In the various packages to save capitalism from itself, the billion is the smallest unit. The works council and the workers of Opel, a company that is in a permanent state of crisis, do not want to hide and are doing their part. Opel boss Reilly and works council chairman Franz have agreed on a package of cuts in wages, vacation and Christmas bonuses amounting to more than one billion euros over the next five years. This is intended to pave the way for government guarantees of 1.8 billion euros. However, in anticipation of a rigid austerity policy, it is by no means certain that these guarantees will actually materialize. In any case, at least 4,000 of Opel’s 24,000 jobs in Germany will be eliminated. The Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote about works council Franz after the agreement: “No question, this is how winners perform.” Is it still going on? While elsewhere in the EU general strikes are being called and factories occupied, Deutschland-AG is mutating into a crisis management community. Pride in having the fewest strike days is no longer enough. The threat potential of Hartz IV and the largest precariat sector in Western Europe make the German trade unions’ hearts sink into their pants: fear eats souls. The agreement at Opel threatens to be the prelude to a race to the bottom in key industries, driving down the general wage level even further. That won’t help. Employee participation in the management of the company can only intensify the macroeconomic downward spiral after the economic stimulus programs have run their course. But the view of the social interrelations is clouded anyway. The ideological community of renunciation is based solely on the false hope of saving one’s own corporate skin in the crisis competition, regardless of what happens to the others. When the catastrophe of state finances triggers the second wave of the economic collapse, Opel will still be the first to go. In the state of consciousness of anticipatory obedience, the only thing that helps is prayer.
Originally published in the print edition of the weekly newspaper Freitag on 05/27/2010
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