Bonn Assembly Votes to Curb Power of Unions

The Bundestag, West Germany’s lower house of Parliament, passed a controversial law Thursday limiting the power of trade unions in certain areas.

The vote came after a heated debate and was roughly along party lines, 265 to 210, with the governing Christian Democrats and their allies, the Free Democrats, in favor and the Social Democrats and the radical Greens opposed.

The Social Democrats condemned the bill as a “declaration of war” on the trade unions and warned that it will be a stormy campaign issue in this year’s national election.

The bill, which is expected to be passed by Parliament’s upper house, the Bundesrat, was pushed by the government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl as part of what he has called long-needed labor reforms.

Basically, the law will change the traditional system under which all workers affected by strikes, in whatever part of the country, have been automatically eligible for unemployment benefits.

Issue of Subsidy

According to the government, this practice amounted to a subsidy from the social welfare system to striking workers.

In the future, affected workers outside an immediate industry in which a strike occurs will continue to receive benefits. However, those in the same industry involved in the strike will not be entitled to unemployment payments.

Thus, if metalworkers go on strike, as they did for seven weeks in 1984, no employees in the metalworking industry would receive benefits, but auto workers affected by their action would.

The bill is not nearly as sweeping as union reform legislation introduced by the Conservative government in Britain, but it is a departure from German practice.

The Christian Democrats and the Free Democrats pushed for tough reforms after the 1984 metalworkers strike crippled the car industry for seven weeks. But the original bill was softened to placate conservative lawmakers with working-class constituencies.

Bitter Opposition

The unions and their Social Democratic allies bitterly opposed the law and vowed Thursday to scrap it if they are returned to power in the national election next January.

Hans-Jochen Vogel, the Social Democratic leader in Parliament, told the government: “You have the next-to-last word. The voters will have the last word.”

He added that the measure will let loose “the most serious social conflict since 1949.”

The Kohl forces insisted that the change is necessary to preserve the government’s neutrality in trade disputes, and Labor Minister Norbert Blum accused unions of reacting with “blind socialist fanaticism.”

The Trade Union Federation, which has 7.5 million members, had held a series of protest strikes during the last few months to show its opposition to the bill, but the actions had no significant effect on the legislators.