A-Infos (en) Danish mass strike continues into day 9

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Danish mass strike continues into day 9


May 5th, 1998

Today, 15 to 20,000 workers demonstrated in front of the employers
federation building in Copenhaghen as part of the national day of action

called by the national meeting of shop stewards. The demonstration was
double the size of last week's one which shows the determination of the
strikers.

The strike remains solid and the employers are starting to complain
about
a "workers' dictatorship" as they have to ask permission to the unions
for any movements they want to make. The unions only allow things to
happen on the basis of emergency cases. One cannot get petrol, cannot
get
out of some of the islands, cannot get an animal slaughtered, etc
without
permission from the trade unions.

Also during the strike there has been a unionisation campaign with
workers going to non-organised workplaces to recruit them to the union.

The negotiations between the employers and the union leaders broke down
and could not reach an agreement. But now the Minister of Labour has
forced them back to the negotiation table with his own presence. What
they are trying to do is getting the government to force some kind of
deal "on both sides" and implement it by law. This way the trade union
leaders would not be forced to call a referendum of the rank and file
about the agreement and this way they can save their face.

The agreement will probably mean 2 days extra holidays but with
government compensation for the bosses. This kind of deal would be very
difficult to accept for the strikers. In fact some of them interviewed
in
the TV said that this is like "feeding the dog with his own tail", and
they insisted that the bosses have had enough profits to afford to pay
for an extra week holidays without compensation. Another striker said
"all the young people we have recruited during the strike would leave
the
union immediately if we just give them this agreement".

The government is desperate to reach an agreement today so that they can

implement it by law tomorrow. This is because many foreign investors and

foreign companies dealing with Danish firms have said that if the strike

goes on for more than 10 days, they are going to withdraw all their
operations. This could have a long term effect for the Danish economy.
The employers themselves are split on what is the way forward and this
is
shown by the fact that the threatened shut down of the retail sector has

not worked in any decisive way.

The problem is that the strike has effectively no leadership. The trade
union leaders are busy negotiating and offer no way forward. The shop
stewards movement which is actually organising the strike has no clear
strategy either. In this conditions it is difficult to see how the anger

with the government implementing a forced deal can be expressed.

Source details follow:
Date: Tue, 05 May 1998 16:46:10 +0100 (BST)
From: socappeal@easynet.co.uk
Subject: Danish strike day 9
Sender: union-d@wolfnet.com
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