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/MAY DAY/GERMANY: Anger at 'Agenda 2010'
By Clive Freeman
BERLIN, Apr 29 (IPS) - Perhaps it is hardly surprising that a Pop Song
making cruel fun of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder should recently shoot
straight to the top of the charts and become Germany's No.1 hit.
What with the country's economy at a low point, jobless levels topping
the 4.5 million mark and plans afoot for a drastic revamp of the welfare
state by his red-green government, Schroeder has been the man many Germans
have loved to hate of late.
Schroeder's finance minister, Hans Eichel, has also been a target after
raising several different taxes and levies in recent months. A caricaturist
employed by Germany's biggest tabloid newspaper has portrayed him as a
vampire, blood dripping from its fangs.
Anger at Schroeder is primarily linked to his controversial 'Agenda 2010'
programme, which aims to sharply reduce long-term jobless benefits, limit
job security guarantees and drop the requirement that employers help pay for
sick benefit insurance. This is a cruel betrayal of SPD working class roots.
SPD party rebels are indirectly threatening to wreck his red-green
government if he goes ahead with the reform package, claiming it is a
betrayal of the party's working-class roots.
Schroeder comes under attack also from the country's trade unionists,
many of whom are traditionally SPD voters.
This week has seen the chancellor boldly defending his government's
policies. His reform plans, he says, are aimed at "renewal" of the country's
economy and of society's current ills, but they would not come at the
expense of social fairness and justness.
Schroeder's popularity rating in Germany has plunged in recent months,
but the SPD's national executive is backing his measures. In Berlin Monday
28 party leadership members voted in favour of the reforms. Only four were
opposed, with a further four abstaining.
The current controversy raging around Schroeder's leadership could come
to a climax on Thursday when trade unionists, many of whom are traditionally
SPD voters, assemble for May l Labour Day celebrations.
Curiously, months ago, long before serious discussion had started on
economic reforms, Schroeder accepted the DGB's (German Trade Union
Federation) invitation to address its main May Day rally.
Appearing with Schroeder will be Michael Sommer, the DGB's powerful
leader, who has repeatedly slammed the government proposals. 50,000 trade
unionists are expected to attend the rally.
"The Chancellor will come. I see no reason why we should exclude him
because of our differences," said Sommer on German TV, when asked if
Schroeder was likely to get a stormy reception from the trade unionists.
Schroeder made a passionate 45-minute plea for SPD members to support his
plans at a regional Social Democratic Party conference in Bonn Monday. It
was the first of four such meetings ahead of the crucial June 1 special
party congress in Berlin, when a decision will be taken on the reforms.
Rounding on party left-wingers at the meeting, Schroeder said there was
no choice but to forge ahead with the reforms. In a rapidly changing,
complex, world the nation faced huge challenges.
"A decisive question," he said, "is whether the government has the
capability in an economic crisis and in a severe international situation to
lead the country effectively. That is the question that must interest and
preoccupy every Social Democrat," he said, sternly glancing at rebellious
party members in the audience.
Ursula Engelen-Kefer, a deputy leader of the German Federation of Trade
Unions, famed for her fiery championing of workers' rights, seemed notably
unimpressed by the Chancellor's words. The reform package, she fears, will
come at the expense of the less well off, and damage workers' interests.
Engelen-Kefer is also unhappy at talk of the German age of retirement
being hiked from the current 65 to 67 - a move aimed apparently at helping
to rescue the country's creaking pay-as-you-go state pension system.
The proposal, she said was deeply unfair, given that most workers
nowadays were retiring at 60. "At present, they only get a proper pension
from the age of 65 and must accept considerable reductions during the
interim period," said the trade union leader in TV interview.
Adding to Schroeder's woes is the sudden "political" reappearance of
Oskar Lafontaine, a former Saarland premier and rival of Schroeder's. His
career seemed ended when, without warning, he quit as the red-green
government's finance minister in March 1999, after a bitter power struggle.
Now a columnist for the mass-circulation daily 'Bild' Lafontaine - a hero
still to many on the party's left wing - used his newspaper platform to
attack the Chancellor for allegedly breaking promises made in last year's
election campaign not to tamper with social welfare programmes.
Lafontaine said he "was not prepared to stand by and see the people
duped."
Later at a peace demonstration in Frankfurt, Lafontaine took aim at
Schroeder again, claiming that, "reform today obviously doesn't stand for
improvement but social cuts and scrapping employees' rights. We don't have
to put up with that. We don't need to go back to the 19th century," he said.
In his "Bild" column the next day there was further niggling. Lafontaine,
who ran for Chancellor in 1990 and was also SPD chairman until leaving the
government, wrote that rank-and-file Social Democrats were "not prepared to
betray the people."
Family Affairs Minister Renate Schmidt, a deputy chairwoman of SPD, came
to her boss's defence, berating the left-wing members of parliament for
collecting SPD members' signatures on a petition criticising Schroeder's
plans.
Their actions were a gross breach of trust and "very damaging for us,"
she told Munich's 'Sueddeutsche Zeitung' newspaper.
Support for Schroeder and the SPD slumped badly after last September's
national election, when the grim state of the public finances and the
economy forced Berlin to raise the prospect of higher taxes and increased
social welfare contributions.
The chancellor clawed back popular support again by his hard-line
opposition to the war in Iraq, but an opinion poll published in the weekly
'Stern' magazine showed that support for the SPD had fallen by three
percentage points from a week ago to 30 percent.
Schroeder's problem is that his coalition with the Greens has only a slim
majority in Parliament. Its combined vote total is 306 but it needs at least
302 votes for a Bundestag majority. Now 12 rebellious SPD members have begun
actively campaigning against his plans, and threatening to vote against the
government.
Schroeder, who has staked his future on the outcome of the June 1 special
party conference, says SPD dissenters are "playing with fire" if they vote
against the proposals. "Nothing less than the party's ability to govern will
be at stake," he warns. (END/2003)
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