Bigger Share for the Workers

West Germany, where it is practically a tradition that "Germans don't strike," last week faced a nationwide labor revolt.

In Hamburg (pop. 1,600,000), a strike of 13,000 transport and utilities workers left West Germany's largest city without gas, water, buses and streetcars for nine days. In Bavaria, 130,000 metal workers downed tools. Nine hundred thousand Ruhr metal workers demanded a 10-pfennig (2.5-c-) hourly increase.

The strikes, which started spontaneously, spread quickly because the great mass of German workers were no longer willing to be left out of the amazing postwar prosperity which their hard work helped make possible.

West Germany's gross national product has risen phenomenally, from $21 billion in 1950 to an estimated $34 billion today. Profits are high, and many a businessman has made a postwar fortune. But while German output rose 50% in four years, wages have risen only 21%. German trade unions had been persuaded to accept thin pay packets as their contribution to the Fatherland's recovery, having been told that wages had to be kept low in order to regain the export markets. In addition, unemployment, fed by ten million refugees from Communism, made a man think twice before risking his job. The result was bad for all Germans: many German workers cannot afford to buy the goods they produce for export. Only 2% of the 20,000 workers assembling Volkswagen drive to work in cars--unlike Ford and General Motors employees in Detroit, most of whom have cars of their own. The German worker's average monthly wage of 325 marks ($77.50) is far from enough when eggs cost 70-c- a dozen, good beef 90-c- a Ib.

U.S. foreign-aid experts think that German employers, who are now having export difficulty, can nonetheless well afford to raise wages. And by increasing the workers' buying power, they will increase their sales at home.

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