*From The Archives Of "Women And Revolution"-The Lessons Of Class Struggle- Hamburg: Women Spark Shipyard Occupation (1984)

Markin comment:

The following is an article from the Spring 1985 issue of "Women and Revolution" that may have some historical interest for old "new leftists", perhaps, and well as for younger militants interested in various cultural and social questions that intersect the class struggle. Or for those just interested in a Marxist position on a series of social questions that are thrust upon us by the vagaries of bourgeois society. I will be posting more such articles from the back issues of "Women and Revolution" during Women's History Month and periodically throughout the year.

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Markin comment:

With the desperate need to ramp up the class struggle today (from our side, the bosses have been on a seemingly eternal offensive) this is a good article not only about the vanguard role that women can, and have, played in important class struggles in the past but about the tactics and strategy necessary to win struggles, ifonditions make that possible.


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The Lessons Of Class Struggle- Hamburg: Women Spark Shipyard Occupation (1984)

Last fall in West Germany strikes and plant occupations broke out in the key Hamburg and Bremen shipyards against massive layoffs of the workforce. The nine-day Hamburg HDW [Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft] shipyard occupation in September was sparked in large part by the militant actions of a group of women, wives of shipyard workers. W&R, along with comrades of the Trotzkistische Liga Deutschlands (TLD), section of the international Spartacist tendency, recently spoke at length with Birgit Wojak, one of the main activists of the women's group; we are pleased to print below excerpts from this very exciting interview.

The TLD had raised key demands during the occupation, in leaflets and discussions with workers in Hamburg and nationally, to extend and win the workers' strikes. These included: "For factory occupations in all plants hit by mass layoffs and closings! For a joint national shipyard, steel and mine strike!" Layoffs were hitting the vital Ruhr steel and mining districts. At the same time the Board of Directors of HDW (which is owned by a state conglomerate) announced that in HDW's Hamburg branch one half of the 4,500 workers would be laid off and in HDW's Kiel branch one out of every three of the 9,000 workers. This "hot autumn" of workers' demonstrations, strikes and occupations
potentially posed the most important class battle for the German workers in 30 years.

The Hamburg and Bremen shipyard occupations took place as political ferment in West Germany is greater than at any time since the founding of the Federal Republic in 1948. The deployment in West Germany of the first-strike Pershing 2 missiles, under the command of the anti-Soviet fanatic Reagan, has deeply polarized West German society. The dramatic actions of the North Sea shipyard workers is a further sign that the West German capitalist order, long the relatively stable core of NATO Europe, is now beginning to break down under the combined impact of war mobilization and economic crisis.

But as Wojak graphically describes, not only the "IG Metall" union bureaucracy and the SPD [Social Democratic Party], but even the so-called "leftists" who had control of the Hamburg occupation itself, did everything in their power to undercut the struggle and prevent the workers from carrying it to victory. The main brake on the German working class is the Social Democrats. Though out of power when these shipyard layoffs were announced, they were the architects of the West German bourgeoisie's present austerity program which has meant massive attacks on the working class.

The dramatic Hamburg occupation—and its betrayal— showed above all the need to forge a revolutionary working-class party by splitting the working-class SPD ranks away from the pro-capitalist tops.

The TLD's aggressive propaganda campaign around the occupations presented a broad programmatic alternative for the workers. Its leaflet noted the importance of the foreign workers: "Yesterday and today these foreign brothers are in the front lines of the struggle.... Full citizenship rights for foreign workers and their families!" The TLD further noted: "While the IG Metall bureaucracy wants to stiffen the backbone of the German steel magnates in the protectionist Common Market cartel, the 'left' is mobilizing for a 'National Steel Company/ or a 'National Shipyards Company.' But if the capitalist economy is not done away with, these nationalized companies (like HDW) will serve the capitalists. As opposed to the Rostock Yards only a few miles away [in East Germany], whose order books are filled with contracts for icebreakers, passenger ships, etc., running for years thanks to the Soviet planned economy, the capitalist 'solution’ to the crisis in the shipyards is arms production: battleships and submarines for war against the Soviet Union."

Lenin said that the fate of the October Revolution was inseparable from the victory of the German October. The converse of that is that the failure of the German working class, the best organized working class in Europe, to live up to its revolutionary obligations has led to two world imperialist wars. The TLD's leaflet concluded: "A militant strike in steel, the shipyards and coal would show the workers the way to prevent stationing NATO first-strike weapons. By strikes—not 'minutes of warning' against the 'superpowers.' For the Breits and the Loderers the Bundes-wehr is a 'peace force. They hate the Soviet Union and fear a new Bremen Soviet Republic, a new Ruhr Red Army—a German October.

"For the revolutionary reunification of Germany by a social revolution in the West and proletarian political revolution in the East! Smash the anti-Soviet war drive! For unconditional military support of the DDR/Soviet Union! For a socialist planned economy! For the Socialist United States of Europe!"

W&R: Can you tell us something about your background that you feel contributed to your becoming an activist in this struggle and occupation? Wojak: The thing that made me just want to do something—I didn't know what I wanted to do—was that my mother died, basically because she worked herself to death. Normally she shouldn't have been allowed to work at the job she did because she had asthma. She worked as a presser in a knitting mill and couldn't handle the wool dust. My father had to retire early as a partial invalid. He lost a leg, also worked 25 years at HDW as a welder, and now he can hardly do anything. The only thing my father had was my mother. He's just vegetating. And that was the main thing that made me say, that's not going to happen to me, and I wasn't going to put up with it any longer. And they want to fire my husband from the HDW plant.

W&R: Plans were announced for massive layoffs in the shipbuilding industry in early spring and a "warning strike" was called, including demonstrations. How did you become involved in the struggle? Wojak: I was approached by my husband to get involved with this women's group—they were actually all wives of men who were already active in the HDW shipyard and who were also affiliated with one political current or another. I met the women's group myself at a forum and found out that they had gone into the Hamburg parliament, tried to storm the microphone to draw attention to the situation of workers in the entire shipbuilding industry. The mike was cut off immediately so that they couldn't say anything. And because they had counted on that they had written an "Open Letter" to the mayor of Hamburg, the Social Democrat von Dohnanyi, and rained these leaflets from the gallery down onto all the parliamentarians. And they unfurled a banner reading, "HDW and MAN wives fight together with their men." Two women were picked out and criminal charges were brought for disrupting a public parliamentary session.

I met these women at a forum on this HDW issue, and Klose, the former Social Democratic mayor of Hamburg, was present. What struck me about this forum in particular was the workers; there were a whole lot of workers from HDW there. They were absolutely furious and wanted a complete change. And this Klose, he just tried to channel it into orderly channels that he could keep in hand. In the beginning, when I heard about what they did, it seemed to be a little bit too radical to me. But that Klose wanted to steer the workers in a very definite direction that he could keep in hand seemed even more awful. So I decided then to go to this women's meeting and take a look for myself.

At this first women's meeting I went to, in April, one woman said right away, yeah, maybe we can still see to it that there are a couple of strikes at HDW, and if it all
doesn't do any good, then we have to occupy the plant. And I thought, sure, if they occupy the plant, that's a long way off, and you don't have to go along with them. But during the occupation, in September, it turned out that some of the workers— I count myself among them as well—that we were the ones who carried out the occupation, whereas the women who had been talking weren't at all the ones who did the occupying. These women as well as so-called "activists" in the plant saw the plant occupation as a means to put pressure on the government to save jobs. And then when I participated in this occupation and got angry every time I had to leave the occupied shipyard and had to sleep alone in my bed at home, I saw it as if I had seized a piece of this shipyard along with all those workers. W&R: The women's committee waged a hunger strike that led up to and in some sense precipitated the September shipyard occupation. What motivated it?

Wojak: In all our work between the warning strike in the spring and during the occupation in September, we tried to do all kinds of actions to mobilize the workers so that they would occupy or put up any line of resistance against the layoffs at all. Whenever there was any kind of plant assembly or when any new events in the shipyard came up we stood in front of the gates with our banner and passed out leaflets, calling on the men to defend themselves, to do something, offered them our help. The result was that the men laughed at us. Then this situation came up in a plant assembly where we said, either we're going to storm the microphone now, just like in parliament, or you guys read these things aloud. And the guys running the meeting were scared to death that we'd storm the mike, because they didn't expect the workers to do the same thing the parliamentarians did, namely nothing, when the mike was turned off, but that the workers would probably resist. So under this pressure, they read what we had written. And for the rest of the plant assembly we were surrounded by a ring of company cops. W&R: What were your demands? Wojak: Our demands were basically the men's demands. They were for the 35-hour week, statification of the shipyard under control of the workforce (we extended it to real control). Then there was the men's demand for "useful alternative production," and that filter systems be installed in power plants so they don't pollute the atmosphere so much. In fact, there was quite a hard discussion with one of the women in the women's group about this, with the result that the men raised "alternative production" as a very hard demand and we just raised it on the side.

W&R: Who were they, and what were the political currents in the women's group?

Wojak: The political people in the plant were primarily from the DKP [pro-Moscow Stalinists], people from the GIM [German section of the United Secretariat], people from the SPD, from the union—in fact all the political groupings were present. In the women's group there were the DKP, KPD [Maoists], GIM; there were people from Arbeiterpolitik [Brandlerites] who got in through women's groups in the union. It was the same with the Social Democrats who also had influence through the unions and some women's groups.
This discussion about "useful alternative production" that came up in the women's group was introduced by me, because I was the only really unpolitical woman there and saw immediately what this "useful alternative production" basically meant for jobs. I told them that it's baloney and meaningless for jobs, whereas all the others supported it at first. The minute I started this discussion I had the feeling that all these women had a narrow-minded view of the whole situation because of their political orientation. That led me to view everything essentially more critically than before.

Maybe one more reason why the hunger strike happened. We wanted to spur the men on to fight. And we had found out that at Hoesch, in the Ruhr, where layoffs in the steel industry are also an issue, there was also a women's group, and they had waged a hunger strike. We had exhausted all the possibilities—standing in front of the gates; in plant assemblies; we went into the union and meetings organized by the union, where we were regularly thrown out. But the men saw us, and you couldn't pretend we weren't there. The Hoesch women had videos of their hunger strike and of the men's strike, and they advised us, if you do a hunger strike, there's no way it can fall through—you definitely have to do it.

From the very beginning we said we don't want to starve ourselves to get sick or die or something, but we agreed from the first if we do a hunger strike to limit it to three days. Because we thought, three days: that's enough to get it in the public eye. And if the men haven't gotten it together after three days to pull off a decent action, then even a ten-day hunger strike won't do any good.

W&R: So how long did the hunger strike go on before the occupation began?

Wojak: We waged a three-day hunger strike right before the occupation. When it got under way there were five women who took part in it from the first to the last day. And there were nine on the last day. We didn't just want to wage a hunger strike without drawing in the men in the shipyard. Because we didn't know that they would publish the list with the mass layoffs at just the same time, we had convinced the men beforehand to carry out an action in the plant as well, if we did this hunger strike. We won them over to boycotting overtime at that point. And then-it became known in the yards—that was the afternoon before the hunger strike, right before quitting time—as people found out that 1,354 people were supposed to be laid off, there was a symbolic occupation of the plant gate for two hours, with only 1,200 people taking part.

The first day of our hunger strike, when nobody knew anything about it beforehand, even the men in the shipyard, about 80 percent of the workforce said completely spontaneously, if the women go on a hunger strike then we'll boycott the canteen for the day. That was a very important thing, because you could see that we women were recognized by the men in the shipyard for the first time. The canteen had been contracted out to a private company before the layoffs were announced, and some women who worked in the canteen were thrown out and rehired for considerably less pay—we wanted to boycott the canteen until the women got the same pay as before.

All the men who were at all political had laughed at us before for this demand, and said that no worker would follow this demand because their own stomachs are more important than other people's stomachs. And the fact that 80 percent carried out this canteen boycott— and they really went hungry, because they didn't know they were going to boycott the canteen and didn't bring sandwiches from home—that proves that they were simply wrong, that the workers forgot their own empty stomachs in their solidarity.
This whole hunger strike was received by all the workers in the shipyard extremely well anyway, although they hardly dared to approach us because of their preconceptions—these poor, weak women, they're standing there and what's more, going hungry for us, and what have we done? They could hardly look us in the eye. And after quitting time that evening, here came all the workers and they brought us flowers. Most of them just kind of shoved them in our hands and walked on by.

W&R: So how did the actual plant occupation begin?

Wojak: The first one to call for an occupation, or for a massive action, I believe, was me. After the three days of the hunger strike were over, there was a closing rally. We had gotten an enormous amount of solidarity and over DM 9,000 ($4,500) in contributions. Several plants declared their solidarity, and it was not only for the women but for solidarity against all layoffs.

We held a rally at the end where each of the women who had taken part in the hunger strike was supposed to say something to the brothers in the shipyard. And I was the last one, and I had lost my notes. So I just called on the men to just do something, and if they didn't fight, that we women would think up something to do to them that would be pretty nasty. W&R: Lysistrata meets the class struggle. Wojak: But the effect of that was not that they all got terribly scared of me or the women, but they applauded it wildly, they cheered it, they picked it up like something they'd wanted to say themselves for a long time. And finally somebody said it. The hunger strike was over on Friday and then came the weekend. The gates were picketed from the outside so that no overtime could go on—organized by the men and some of the women picketed too.

There was a general plant assembly during the hunger strike where the men fought with the bosses and got us the right to speak. A plant assembly is where the whole plant comes together in one room, organized by the union—there's a minimum of four assemblies annually. And the Management Committee [the bosses] and the plant council are there and make reports. Every individual worker can speak.60 this plant assembly continued on Monday morning. It ended with a march of the workers through the inner city in a demonstration of 3,000. And after the demonstration all the workers went back into the plant and continued the plant assembly and then voted to occupy the plant. And that was adopted 100 percent.

W&R: And who was elected the leadership of the occupation?

Wojak: There was a prominent supporter of the DKP, who had worked out this occupation plan just in case. And they were essentially the people who had been working together beforehand—like the DKP, SPD, KPD, GIM, unionists.

W&R: What was the relationship of the official union leadership of the Metalworkers [IG Metall] to the occupation?

Wojak: Before the occupation the IG Metall didn't look upon it kindly and it didn't look on the women's activities kindly either. A week before the hunger strike somebody from the union put out the word that the HDW women are dead, they don't exist anymore. And then when this demonstration through the center of town took place and afterwards the occupation was voted, they were singing a different tune all of a sudden. Because they probably saw that the workers just couldn't be stopped. So they said, we'll support every action; go ahead, and we'll always be behind you. Only I'm talking about the local union organization in Hamburg—there wasn't so much as a letter of solidarity from the IG Metall from the rest of the country. During the occupation the union reps didn't behave worse than the "activists" in the plant, which were in all these parties, but they were awful enough themselves.

W&R: We haven't discussed the laws that come from the 1950s—the "Factory Regulation Law" (Betreefasver-rassungsgesetz). Can you explain why this law is followed so slavishly, and what it in fact means with regard to workers' struggles?

Wojak: The "Factory Regulation Law" is a law the government passed that means limitations on the workers, especially in strikes. It's a terribly thick book that's not easy to explain. But for example it says that in your plant you can't just support strikes in other plants or collect money for them. All the plant assemblies— how they are to be held, whether there are secret or open ballots, are governed by it. And a plant occupation is a violation of the "Factory Regulation Law" because a worker can't just seize the plant that belongs to someone else.

W&R: The fact that the members of the plant council are bound to silence is also laid down in the "Factory Regulation Law" as well, including about layoffs. Wojak: Yes. In the case of this list of 1,354 people to be laid off, for example, the members of the plant council were obligated not to make that public. This law basically just hinders the workers from using their power m any way whatsoever against the bosses. And the unions haven't done anything against it and are therefore complicit.

W&R: What was the role of the women's committee during the occupation?

Wojak: Pretty pathetic, because we had set as our goal calling on the men to wage a fight. And in fact we reached that goal with the hunger strike. So during the occupation we didn't want to stand on the sidelines; but we really didn't know at all what we ought to do
I myself concentrated on extending the strike together with two other women. We went to AC Weser, to a shipyard in Bremen where they had decided long before the HDW occupation to occupy\ this shipyard because there was no more putting the brakes on these workers or holding them back from doing an action like that. So we drove to Bremen and were totally depressed when we got there, because the conditions under which the shipyard was occupied were really awful for the workers. They had one last ship in Bremen which was up for repairs, and then the whole shipyard was supposed to be shut down, closed

We weren't allowed to speak to the workers there before the occupation was voted. And when they did vote to occupy, you could see that a crime was perpetrated against the workers, because the occupation was coupled with the condition that the necessary repairs for this one ship still had to go on during the occupation. Further, the occupation in Bremen was; an extremely late point in time—one day before the occupation in Hamburg was given up, and it w; planned that way.

During the HDW occupation a ship was literal kidnapped from the HDW workers. The cables were cut. One worker was injured, not very seriously, bi people could in fact have been killed. We took the brothers in Bremen a cable from this captured ship as warning that they should keep a close watch on the ship. The workers welcomed us with cheers. We g more applause for what we said there than ever before although it was just to give them a little courage at really nothing more. Afterwards we also discussed with a whole lot of workers, and a lot of them who h been for going on with these repairs changed this opinion within five minutes and didn't want to do it anymore.

Another guy, the DGB [German trade-union federation] chairman in Bremen, spoke, and first express his solidarity and cozied up to them like mad and said you guys are in an unusual situation; so an unusual situation demands unusual means and you guys have
grasped them. And it's right that you have occupied your shipyard and you ought to occupy it a while longer—and then you ought to let the bosses and the politicians decide what ought to happen to the shipyard. And even then the workers applauded. And there was this worker sitting next to me during this speech, and it just slipped out of my mouth: how can this man be allowed to speak here? Why doesn't somebody throw him out? Then he really thought about it, at first he didn't say anything at all, then he said, yeah, that's outrageous, what he's saying here. He can't be allowed to do that. But then the guy up front was already gone. But before, this guy had clapped too.

We had these buttons with "Stop the death of HDW in installments—HDW must stand" on them, with the HDW insignia and over that "HDW Occupied" on a red background. And a worker in Bremen just had to have it, and he gave me his helmet. It has a sticker on one side, "AC Weser Occupied," and on the other "HDW Occupied."

When we women came back from this shipyard occupation, we didn't have the feeling that this occupation would be a support for the HDW workers, but that it was something designed to. go against workers' struggles. When we got back to HDW, we told the strike committee what was going on, that AC Weser wouldn't be a support for Hamburg and that they would have to extend the struggle in other ways. They said it wasn't right to tell the workers something like that. I did tell the workers that, and I know one other woman—from the GIM—also told it to the workers.

W&R: The TLD raised the demand to extend the strike to mining and steel, where there were also plans for substantial layoffs and firings. How do you feel about that demand, and given a revolutionary leadership, do you think it could have been an outgrowth of the shipyard occupation?

Wojak: It would have been possible, definitely. The question of extension was already very close, even without a revolutionary leadership, and only a spark would have been necessary to ignite it. But with a revolutionary leadership there would have been a guarantee for extending it.

W&R: How did the occupation end, and what did the workers win or lose?

Wojak: The HDW occupation lasted nine days. The mass of workers lost their jobs. The layoffs were carried out just like they had been planned. The layoffs are continuing today. The workers in the plant have worse working conditions than before, there's speedup. There have already been two deaths as a result.

The reason the occupation was broken off then was: yeah, they said we have the chance of getting a decent severance plan. They didn't even get the severance plan they had before the occupation but one significantly worse.

The foreign workers are in a very bad position. They are the ones primarily hit by the layoffs. About 50 percent of the foreign workers at HDW were fired. And they can be deported immediately if they don't get a new job, and they don't have a chance to get a new job either. So they won absolutely nothing, except when one or the other can draw the lessons—that you have to design an occupation differently, that is, not carry out an occupation under such conditions, but from the very beginning set the conditions yourself and not let them be dictated to you.

The occupation ended with a general plant assembly, which includes the lower- and middle-level management. Then the Management Committee has the right to take part; most of the time politicians are also invited—but not to this one. The Management Committee announced that if they didn't give up the occupation then they might fire the whole workforce— in one fell swoop. Without notice. People weren't quite convinced that that would in fact happen. But in the 70s that did happen once, when two shipyards, the Deutsche Werft and the Howaldtswerke fused. They fired the whole workforce because they were on strike, and afterwards they just hired back the part that they needed. So the threat of firings was in the air. Then there was the second thing. The Management Committee had announced that if Hamburg resisted and continued the occupation, the works would go deeper and deeper in the red, and then they wouldn't have any other choice but to split off Hamburg and Kiel from one another, as affiliates or even as two independent companies. But this plan has existed a long time, even without the occupation.

W&R: What was the role of the DKP and the KPD and the GIM during the occupation, and in the plant assembly meeting?

Wojak: From the first moment they set their stakes all on negotiations—negotiations with the politicians in Bonn and Schleswig-Holstein, since HDW is 100 percent state-owned. Those are both Christian Democratic governments. And their role was precisely to put pressure on these politicians, to say, "Do something about the shipyard please. Don't throw all these people out onto the street, after all." They all agreed completely on that. Those were always the things that kept coming up even before the occupation, in strikes or other actions—apply pressure. You can also see it in this program for "useful alternative production." That was drafted by people from the DKP, from the GIM— in effect a somewhat broader version of the strike committee together with people from the union and other activists. Then the union took it up and printed it as a program. For all practical purposes their aim is to give the capitalists a hand, how to make it, if you can just get a little bit more capital to boot, without having to fire guys.

W&R: I understand that in the course of the occupation a GIM supporter in the workforce put up a banner of Solidarnos'c'. How was this received?

Wojak: This Solidarnos'c' banner actually only had a slight meaning for the workforce. It was one banner among many. There were other banners from other plants, for example AEG Schiffbau brought over a huge banner. Such banners were received with more applause and many more workers also crowded around them. Solidarnos'c' itself was seen as the shipyard workers there going into the streets, and they stuck together and fought for their rights. Solidarnos'c'' real role wasn't seen; most of the workers don't know much about Solidarnos.

The thing is, they tried to block every political discussion in the union. There was a band in the yard one evening and they were singing some kind of political things, and a guy from the SPD took the mike away from them and said, look, leave politics out of this; the shipyard occupation isn't a political affair. The workers who got wind of it were pretty pissed off. And I noticed how they attacked the union bureaucrats pretty hard: what is this, and everybody can say what they want to here, and even if there's political stuff here—there's a highly political situation at HDW. He went away then, but the musicians didn't have the nerve to start again. But that was just the way discussions about Solidarnos'c' or issues in a larger context during the occupation were blocked, and the GIM supporters hung the sign up, intervened by doing that, but didn't tell the workers anything about it.

W&R: What role did these left groups play in the plant assembly discussion regarding the occupation in the face of the fact that the occupation had spread to Bremen, so that ending the occupation at that particular point in Hamburg was particularly criminal.

Wojak: It was criminal. The political groups were all straining to reach the same goal, told the workers, yes, under these conditions where we have to take into account that the whole workforce will be fired, where there's no sort of severance plan at all, and then the poor foreigners will be fired and won't even be able to take home any severance pay at all if they're deported—at such a point we can't call on you guys to continue the occupation, although we would have really liked to. That was what was said during the occupation, during the vote, by all the political groups. And Bremen. The workers in Bremen were of course terribly disappointed. They probably did see it as criminal, what happened in Hamburg. Only the strike committee (which was the same as the plant council in Bremen) said, what's so bad about that? Hamburg and Bremen don't have anything to do with each other.

W&R: Let's return to the question of the foreign workers. It's my understanding that the foreign worker also supported the end of the occupation even though they had the most to lose by the layoffs. Why was that?

Wojak: It was essentially Turkish workers who sup ported ending the occupation. Not because they were Turkish, but simply because the Turks speak the leas German, and because they were absolutely no properly provided with information. Hardly anything was translated. There was one Yugoslavian woman in our women's group and we were the first ones in the shipyard to have leaflets and placards in Turkish and Yugoslavian when we went into the plant assembly during the hunger strike, and a lot of foreign workers stood up. They applauded us and brought us chairs, because finally somebody in the shipyard was thinking of the foreign workers. I believe that without the women, the foreigners wouldn't even have known what was going on at the beginning of the occupation.

There was one Turkish guy in the yard who could speak good German. They told him, this is the way things are, and then it was up to him the extent to which he passed on the information to his brothers, or not. He handled it by saying, listen, the next vote is going to be about this or that, and if I raise my hand, that's correct, so you guys do the same. Of course, in this vote on the occupation that wasn't possible—it was secret, and nobody raised his hand. Most of the Turks had no idea what they should do and were totally unsure of themselves.

I heard that a couple of days beforehand there were also people in the yard who had threatened the Turkish workers. There was almost a physical fight. They threatened that if the Turks continued to participate actively in the occupation they would beat them up, or they threatened them in other ways. As far as I could find out these were people that came from the [Turkish fascist] Grey Wolves.

W&R: Did the workers in the shipyard occupation take any measures such as forming workers defense guards to defend against the fascistic Grey Wolves or other fascist groups that might attempt to break up the occupation?

Wojak: No, none at all. There was no defense, neither against the fascist groups, nor against the scabs, nor against the police attacks that had been threatened.
I have to add that there were a whole series of scabs during the occupation: almost all the white-collar workers worked during the occupation, and after a couple of days parts of the machine shop started working—in the end I believe it was half of the machine shop that worked, first secretly and then openly.

First the workers said, look, they're working. They can't do that. We're going to throw them out. And then there were discussions with the strike committee, and they said, no, that would disturb the "peace and quiet" in the yard, and peace and quiet and order [Ruhe und Ordnung], that's the one thing that you have to maintain in such a big occupation, and you ought to go to the people and talk to them and try to convince them not to work. When I came onto the yard the next day I asked, well, did you guys throw out the white-collar workers? And the workers said, no, we have to keep it quiet, and all that creates an uproar, and we can't do that either. That's the way they manipulated the workers' opinion in practice.

I ask myself how these people in the strike committee wanted to convince people to continue the occupation or not to work, when they themselves had made a deal with the management about painting the bottom of a ship and sent the workers off to work. The painting has to be done in two coats—if the second coat isn't done, then the first coat is ruined too. And for doing that they got from the management deliveries of food to the canteen for one more day.

A number of times in the Social Democratic daily paper there were two-page spreads: HDW will be cleared; police attack; police intervention threats—in order to confuse the workers about what they ought to do. When the first article came out I was in the yard too, and the workers said—a lot of them anyway—what do they think they want, the police? They won't even get in here; the gates are shut tight, and right behind the gates is the fire station. We have water cannons, we have helmets, we have clubs, we have everything here. They won't get in here at all; we'll know how to defend our shipyard for sure. And the next day I asked, what are you guys doing now, and they said, well, when the police come, then we'll let them carry us all away. We won't offer any resistance. And so that's another sign how the opinion was manipulated by the strike committee.

W&R: One of the points made in the TLD's leaflet directed at the HDW occupation was the comparison between the Rostock shipyards in East Germany, where the order books are full—a demonstration of the power of a planned economy—and HDW, which is even turning away work from the Soviet Union at the same time it's laying off thousands of workers. Did this contrast have any impact on the workers during the occupation?

Wojak: This discussion definitely existed in the shipyard, this comparison between the DDR yards in general and shipyards in the Soviet Union, and here in West Germany—simply because these orders to build ships were refused. The workers said, sure, build ships—if it was a question of what kind of ships we need, we could be booked up too. The thing is whether we want to build them—or whether our bosses want to build them. And they just don't want to. And that's whose fault it is that we aren't getting any more work in the harbor.

W&R: After the occupation you put out a leaflet in which you call for a study of the lessons of the occupation. What do you think those lessons are?

Wojak: The lessons of the occupation are that the workers' interests were not represented during the occupation at all, otherwise they would have had something to take home with them from such a large-scale occupation. The people who are responsible for this are the strike committee, who belonged to all the political parties. It would have definitely been possible to extend a strike to all the shipyards, to the mines and to the steel industry, like it says in the TLD's leaflet. That was the least that could have happened. Such an extension into broad areas would have paralyzed a large part of the West German economy. At that point the HDW occupation would have been just one point of a massive campaign.

But of course you can't carry out such an extension if you basically don't want to win but only want a couple of concessions from the capitalists. If you lay the basis for things like this, then the consequence is that the workers take the power. And you have to want that.

There was criticism of a lack of solidarity from other plants. Well, if you don't offer me something to fight for, then what am I supposed to go running off and fight for?
During the occupation I saw what would have been possible, and I saw what all the parties and political groupings did. I saw what the social democrats of the SPD did. They said to the workers, we are the party; we'll do everything for you; we'll save your jobs, but we're going to do it together with the capitalists. And together with the capitalists means against the workers. That's not a party that can be the leadership of an occupation or of strikes, or of the workers' interests.

The DKP did nothing different from the SPD. Maybe there was a little bit more leftist touch in their speeches, but looking at what they did, they are indistinguishable. The GIM was in the shipyard, and they hardly opened their mouth. But the one guy from the GIM that was in the strike committee was also indistinguishable. It's exactly the same with the KPD, and the people from Arbeiterpolitik didn't have any different program either.

The first thing the workers have to have, that's a decent party that represents their interests. When you read the TLD's leaflet, you saw that they did represent the workers. The other political groups, parties—they wanted to keep the TLD out of the shipyard as far as possible. And discussions they had with individual workers were also not looked on kindly.

All the political groups except the TLD said, the workers—they're not that advanced; they can't do all that yet; and they don't understand all that yet. But I'm a worker myself. If somebody asks me, do you want to determine what's produced in your plant, I'll say of course I want that. And if he asked me, do you also want to determine how much you earn, then I'll say, of course I want to determine that. And do you also want to determine your hours and your working conditions? Then of course I say I want to determine that too. I don't have to be so all-fired advanced for that; every worker understands that. And that's what the TLD said. And it's simply necessary to have a party, one you can really turn to with your interests and doesn't turn right around and betray the workers again.

*From The Archives Of "Women And Revolution"-Hamburg: Women Spark Shipyard Occupation (1984)

Markin comment:

The following is an article from the Spring 1984 issue of "Women and Revolution" that may have some historical interest for old "new leftists", perhaps, and well as for younger militants interested in various cultural and social questions that intersect the class struggle. Or for those just interested in a Marxist position on a series of social questions that are thrust upon us by the vagaries of bourgeois society. I will be posting more such articles from the back issues of "Women and Revolution" during Women's History Month and periodically throughout the year.

Markin comment:

With the desperate need to ramp up the class struggle today (from our side, the bosses have been on a seemingly eternal offensive) this is a good article not only about the vanguard role that women can, and have, played in important class struggles in the past but about the tactics and strategy necessary to win struggles, if possible.


**************

Last fall in West Germany strikes and plant occupations broke out in the key Hamburg and Bremen shipyards against massive layoffs of the workforce. The nine-day Hamburg HDW [Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft] shipyard occupation in September was sparked in large part by the militant actions of a group of women, wives of shipyard workers. W&R, along with comrades of the Trotzkistische Liga Deutschlands (TLD), section of the international Spartacist tendency, recently spoke at length with Birgit Wojak, one of the main activists of the women's group; we are pleased to print below excerpts from this very exciting interview.

The TLD had raised key demands during the occupation, in leaflets and discussions with workers in Hamburg and nationally, to extend and win the workers' strikes. These included: "For factory occupations in all plants hit by mass layoffs and closings! For a joint national shipyard, steel and mine strike!" Layoffs were hitting the vital Ruhr steel and mining districts. At the same time the Board of Directors of HDW (which is owned by a state conglomerate) announced that in HDW's Hamburg branch one half of the 4,500 workers would be laid off and in HDW's Kiel branch one out of every three of the 9,000 workers. This "hot autumn" of workers' demonstrations, strikes and occupations
potentially posed the most important class battle for the German workers in 30 years.

The Hamburg and Bremen shipyard occupations took place as political ferment in West Germany is greater than at any time since the founding of the Federal Republic in 1948. The deployment in West Germany of the first-strike Pershing 2 missiles, under the command of the anti-Soviet fanatic Reagan, has deeply polarized West German society. The dramatic actions of the North Sea shipyard workers is a further sign that the West German capitalist order, long the relatively stable core of NATO Europe, is now beginning to break down under the combined impact of war mobilization and economic crisis.

But as Wojak graphically describes, not only the "IG Metall" union bureaucracy and the SPD [Social Democratic Party], but even the so-called "leftists" who had control of the Hamburg occupation itself, did everything in their power to undercut the struggle and prevent the workers from carrying it to victory. The main brake on the German working class is the Social Democrats. Though out of power when these shipyard layoffs were announced, they were the architects of the West German bourgeoisie's present austerity program which has meant massive attacks on the working class.

The dramatic Hamburg occupation—and its betrayal— showed above all the need to forge a revolutionary working-class party by splitting the working-class SPD ranks away from the pro-capitalist tops.

The TLD's aggressive propaganda campaign around the occupations presented a broad programmatic alternative for the workers. Its leaflet noted the importance of the foreign workers: "Yesterday and today these foreign brothers are in the front lines of the struggle.... Full citizenship rights for foreign workers and their families!" The TLD further noted: "While the IG Metall bureaucracy wants to stiffen the backbone of the German steel magnates in the protectionist Common Market cartel, the 'left' is mobilizing for a 'National Steel Company/ or a 'National Shipyards Company.' But if the capitalist economy is not done away with, these nationalized companies (like HDW) will serve the capitalists. As opposed to the Rostock Yards only a few miles away [in East Germany], whose order books are filled with contracts for icebreakers, passenger ships, etc., running for years thanks to the Soviet planned economy, the capitalist 'solution’ to the crisis in the shipyards is arms production: battleships and submarines for war against the Soviet Union."

Lenin said that the fate of the October Revolution was inseparable from the victory of the German October. The converse of that is that the failure of the German working class, the best organized working class in Europe, to live up to its revolutionary obligations has led to two world imperialist wars. The TLD's leaflet concluded: "A militant strike in steel, the shipyards and coal would show the workers the way to prevent stationing NATO first-strike weapons. By strikes—not 'minutes of warning' against the 'superpowers.' For the Breits and the Loderers the Bundes-wehr is a 'peace force. They hate the Soviet Union and fear a new Bremen Soviet Republic, a new Ruhr Red Army—a German October.

"For the revolutionary reunification of Germany by a social revolution in the West and proletarian political revolution in the East! Smash the anti-Soviet war drive! For unconditional military support of the DDR/Soviet Union! For a socialist planned economy! For the Socialist United States of Europe!"

W&R: Can you tell us something about your background that you feel contributed to your becoming an activist in this struggle and occupation? Wojak: The thing that made me just want to do something—I didn't know what I wanted to do—was that my mother died, basically because she worked herself to death. Normally she shouldn't have been allowed to work at the job she did because she had asthma. She worked as a presser in a knitting mill and couldn't handle the wool dust. My father had to retire early as a partial invalid. He lost a leg, also worked 25 years at HDW as a welder, and now he can hardly do anything. The only thing my father had was my mother. He's just vegetating. And that was the main thing that made me say, that's not going to happen to me, and I wasn't going to put up with it any longer. And they want to fire my husband from the HDW plant.

W&R: Plans were announced for massive layoffs in the shipbuilding industry in early spring and a "warning strike" was called, including demonstrations. How did you become involved in the struggle? Wojak: I was approached by my husband to get involved with this women's group—they were actually all wives of men who were already active in the HDW shipyard and who were also affiliated with one political current or another. I met the women's group myself at a forum and found out that they had gone into the Hamburg parliament, tried to storm the microphone to draw attention to the situation of workers in the entire shipbuilding industry. The mike was cut off immediately so that they couldn't say anything. And because they had counted on that they had written an "Open Letter" to the mayor of Hamburg, the Social Democrat von Dohnanyi, and rained these leaflets from the gallery down onto all the parliamentarians. And they unfurled a banner reading, "HDW and MAN wives fight together with their men." Two women were picked out and criminal charges were brought for disrupting a public parliamentary session.

I met these women at a forum on this HDW issue, and Klose, the former Social Democratic mayor of Hamburg, was present. What struck me about this forum in particular was the workers; there were a whole lot of workers from HDW there. They were absolutely furious and wanted a complete change. And this Klose, he just tried to channel it into orderly channels that he could keep in hand. In the beginning, when I heard about what they did, it seemed to be a little bit too radical to me. But that Klose wanted to steer the workers in a very definite direction that he could keep in hand seemed even more awful. So I decided then to go to this women's meeting and take a look for myself.

At this first women's meeting I went to, in April, one woman said right away, yeah, maybe we can still see to it that there are a couple of strikes at HDW, and if it all
doesn't do any good, then we have to occupy the plant. And I thought, sure, if they occupy the plant, that's a long way off, and you don't have to go along with them. But during the occupation, in September, it turned out that some of the workers— I count myself among them as well—that we were the ones who carried out the occupation, whereas the women who had been talking weren't at all the ones who did the occupying. These women as well as so-called "activists" in the plant saw the plant occupation as a means to put pressure on the government to save jobs. And then when I participated in this occupation and got angry every time I had to leave the occupied shipyard and had to sleep alone in my bed at home, I saw it as if I had seized a piece of this shipyard along with all those workers. W&R: The women's committee waged a hunger strike that led up to and in some sense precipitated the September shipyard occupation. What motivated it?

Wojak: In all our work between the warning strike in the spring and during the occupation in September, we tried to do all kinds of actions to mobilize the workers so that they would occupy or put up any line of resistance against the layoffs at all. Whenever there was any kind of plant assembly or when any new events in the shipyard came up we stood in front of the gates with our banner and passed out leaflets, calling on the men to defend themselves, to do something, offered them our help. The result was that the men laughed at us. Then this situation came up in a plant assembly where we said, either we're going to storm the microphone now, just like in parliament, or you guys read these things aloud. And the guys running the meeting were scared to death that we'd storm the mike, because they didn't expect the workers to do the same thing the parliamentarians did, namely nothing, when the mike was turned off, but that the workers would probably resist. So under this pressure, they read what we had written. And for the rest of the plant assembly we were surrounded by a ring of company cops. W&R: What were your demands? Wojak: Our demands were basically the men's demands. They were for the 35-hour week, statification of the shipyard under control of the workforce (we extended it to real control). Then there was the men's demand for "useful alternative production," and that filter systems be installed in power plants so they don't pollute the atmosphere so much. In fact, there was quite a hard discussion with one of the women in the women's group about this, with the result that the men raised "alternative production" as a very hard demand and we just raised it on the side.

W&R: Who were they, and what were the political currents in the women's group?

Wojak: The political people in the plant were primarily from the DKP [pro-Moscow Stalinists], people from the GIM [German section of the United Secretariat], people from the SPD, from the union—in fact all the political groupings were present. In the women's group there were the DKP, KPD [Maoists], GIM; there were people from Arbeiterpolitik [Brandlerites] who got in through women's groups in the union. It was the same with the Social Democrats who also had influence through the unions and some women's groups.
This discussion about "useful alternative production" that came up in the women's group was introduced by me, because I was the only really unpolitical woman there and saw immediately what this "useful alternative production" basically meant for jobs. I told them that it's baloney and meaningless for jobs, whereas all the others supported it at first. The minute I started this discussion I had the feeling that all these women had a narrow-minded view of the whole situation because of their political orientation. That led me to view everything essentially more critically than before.

Maybe one more reason why the hunger strike happened. We wanted to spur the men on to fight. And we had found out that at Hoesch, in the Ruhr, where layoffs in the steel industry are also an issue, there was also a women's group, and they had waged a hunger strike. We had exhausted all the possibilities—standing in front of the gates; in plant assemblies; we went into the union and meetings organized by the union, where we were regularly thrown out. But the men saw us, and you couldn't pretend we weren't there. The Hoesch women had videos of their hunger strike and of the men's strike, and they advised us, if you do a hunger strike, there's no way it can fall through—you definitely have to do it.

From the very beginning we said we don't want to starve ourselves to get sick or die or something, but we agreed from the first if we do a hunger strike to limit it to three days. Because we thought, three days: that's enough to get it in the public eye. And if the men haven't gotten it together after three days to pull off a decent action, then even a ten-day hunger strike won't do any good.

W&R: So how long did the hunger strike go on before the occupation began?

Wojak: We waged a three-day hunger strike right before the occupation. When it got under way there were five women who took part in it from the first to the last day. And there were nine on the last day. We didn't just want to wage a hunger strike without drawing in the men in the shipyard. Because we didn't know that they would publish the list with the mass layoffs at just the same time, we had convinced the men beforehand to carry out an action in the plant as well, if we did this hunger strike. We won them over to boycotting overtime at that point. And then-it became known in the yards—that was the afternoon before the hunger strike, right before quitting time—as people found out that 1,354 people were supposed to be laid off, there was a symbolic occupation of the plant gate for two hours, with only 1,200 people taking part.

The first day of our hunger strike, when nobody knew anything about it beforehand, even the men in the shipyard, about 80 percent of the workforce said completely spontaneously, if the women go on a hunger strike then we'll boycott the canteen for the day. That was a very important thing, because you could see that we women were recognized by the men in the shipyard for the first time. The canteen had been contracted out to a private company before the layoffs were announced, and some women who worked in the canteen were thrown out and rehired for considerably less pay—we wanted to boycott the canteen until the women got the same pay as before.

All the men who were at all political had laughed at us before for this demand, and said that no worker would follow this demand because their own stomachs are more important than other people's stomachs. And the fact that 80 percent carried out this canteen boycott— and they really went hungry, because they didn't know they were going to boycott the canteen and didn't bring sandwiches from home—that proves that they were simply wrong, that the workers forgot their own empty stomachs in their solidarity.
This whole hunger strike was received by all the workers in the shipyard extremely well anyway, although they hardly dared to approach us because of their preconceptions—these poor, weak women, they're standing there and what's more, going hungry for us, and what have we done? They could hardly look us in the eye. And after quitting time that evening, here came all the workers and they brought us flowers. Most of them just kind of shoved them in our hands and walked on by.

W&R: So how did the actual plant occupation begin?

Wojak: The first one to call for an occupation, or for a massive action, I believe, was me. After the three days of the hunger strike were over, there was a closing rally. We had gotten an enormous amount of solidarity and over DM 9,000 ($4,500) in contributions. Several plants declared their solidarity, and it was not only for the women but for solidarity against all layoffs.

We held a rally at the end where each of the women who had taken part in the hunger strike was supposed to say something to the brothers in the shipyard. And I was the last one, and I had lost my notes. So I just called on the men to just do something, and if they didn't fight, that we women would think up something to do to them that would be pretty nasty. W&R: Lysistrata meets the class struggle. Wojak: But the effect of that was not that they all got terribly scared of me or the women, but they applauded it wildly, they cheered it, they picked it up like something they'd wanted to say themselves for a long time. And finally somebody said it. The hunger strike was over on Friday and then came the weekend. The gates were picketed from the outside so that no overtime could go on—organized by the men and some of the women picketed too.

There was a general plant assembly during the hunger strike where the men fought with the bosses and got us the right to speak. A plant assembly is where the whole plant comes together in one room, organized by the union—there's a minimum of four assemblies annually. And the Management Committee [the bosses] and the plant council are there and make reports. Every individual worker can speak.60 this plant assembly continued on Monday morning. It ended with a march of the workers through the inner city in a demonstration of 3,000. And after the demonstration all the workers went back into the plant and continued the plant assembly and then voted to occupy the plant. And that was adopted 100 percent.

W&R: And who was elected the leadership of the occupation?

Wojak: There was a prominent supporter of the DKP, who had worked out this occupation plan just in case. And they were essentially the people who had been working together beforehand—like the DKP, SPD, KPD, GIM, unionists.

W&R: What was the relationship of the official union leadership of the Metalworkers [IG Metall] to the occupation?

Wojak: Before the occupation the IG Metall didn't look upon it kindly and it didn't look on the women's activities kindly either. A week before the hunger strike somebody from the union put out the word that the HDW women are dead, they don't exist anymore. And then when this demonstration through the center of town took place and afterwards the occupation was voted, they were singing a different tune all of a sudden. Because they probably saw that the workers just couldn't be stopped. So they said, we'll support every action; go ahead, and we'll always be behind you. Only I'm talking about the local union organization in Hamburg—there wasn't so much as a letter of solidarity from the IG Metall from the rest of the country. During the occupation the union reps didn't behave worse than the "activists" in the plant, which were in all these parties, but they were awful enough themselves.

W&R: We haven't discussed the laws that come from the 1950s—the "Factory Regulation Law" (Betreefasver-rassungsgesetz). Can you explain why this law is followed so slavishly, and what it in fact means with regard to workers' struggles?

Wojak: The "Factory Regulation Law" is a law the government passed that means limitations on the workers, especially in strikes. It's a terribly thick book that's not easy to explain. But for example it says that in your plant you can't just support strikes in other plants or collect money for them. All the plant assemblies— how they are to be held, whether there are secret or open ballots, are governed by it. And a plant occupation is a violation of the "Factory Regulation Law" because a worker can't just seize the plant that belongs to someone else.

W&R: The fact that the members of the plant council are bound to silence is also laid down in the "Factory Regulation Law" as well, including about layoffs. Wojak: Yes. In the case of this list of 1,354 people to be laid off, for example, the members of the plant council were obligated not to make that public. This law basically just hinders the workers from using their power m any way whatsoever against the bosses. And the unions haven't done anything against it and are therefore complicit.

W&R: What was the role of the women's committee during the occupation?

Wojak: Pretty pathetic, because we had set as our goal calling on the men to wage a fight. And in fact we reached that goal with the hunger strike. So during the occupation we didn't want to stand on the sidelines; but we really didn't know at all what we ought to do
I myself concentrated on extending the strike together with two other women. We went to AC Weser, to a shipyard in Bremen where they had decided long before the HDW occupation to occupy\ this shipyard because there was no more putting the brakes on these workers or holding them back from doing an action like that. So we drove to Bremen and were totally depressed when we got there, because the conditions under which the shipyard was occupied were really awful for the workers. They had one last ship in Bremen which was up for repairs, and then the whole shipyard was supposed to be shut down, closed

We weren't allowed to speak to the workers there before the occupation was voted. And when they did vote to occupy, you could see that a crime was perpetrated against the workers, because the occupation was coupled with the condition that the necessary repairs for this one ship still had to go on during the occupation. Further, the occupation in Bremen was; an extremely late point in time—one day before the occupation in Hamburg was given up, and it w; planned that way.

During the HDW occupation a ship was literal kidnapped from the HDW workers. The cables were cut. One worker was injured, not very seriously, bi people could in fact have been killed. We took the brothers in Bremen a cable from this captured ship as warning that they should keep a close watch on the ship. The workers welcomed us with cheers. We g more applause for what we said there than ever before although it was just to give them a little courage at really nothing more. Afterwards we also discussed with a whole lot of workers, and a lot of them who h been for going on with these repairs changed this opinion within five minutes and didn't want to do it anymore.

Another guy, the DGB [German trade-union federation] chairman in Bremen, spoke, and first express his solidarity and cozied up to them like mad and said you guys are in an unusual situation; so an unusual situation demands unusual means and you guys have
grasped them. And it's right that you have occupied your shipyard and you ought to occupy it a while longer—and then you ought to let the bosses and the politicians decide what ought to happen to the shipyard. And even then the workers applauded. And there was this worker sitting next to me during this speech, and it just slipped out of my mouth: how can this man be allowed to speak here? Why doesn't somebody throw him out? Then he really thought about it, at first he didn't say anything at all, then he said, yeah, that's outrageous, what he's saying here. He can't be allowed to do that. But then the guy up front was already gone. But before, this guy had clapped too.

We had these buttons with "Stop the death of HDW in installments—HDW must stand" on them, with the HDW insignia and over that "HDW Occupied" on a red background. And a worker in Bremen just had to have it, and he gave me his helmet. It has a sticker on one side, "AC Weser Occupied," and on the other "HDW Occupied."

When we women came back from this shipyard occupation, we didn't have the feeling that this occupation would be a support for the HDW workers, but that it was something designed to. go against workers' struggles. When we got back to HDW, we told the strike committee what was going on, that AC Weser wouldn't be a support for Hamburg and that they would have to extend the struggle in other ways. They said it wasn't right to tell the workers something like that. I did tell the workers that, and I know one other woman—from the GIM—also told it to the workers.

W&R: The TLD raised the demand to extend the strike to mining and steel, where there were also plans for substantial layoffs and firings. How do you feel about that demand, and given a revolutionary leadership, do you think it could have been an outgrowth of the shipyard occupation?

Wojak: It would have been possible, definitely. The question of extension was already very close, even without a revolutionary leadership, and only a spark would have been necessary to ignite it. But with a revolutionary leadership there would have been a guarantee for extending it.

W&R: How did the occupation end, and what did the workers win or lose?

Wojak: The HDW occupation lasted nine days. The mass of workers lost their jobs. The layoffs were carried out just like they had been planned. The layoffs are continuing today. The workers in the plant have worse working conditions than before, there's speedup. There have already been two deaths as a result.

The reason the occupation was broken off then was: yeah, they said we have the chance of getting a decent severance plan. They didn't even get the severance plan they had before the occupation but one significantly worse.

The foreign workers are in a very bad position. They are the ones primarily hit by the layoffs. About 50 percent of the foreign workers at HDW were fired. And they can be deported immediately if they don't get a new job, and they don't have a chance to get a new job either. So they won absolutely nothing, except when one or the other can draw the lessons—that you have to design an occupation differently, that is, not carry out an occupation under such conditions, but from the very beginning set the conditions yourself and not let them be dictated to you.

The occupation ended with a general plant assembly, which includes the lower- and middle-level management. Then the Management Committee has the right to take part; most of the time politicians are also invited—but not to this one. The Management Committee announced that if they didn't give up the occupation then they might fire the whole workforce— in one fell swoop. Without notice. People weren't quite convinced that that would in fact happen. But in the 70s that did happen once, when two shipyards, the Deutsche Werft and the Howaldtswerke fused. They fired the whole workforce because they were on strike, and afterwards they just hired back the part that they needed. So the threat of firings was in the air. Then there was the second thing. The Management Committee had announced that if Hamburg resisted and continued the occupation, the works would go deeper and deeper in the red, and then they wouldn't have any other choice but to split off Hamburg and Kiel from one another, as affiliates or even as two independent companies. But this plan has existed a long time, even without the occupation.

W&R: What was the role of the DKP and the KPD and the GIM during the occupation, and in the plant assembly meeting?

Wojak: From the first moment they set their stakes all on negotiations—negotiations with the politicians in Bonn and Schleswig-Holstein, since HDW is 100 percent state-owned. Those are both Christian Democratic governments. And their role was precisely to put pressure on these politicians, to say, "Do something about the shipyard please. Don't throw all these people out onto the street, after all." They all agreed completely on that. Those were always the things that kept coming up even before the occupation, in strikes or other actions—apply pressure. You can also see it in this program for "useful alternative production." That was drafted by people from the DKP, from the GIM— in effect a somewhat broader version of the strike committee together with people from the union and other activists. Then the union took it up and printed it as a program. For all practical purposes their aim is to give the capitalists a hand, how to make it, if you can just get a little bit more capital to boot, without having to fire guys.

W&R: I understand that in the course of the occupation a GIM supporter in the workforce put up a banner of Solidarnos'c'. How was this received?

Wojak: This Solidarnos'c' banner actually only had a slight meaning for the workforce. It was one banner among many. There were other banners from other plants, for example AEG Schiffbau brought over a huge banner. Such banners were received with more applause and many more workers also crowded around them. Solidarnos'c' itself was seen as the shipyard workers there going into the streets, and they stuck together and fought for their rights. Solidarnos'c'' real role wasn't seen; most of the workers don't know much about Solidarnos.

The thing is, they tried to block every political discussion in the union. There was a band in the yard one evening and they were singing some kind of political things, and a guy from the SPD took the mike away from them and said, look, leave politics out of this; the shipyard occupation isn't a political affair. The workers who got wind of it were pretty pissed off. And I noticed how they attacked the union bureaucrats pretty hard: what is this, and everybody can say what they want to here, and even if there's political stuff here—there's a highly political situation at HDW. He went away then, but the musicians didn't have the nerve to start again. But that was just the way discussions about Solidarnos'c' or issues in a larger context during the occupation were blocked, and the GIM supporters hung the sign up, intervened by doing that, but didn't tell the workers anything about it.

W&R: What role did these left groups play in the plant assembly discussion regarding the occupation in the face of the fact that the occupation had spread to Bremen, so that ending the occupation at that particular point in Hamburg was particularly criminal.

Wojak: It was criminal. The political groups were all straining to reach the same goal, told the workers, yes, under these conditions where we have to take into account that the whole workforce will be fired, where there's no sort of severance plan at all, and then the poor foreigners will be fired and won't even be able to take home any severance pay at all if they're deported—at such a point we can't call on you guys to continue the occupation, although we would have really liked to. That was what was said during the occupation, during the vote, by all the political groups. And Bremen. The workers in Bremen were of course terribly disappointed. They probably did see it as criminal, what happened in Hamburg. Only the strike committee (which was the same as the plant council in Bremen) said, what's so bad about that? Hamburg and Bremen don't have anything to do with each other.

W&R: Let's return to the question of the foreign workers. It's my understanding that the foreign worker also supported the end of the occupation even though they had the most to lose by the layoffs. Why was that?

Wojak: It was essentially Turkish workers who sup ported ending the occupation. Not because they were Turkish, but simply because the Turks speak the leas German, and because they were absolutely no properly provided with information. Hardly anything was translated. There was one Yugoslavian woman in our women's group and we were the first ones in the shipyard to have leaflets and placards in Turkish and Yugoslavian when we went into the plant assembly during the hunger strike, and a lot of foreign workers stood up. They applauded us and brought us chairs, because finally somebody in the shipyard was thinking of the foreign workers. I believe that without the women, the foreigners wouldn't even have known what was going on at the beginning of the occupation.

There was one Turkish guy in the yard who could speak good German. They told him, this is the way things are, and then it was up to him the extent to which he passed on the information to his brothers, or not. He handled it by saying, listen, the next vote is going to be about this or that, and if I raise my hand, that's correct, so you guys do the same. Of course, in this vote on the occupation that wasn't possible—it was secret, and nobody raised his hand. Most of the Turks had no idea what they should do and were totally unsure of themselves.

I heard that a couple of days beforehand there were also people in the yard who had threatened the Turkish workers. There was almost a physical fight. They threatened that if the Turks continued to participate actively in the occupation they would beat them up, or they threatened them in other ways. As far as I could find out these were people that came from the [Turkish fascist] Grey Wolves.

W&R: Did the workers in the shipyard occupation take any measures such as forming workers defense guards to defend against the fascistic Grey Wolves or other fascist groups that might attempt to break up the occupation?

Wojak: No, none at all. There was no defense, neither against the fascist groups, nor against the scabs, nor against the police attacks that had been threatened.
I have to add that there were a whole series of scabs during the occupation: almost all the white-collar workers worked during the occupation, and after a couple of days parts of the machine shop started working—in the end I believe it was half of the machine shop that worked, first secretly and then openly.

First the workers said, look, they're working. They can't do that. We're going to throw them out. And then there were discussions with the strike committee, and they said, no, that would disturb the "peace and quiet" in the yard, and peace and quiet and order [Ruhe und Ordnung], that's the one thing that you have to maintain in such a big occupation, and you ought to go to the people and talk to them and try to convince them not to work. When I came onto the yard the next day I asked, well, did you guys throw out the white-collar workers? And the workers said, no, we have to keep it quiet, and all that creates an uproar, and we can't do that either. That's the way they manipulated the workers' opinion in practice.

I ask myself how these people in the strike committee wanted to convince people to continue the occupation or not to work, when they themselves had made a deal with the management about painting the bottom of a ship and sent the workers off to work. The painting has to be done in two coats—if the second coat isn't done, then the first coat is ruined too. And for doing that they got from the management deliveries of food to the canteen for one more day.

A number of times in the Social Democratic daily paper there were two-page spreads: HDW will be cleared; police attack; police intervention threats—in order to confuse the workers about what they ought to do. When the first article came out I was in the yard too, and the workers said—a lot of them anyway—what do they think they want, the police? They won't even get in here; the gates are shut tight, and right behind the gates is the fire station. We have water cannons, we have helmets, we have clubs, we have everything here. They won't get in here at all; we'll know how to defend our shipyard for sure. And the next day I asked, what are you guys doing now, and they said, well, when the police come, then we'll let them carry us all away. We won't offer any resistance. And so that's another sign how the opinion was manipulated by the strike committee.

W&R: One of the points made in the TLD's leaflet directed at the HDW occupation was the comparison between the Rostock shipyards in East Germany, where the order books are full—a demonstration of the power of a planned economy—and HDW, which is even turning away work from the Soviet Union at the same time it's laying off thousands of workers. Did this contrast have any impact on the workers during the occupation?

Wojak: This discussion definitely existed in the shipyard, this comparison between the DDR yards in general and shipyards in the Soviet Union, and here in West Germany—simply because these orders to build ships were refused. The workers said, sure, build ships—if it was a question of what kind of ships we need, we could be booked up too. The thing is whether we want to build them—or whether our bosses want to build them. And they just don't want to. And that's whose fault it is that we aren't getting any more work in the harbor.

W&R: After the occupation you put out a leaflet in which you call for a study of the lessons of the occupation. What do you think those lessons are?

Wojak: The lessons of the occupation are that the workers' interests were not represented during the occupation at all, otherwise they would have had something to take home with them from such a large-scale occupation. The people who are responsible for this are the strike committee, who belonged to all the political parties. It would have definitely been possible to extend a strike to all the shipyards, to the mines and to the steel industry, like it says in the TLD's leaflet. That was the least that could have happened. Such an extension into broad areas would have paralyzed a large part of the West German economy. At that point the HDW occupation would have been just one point of a massive campaign.

But of course you can't carry out such an extension if you basically don't want to win but only want a couple of concessions from the capitalists. If you lay the basis for things like this, then the consequence is that the workers take the power. And you have to want that.

There was criticism of a lack of solidarity from other plants. Well, if you don't offer me something to fight for, then what am I supposed to go running off and fight for?
During the occupation I saw what would have been possible, and I saw what all the parties and political groupings did. I saw what the social democrats of the SPD did. They said to the workers, we are the party; we'll do everything for you; we'll save your jobs, but we're going to do it together with the capitalists. And together with the capitalists means against the workers. That's not a party that can be the leadership of an occupation or of strikes, or of the workers' interests.

The DKP did nothing different from the SPD. Maybe there was a little bit more leftist touch in their speeches, but looking at what they did, they are indistinguishable. The GIM was in the shipyard, and they hardly opened their mouth. But the one guy from the GIM that was in the strike committee was also indistinguishable. It's exactly the same with the KPD, and the people from Arbeiterpolitik didn't have any different program either.

The first thing the workers have to have, that's a decent party that represents their interests. When you read the TLD's leaflet, you saw that they did represent the workers. The other political groups, parties—they wanted to keep the TLD out of the shipyard as far as possible. And discussions they had with individual workers were also not looked on kindly.

All the political groups except the TLD said, the workers—they're not that advanced; they can't do all that yet; and they don't understand all that yet. But I'm a worker myself. If somebody asks me, do you want to determine what's produced in your plant, I'll say of course I want that. And if he asked me, do you also want to determine how much you earn, then I'll say, of course I want to determine that. And do you also want to determine your hours and your working conditions? Then of course I say I want to determine that too. I don't have to be so all-fired advanced for that; every worker understands that. And that's what the TLD said. And it's simply necessary to have a party, one you can really turn to with your interests and doesn't turn right around and betray the workers again.

*From The Leon Trotsky Archives- With Greece In Mind Today- A Program Of Action In France (1934)

Click on the headline to link to an "Leon Trotsky Internet Archive" online copy of his "Program of Action for France" in 1934.

Markin comment:

Yes, I know France in 1934 was a long time ago. Yes, I know the conditions then with the very ominous rise of fascism in Europe were somewhat different that today's "democratic" international capitalist globalization. And yes, I know the Soviet Union is gone as a factor in world politics. To our disadvantage. But read some of these points and see if you don't agree that they apply in Greece today. Leon Trotsky is speaking our revolutionary language, wherever he is.

*From The Leon Trotsky Internet Archives- With Greece In Mind- The Lessons of History- "The French Revolution Has Begun " (1936)

Click on the headline to link to a "Leon Trotsky Internet archive" online copy of "The French Revolution Has Begun" from his 1936 pamphlet, "Whither France?".

Markin comment:

Every Greek militant, and every supporter of the working class struggles in Greece today, can benefit, and benefit greatly, from reading Leon Trotsky's works, especially those from the mid-1930s when another period of class struggle was heating up and the struggle for power- working class power- was posed. This time we had better learn our lessons early- and win

*Labor's Untold Story- In The Sunnier Days Of The Militant Labor Movement- The Great Flint Michigan GM Sitdown Strike Of 1936

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for the famous Flint auto plant sit-down strikes that did much to organize the automobile industry back in the days. This is one event that I will be covering in more depth at a later time. It is, after all, one thing to have a walk-out strike and encircle the factory it is quite another to occupy the factory itself. That puts the question of the private ownership of the means of production point blank.

Every Month Is Labor History Month

This Commentary is part of a series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!

As a first run through, and in some cases until I can get enough other sources in order to make a decent presentation, I will start with short entries on each topic that I will eventually go into greater detail about. Or, better yet, take my suggested topic and run with it yourself.

*Defend The Republic Window Workers' Chicago Factory Occupation

Click on the title to link to an article in December 2009 "Socialist Appeal" concerning last year's factory take-over at the Republic Door and Window factory in Chicago.

Commentary

This is a little news item that I have just picked up from the AP. I note here that last week I mentioned as a "fantasy" that the Detroit auto workers needed to "seize" the factories in order to get something for all the wealth they had produced. One should also note that this was a union-led action. More, hopefully much more, later. Markin



Idled workers occupy factory in Chicago

By Rupa Shenoy

Associated Press Writer / December 6, 2008

CHICAGO—Workers laid off from their jobs at a factory have occupied the building and are demanding assurances they'll get severance and vacation pay that they say they are owed.

About 200 employees of Republic Windows and Doors began their sit-in Friday, the last scheduled day of the plant's operation.

Leah Fried, an organizer with the United Electrical Workers, said the Chicago-based vinyl window manufacturer failed to give 60 days' notice required by law before shutting down.

Workers also were angered when company officials didn't show up for a meeting Friday that had been arranged by U.S. Rep Luis Gutierrez, a Chicago Democrat, she said.

During the peaceful takeover, workers have been shoveling snow and cleaning the building, Fried said.

"We're doing something we haven't since the 1930s, so we're trying to make it work," Fried said.

Union officials said another meeting with the company is scheduled for Monday.

Representatives of Republic Windows did not immediately respond Saturday to calls and e-mails seeking comment.

Police spokeswoman Laura Kubiak said authorities were aware of the situation and officers were patrolling the area.

Crain's Chicago Business reported that the company's monthly sales had fallen to $2.9 million from $4 million during the past month. In a memo to the union, obtained by the business journal, Republic CEO Rich Gillman said the company had "no choice but to shut our doors."

© Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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