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prol-position news #1 | 3/2005
This is the first issue of the Prol-position Newsletter. The newsletter is an open project discussing and circulating articles from different regions, translated from different languages, and reporting on different spheres of exploitation and proletarian struggle around the world. More...
Wildcat strike at GM/Opel in Bochum, Germany
Fear over losing ones job, threats of relocation and outsourcing, the closure of workplaces, wage freezes and increased pressure at work (and to accept any kind of work) leads to “disempowerment” of workers, so they say in “Die Zeit”. It that true? Does this strike not show just the opposite? A few hundred workers organized themselves independently from the union in the clear knowledge that they could force Opel, Europe-wide, to its knees – and how! It impressed hundreds of thousands of workers, provided the VW workers with a substantially better final agreement than their personnel manager. More...
The explicit General Motors’s program in week 2004.36 about the plants in Rüsselsheim (Opel in Germany) and Trollhattan (SAAB in Sweden) and the underbidding when it comes to sending classmates to unemployment, is only about speaking out clearly what is always an imperative with the competition between plants and workers’ collectives. A competition that is most fierce within the major companies. More...
In November 1999, Volkswagen labor director Hartz presented the new project called “5000 x 5000“ to the public. 5000 working spaces would be established to produce the new Volkswagen “Touran“ model in Wolfsburg (Germany) and Hannover (Germany). The goal would be to bring “work places from abroad“ back to Germany. The project wanted to show that even under German (high-wage) conditions it would be possible to create profitable production. More...
Capitalists in Germany try to force workers in the Western part to accept major pay cuts and longer working hours - a kind of ‘downward’ adjustment to the conditions in the Eastern part. The Opel/GM management told workers in their plants in Bochum in January 2005 that they will have to accept the same conditions as workers in the Eisenach plant (Eastern part of Germany). While the negotiations in the public sector are still going on, the workers here can also expect pay cuts and longer working hours - again a ‘downward’ adjustment to the conditions in the East. More...
Protests against welfare-reform in Germany
While the initiatives of the unemployed, the social forums and other alliances were preparing for a hot autumn for months, the Monday demonstrations against the welfare reform disrupted the silence of the midsummer break in east-German cities. Several thousand people took the streets week after week. What had begun as a small protest in Magdeburg grew as rapidly as it shrank again, after it became clear that the government would only carry out cosmetic adjustments to the so-called Hartz IV reform. More...
Update on Hartz IV/welfare-reform
The Wildcat-article (see above) was written a few months ago to understand the background and purpose of the Hartz IV-reform and the movement against it. Since then the new unemployment benefit (Arbeitslosengeld 2: Alg2) has been introduced and the municipal social security offices and the federal employment agency (Arbeitsagentur) have formed joint offices for managing those getting Alg2. From the start, problems arose. More...
Struggles of migrant workers in Paris, France
The article was published in the first issue of the new French revue La Question Social - Revue Libertaire de Reflexion et de Combat (The Social Question - Libertarian Journal for Reflection and Struggle). The following is the part of the text dealing with the strikes at Frog Pub, a strike that was less internationally known than the McDonalds strike. More...
We were travelling around France this autumn and along our way were at three very different confrontations. These conflicts have some typical characteristics, and can serve as examples of the various different starting points and conditions of struggle. More...
Aviation: Two struggles in Britain and Belgium
Here are two shorter reports about struggles in the aviation sector. We visited a picket line of striking baggage handlers at Gatwick Airport in London and a demonstration of DHL-workers in Bruxelles. We think that the aviation sector in general has got some interesting political characteristics and potentials for future struggles. More...
Construction: Struggle at Laing O’Rourke, Britain
Laing O’Rourke is a major construction company in the UK and the main contractor on the Kings Cross Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL), one of the biggest and most significant construction projects in the UK. They are also builder of UK spy-base GCHQ and many Police renovations. In Autumn 2004 the workers had a series of protests over the new contracts (or contricks as the Laing workers are calling them) and unfair dismissal. They have been supported by direct action groups. More...
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