The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1929-06-08
STEEL WORKERS
HEROIC STRUGGLE.
Set Excellent Example
of How to Win

One thousand, seven hundred
workers employed in the Steel
Works and Rolling Mills in Hen
ningsdorf, near Berlin, an undertake
ing belonging to the A. E. G. con-
Germ, have been on strike for over
three months against a wage cut
of 10 to 80 per cent. The fight be-
gan on Jan. % last when a depart
ment, comprising 309 men, downed
tools because, after futile negotia-
lions by the works management, the
above wage cut was simply dictated.
In order to enforce this wage cut
the works management, day or
two later, locked out the whole of
the staff.
Commencement of Struggle.
At the commencement of the
struggle the staff was divided into
strikers and locked-out, into free
trade union organized, christian-so-
cialist organized, and unorganized
workers. About Is per cent of the
whole staff is organized in the free
trade union. In order to set up a
united fighting front the revolution
airy opposition, on the second day Of
the struggle, organized the election
of a united Strike Committee, in
which both the organized and I'M
organized workers are duly repre-
scented. This measure was unapi-
mously supported by the whole of
the staff. Already in the first week
of the struggle the wives of the
strikers and also the youth were
modified, and they elected their
representative to the Strike Com
mittee. BY this means the women,
who otherwise are often retarding
element in labor struggles, were &C
corded an active place in the fight
| ing front.
The united revolutionary Strike
Committee, in close connection with
the fighting workers, have for four
teen weeks frustrated all attempts
at sabotage on the part of the re-
formist trade union bureaucracy, the
Christian union and the Stahlheln.
1epelled all the attacks of the works
management and the social demos
cratic burgomaster and thwarted all
attempts of the foremen, acting on
behelf of the works management, to
obtain strikebreakers.
IA Weeks Struggle.
In the fourteenth week of the
struggle the reformist trade union
bureaucracy went over to open
strikebreaking and declared the
strike to be at an end, although the
workers had by six votes rejected
base compromise and decided to
continue the fight.
But all these efforts to force the
workers to capitulate have been of
no avail; the front remains firm
and mistaken. The workers have
realized the necessity for and the
leading role played by revolutionary
Strike Committees as united front
organs capable of fighting deter
minedly against the reformist trade
Iunion bureaucracy, the employers,
and the organs of the state. During
the struggle the factory nucleus has
increased from seventeen comrades
to over fifty; local group of the
Workers international Relief, num-
boring 200 members, and group of
the Young Spartacus League have
been formed. The number of read
crs of the Communist organ "yolk-
secho" has increased by 10. About
the same number of workers have,
in spite of the treachery of the re-
formist trade union bureaucracy,
Joined the Metal Workers Union in
order to strengthen the opposition.
This struggle constitutes an in
structive and heroic example of the
whole labor movement.