By Julio Godoy
PARIS, Oct 23 2007 (IPS)

The joint strike action by French and German railways workers Oct. 18 disguises wide differences in approach to industrial action in the two countries.

In France, strike is a constitutional right invoked regularly by unions to force through their demands, or to protest against government or corporate measures that may restrict social achievements. In Germany strikes are still used much less by unions.

The Hans Boeckler Foundation, a labour research institute linked to the Confederation of German Trade Unions (DGB, after its German name), reports that between 1996 and 2005 there were only 2.4 days of strike per year per 1,000 workers in Germany, against 71.5 in France, and 144.9 in Spain.

In France and Germany, unions came into being about the same time in the middle of the 19th century following the emergence of Marxism. In France the right to strike was first recognised in 1864 by the Law Ollivier. It became a constitutional right in 1946. Unions became authorised in 1884.

In Germany, seamen had organised strikes already in 1791. With the development of heavy industry in the 19th century, strike became a resource German unions began to use regularly.

The histories of industrial action in France and Germany began to diverge after World War II. In Germany, with growing representation of unions in management, negotiations became the norm to resolve labour conflicts.

Legislation on strike continues to be marked by “a juridical vacuum”, Gregor Thuesing, director of the institute on labour law at the University of Bonn, some 480 km southwest of Berlin, told IPS.

Heiner Dribbus, labour researcher at the Hans Boeckler Foundation, says that in Germany “the right to strike is actually a purely nominal right, very much restricted when compared to that of other countries, such as France.”

Most German public servants, some 1.8 million, do not have the right to strike.

But the trends in both countries are changing. In France the number of strike actions has been falling since 1995; in Germany it is increasing, even though unions and workers on both sides of the border face similar pressures of a cutting of state welfare allocations and a reduction of labour rights.

In France, short-term union success in 1995 started off a long-term decline. A three-week strike paralysed the country, and forced the right-wing government of then president Jacques Chirac to withdraw a plan to reform the state pensions system, especially in the “special regimes” for railways and electricity workers.

Following that, the right-wing Union for the Republic party and its successor Union for a Popular Movement, which ruled the country between 1993 and 1997, and now since 2002, have been introducing ways to limit strikes, and stepping up pressure on unions to cut industrial action.

One new government measure is the requirement for “minimum service”. A law passed in August this year mandates that unions and managements must sign an agreement before Jan 1, 2008 to guarantee “continuity of public service in terrestrial transport” in the event of a strike.

The proposal on minimum service is so controversial that negotiations have not even started as yet at the state-owned railroad company Société Nationale de Chemins de Fer (SNCF), or at the Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens, which runs the subway and bus services in Paris.

Joel Lecoq, general secretary at the French Democratic Confederation of Workers, says the law would be unconstitutional. “It is impossible to put in place minimum public service without fundamentally violating the constitutional right to strike.”

Meanwhile, strikes in the public transport system are continuing, though not as strongly as on Oct. 18. Sources at a major French union told IPS Monday that they were discussing whether to extend their actions, leading up to a new general strike mid-November.

The Oct. 18 strike was called to protest against government plans to extend the contributions period for pension benefits from 37.5 years at present to 40 years in 2012.

Strikes remain less common in Germany, but they are growing in number. The number of labour days lost in strikes rose to 12.4 per thousand workers in 2006, the highest since 1993. This increase has led more and more employers to seek verdicts from tribunals to prohibit strikes.

The state-owned railways company Bundesbahn lodged complaints before tribunals to stop the Oct. 18 strikes – with some success. On Oct. 5, a tribunal in Chemnitz in the federal state of Saxony authorised strikes only in regional and suburban trains.

But such legal decisions are being resisted, and by companies as well. “Judicial actions against strikes are the wrong way of dealing with strikes,” says Hagen Lesch, labour expert at the Cologne Institute for the German Economy, financed by private enterprises. “In the German labour world the autonomy of the regulations between employers and employees must be given priority.”

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