A Quick End to an Efficient Strike

ALL IN ALL, LAST WEEK'S STRIKE OF GERMANY'S 2.3 million transport and public employees was remarkably well managed. On any one of the 11 days it lasted, only about 400,000 of the union's workers actually stayed off the job. That was sufficient to throw commuters into confusion, ground airplanes and pile up a moderate heap of uncollected garbage. It demonstrated the union's power but did not produce the elemental disorder Germans find so distasteful.

The issues the confrontation presented, however, were absolutely basic. Would German workers accept the government's call to continue making sacrifices in order to help westernize eastern Germany? The answer so far is no. The public workers' union demanded a 9.5% wage increase while the government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl argued that anything over 4.8%, or just enough to cover the inflation rate, would damage the economy. Last week the government was forced to offer 5.4%. The union leadership accepted, and chairwoman Monika Wulf-Mathies called it "a political victory." Minister of Special Tasks Rudolf Seiters, the government's chief negotiator, warned that the settlement would slow the country's economic growth. When federal, state and local costs were added up, he said, the government outlays would increase $10 billion this year. Rank-and-file union members will now have to vote on the deal.

But that does not end the national argument. Several major unions, including the 4 million-member I.G. Metall, Germany's largest industrial labor organization, began staging warning strikes. Like the public employees, metalworkers are opening with a demand for a 9.5% raise. And in eastern Germany, where unions have not yet integrated with their western brethren and earnings are about 40% less, workers are considering strikes for pay increases that would bring them closer to levels in the west.

At a news conference in Berlin, Kohl felt impelled to deny that the governing coalition, shaken by the economy's troubles and Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher's resignation, was in any danger. The opposition Social Democrats accused the government of "stupidity and provocation." They now top Kohl's Christian Democrats in the polls and are calling for the Chancellor's resignation. "The coalition is stable," Kohl insisted last week. (See related story on page 50.)