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ONAL THE West German steelworkers' strike has just ended. One important development was a move to involve women.
La women's group started a street petition in support of the strike after an interview with a striker's local paper attacking it. Together with the strike leadership they then organised a meeting for the strikers' wives, and have organised the joint collection of funds for the families. The women also attended the mass meetings, as shown in our Europe.
The demand for a shorter working week, with no loss of pay and no become so important because of the steady rise of long-term, structural unemployment.
Employers like Times Newspapers are using the economic crisis to try workforce by labour-saving technology.
Such moves are the other side German miracle'. In steel, for instance, no fewer than 36,000 jobs went in 1975-77. Now the workers have had enough.
The vote for strike action in the Ruhr was 87 per they cheered Rudolf Judith, a Icader or me ru-melan union when he recalled the co-operation of pre-war steel bosses with the Nazis.
'One really has the impression here, he said, that the employees are many plants as unnecessary ballast. when the economy becalmed, they can simply be the ship.' speed-up, has to trim the going round the clock.
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thrown overboard to lighten The workers' demand for a 35-hour week, as well as a 5 per cent pay rise, aims not only to out. preserve jobs but to create new Yet ones. Because steelmaking is a continuous process, a reduc- working tion in the working week would alternative force the employers to take on a "fifth team' to keep production "job-creation" imposed by the working class increasingly - is badly needed in West unemploy ment is 4.3 per cent and would be much higher but for the example. shipping of tens of thousands of immigrant workers back to In Belgium mass action has reductions in without loss of pay. cent of the in the petroleum ACTION gas, electricity, multiple stores, and now covered by such agreements.
In Britain, too, the demand for a 35-hour week has been most of this THE PEOPLE OF ZIMBABWE WANT YOUR SONS & DAUGHTERS TO COME HOME autumn's claims. But the union leaders' failure to campaign for this demand has tended mean that it is the first thing to It was supposed to be central part of the Ford claim. But there was nothing about it in the final settlement. And the Post Office Engineers' struggle for a 35-hour week was sold this demand is an elementary way of uniting the class an TO 1 capitalist scourge of unemployment only Britain, but throughout Western Europe.
The European capitalists are operating on multinational level. The takeover of the Chrysler plants in Britain by Peugeot is just one The way to stop them using the workforce of one country against that of another is joint action together.
The need for such action has even been recognised by the European TUC, which organised an international day of action against unemployment last April. In Italy, Greece, Belgium and Spain this was marked by strikes and mass meetings lasting two or three In Britain, however, all the TUC did was to go and talk to the government about the need economic growth. That must have been consolation to the more than 6 million unemploved ir PLIC Common Market countries!
CO-ORDINATE We are now seeing efforts to create West European institutions which Cal. ordinate the capitalists' attempts to solve the crisis at the expense of the workforce. One step in this is next year's European elections This is both a challenge and an opportunity for the workers movement. The European elections can be used as a focus to put forward the idea of a different, socialist Europe one run by working people themselves in their own interests.
This would be immensely aided by common action for the shorter working week against unemployment including active support for all those like the West German steelworkers who go into struggle around this demand.
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THE 35-HOUR WEEK is rapidly becoming standard feature of union claims throughout Western It was recently at the heart of the first strike by German steelworkers in the Ruhr for 50 years.