by law from calling for strike action.

Because of this a system of shop stewards' committees has evolved at factory level totally separate from and independent of the works councils and the trade union bureaucracy.

In the coal, iron and steel industries there exists parity of representation of workers and management. Last autumn a bill to extend this to all industry was defeated by the senate.

Right-wing opposition to the bill was based'not on employer opposition to the system as such -they have supported it for the last thirty years - but fear of the growing resistance of workers to unemployment. In exactly the same way the CBI resisted the 'Industrial Democracy' aspects of Wilson's Industry Bill.

Side-Track

Finance Minister, Hans Apel, addressing the annual conference of the DGB (German TUC) in Hamburg in May, attempted to persuade the trade unions to accept a watered-down version of the bill involving less than parity representation.

This whole discussion is a complete side-track. The task now facing German workers is a complete break from 'worker participation' and for independent working class action against growing unemployment.

The struggle to open the books - reveal "business secrets' to independently elected trade union committees answerable to shopfloor only as the first step in the campaign for nationalisation without compensation (except to small savers) is the only viable programme against rising unemployment.

Factory committees independent of the fake participation schemes must be elected with the task of leading the fight for workers' control of production in opposition to workers' participation in speed-up and redundancy.

Control

Workers have no interests in common with the employers. The task of the unions is to assert working class interests and control the management, in prepartion to remove the employers' representatives and introduce full workers' management after nationalisation.

Along with nationalisation a programme of useful public works must • be established to ensure continuity of work and enable the development of a socialist economic plan for German industry.

This programme, of course, comes into direct confrontation with the protection of business secrets and prohibition of advocacy of strikes embedded in the cúrrent West German system of worker It is around the struggle for such a programme that a new leadership carrying forward the Transitional Programme of the Fourth International must be built in the working class in West Germany. ALI Wate gate

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Gloomy forecasts for the West German economy cont-