FAU-IAA - Direct Action #222 - Workers' resistance in the "land of industrial peace" (de)

Pacification attempts and development of workers' struggles in Switzerland over the past 
100 years ---- Switzerland is a striking poor country, a country of "industrial peace". 
Strikes are so rare that many people believe in Switzerland, the strike was illegal. 
Although this is not true, it runs - together with the lack of protection against 
dismissal for union activists - in fact it almost out. This is shown by two recent 
examples in the hospital La Providence in Neuch?tel and at SPAR in Daettwil where the 
strikers were dismissed. While it is running court proceedings for wrongful dismissal, but 
the facts do nothing to change. The message of the business to their wage slaves is clear: 
Anyone who goes on strike in Switzerland, is dismissed! This is to be re-enforced 
unconditionally the "industrial peace".

When an armistice is concluded between two hostile armies, so the two armies continue to 
face as enemies. If, instead, a "peace agreement" is made, then the enemies no longer 
regard as such and become "partners" - from class enemies are social partners. This can be 
done from the insight that both armies are approximately equal thickness and therefore 
none is able to defeat the other. Often, the peace is concluded, however, due to the 
unconditional surrender of the defeated army. It is psychologically easy to see that in 
this case, at some point start most of the losers to feel their slavery as less oppressive 
to identify themselves with the interests of their masters. Hence those "politics of the 
lesser evil" that understands it so masterfully, reinterpreting defeats into victories 
developed.

THE DEFEAT OF 1918 AS THE FOUNDATION OF "INDUSTRIAL PEACE"

An example of such a development is the emergence of "industrial peace" in Switzerland, is 
considered the beginning of the end of the "peace agreement" in the machine and metal 
industry in 1937. The agreement, which contained no regulation of wages and working 
conditions, required the parties to refrain from any action such as strikes or lockouts. 
Of particular importance is the commitment of the Parties, is "its members to hold to 
comply with the terms of this Agreement, failing which the guilty party is in breach of 
contract". Thus, the union undertook not only to refrain from action, but also - in the 
sense of "control function" - to actively ensure compliance with labor peace.

Looking more closely, was this "peace agreement" only the logical continuation of a trade 
union policy, which began shortly after the failed general strike in November 1918. At 
that time, the strike leadership had bowed to the ultimatum of the state government and 
the strike ended unconditionally. Your surrender it justified as follows: The workers had 
died of the power of bayonets. In order to continue the strike, would the workers "must 
have equivalent weapons such as the criminal hunted on them army. This equality did not 
exist. The masses defenseless the machine guns of the enemy deliver that we could and 
could not. " the power struggle class against class had the workers lost in November 1918. 
Local general strike in 1919 in Zurich and Basel, where those forces who did not want to 
come to terms with the defeat, were particularly strong, were brutally suppressed by the 
state. For all others, the policy of adaptation and subordination began very soon to the 
interests of entrepreneurs.

ON THE WAY TO "SOCIAL PARTNERSHIP"

Pioneer of this "strategy" was the Swiss metal and watches Workers' Union (SMSR), who 
signed the "Peace Agreement" of 1937. But was by no means limited to this union: In 1927, 
when the new Civil Service Act contained a ban on strikes for the Federal staff, the Swiss 
Federation of Trade Unions (SGB) stood behind the law. In the same year the SGB Congress 
emphasized the reference to the proletarian class struggle from his statutes and closed 
the Basel union cartel because of its class struggle from the attitude of SGB. Thus it can 
be stated that the "social peace" in Switzerland began with the violent repression of the 
workers' protest in the years of the country strikes, a time of great economic hardship, 
and was not based around the same relative prosperity of the economic upswing after the 
Second World War. It was a "social peace" which the bourgeoisie had forced at gunpoint of 
the working class. The suppression of a social class by another was its material basis. 
Until the "labor peace" - at least temporarily - was fully enforced, it took several 
decades. The year 1961 came in first without a single stoppage in the statistics. The 
Zurich Plasterers strike two years later could therefore be interpreted as a last flicker 
of will to resist, but also as a conclusion of an era. Because at least from then on it 
was the "wildcat strike", which became the engine of industrial disputes.

"WILDCAT STRIKES" IN THE 1970S

In July 1968, the seventy workers of the ballpoint pen factory Penrex occurred in Ticino 
on strike and demanded three weeks vacation. The striking workers occupied the factory and 
watched them around the clock. After a month of strike demands are met. In May 1970 also 
went on strike in Ticino, the 150 workers of a Bally daughter, again mainly commuters, and 
demanded among other things, a guaranteed minimum wage and the abolition of piecework. The 
workers took care of neither peace nor to the labor union contract policy. They 
acknowledged the operating committee and chose not own strike committee. Since the strike 
remained isolated, the united front of business owners and union could smash the fight 
after three weeks: Sixty workers, more than a third of the workforce, were laid off, the 
others were given a wage increase of only five percent. A month earlier, in April 1970, 
200 Spanish construction workers of the company Murer went on strike for four days in 
Geneva successfully for wage increases - against the will of the union, but supported by 
4000 workers and young people who demonstrated their solidarity in the city. In contrast, 
ended in June 1970, the strike of forty Spanish workers of a construction company in 
Stansstad in central Switzerland, with a defeat, and the strikers were asked by the 
immigration police at the border.

The highlight in the strike movement at the beginning of the seventies were the workers' 
struggles in the Geneva metal industry. On February 26, 1971 were 160 workers - about 
three quarters of Spanish emigrants - the Verntissa in Geneva (recently acquired by Sulzer 
Winterthur) on strike, demanding a ten percent wage increase for all. This, after the SMUV 
had three percent individually, depending on work performance, negotiated. When operating 
committee and union workers wanted to move to the resumption of work, they were booed. The 
workers chose a private, multi-national strike committee from their ranks. In solidarity 
with the Verntissa-workers decided on March 2, 200 of 300 workers in the past few months 
Buehrle Group belonging Hispano-Oerlikon, also to go on strike. One day later, followed by 
the 500 workers at the Ateliers des Charmilles. When it succeeded, the operation of the 
Commission S?cheron to negotiate the demands without strike and thus to prevent a 
solidarity strike of 1400 workers of that operation, the strike front began to crumble. On 
March 5, a member of the strike committee at Charmilles personally signed a contract for 
9.5%, and after a week the workers of Verntissa and the Hispano-Oerlikon with 9.5% 
indicated satisfied.

NEW FIGHTING IN TIME OF CRISIS

The strike at the Piano Factory Burger & Jacobi in Biel - on the language border to the 
French Switzerland - in the summer of 1974, after more than a decade was the first major 
labor dispute in German Switzerland. He is, above all, of particular importance, because 
it was first zusch?ttete the deep divide between native and immigrant workers and made it 
clear in what way the competition among the workers by itself disappears: by the common 
struggle against the employers. Same time, this labor dispute symbolizes the transition 
from the period of economic boom to crisis and defense against the deterioration of 
working and living conditions.

Barely two years later, in March 1976, led the staff of the railway track machinery 
manufacturer in Lausanne Matisa an exemplary fight against layoffs and against the 
shackles of labor peace. For the first time in 40 years, there was a staff in the machine 
and metal industries have succeeded with their self-organization in operation to force the 
SMUV, support a "wildcat strike". With the strike, the cleavage was overcome among the 
workers. This unity of the workers in struggle, which was maintained over the strike out, 
was determined her biggest success, even if the result in terms of the main requirements 
was unsatisfactory.

The strikes at Burger & Jacobi in Biel and at Matisa in Lausanne are exemplary and have 
startling parallels to current struggles on. They all move in the tension between 
workforces that organize around operational activists around, as well as the union 
apparatus and external supporters. It is the emergence of a strong, self-authorized 
collective operating the key to success and at the same time a difficult process, which is 
hardly influenced from the outside.

Rainer Thomann

CoverNote: This article is a revised summary of the contribution of the same name in the 
book by Anna Leather (eds.) "labor disputes in the sign of self-empowerment - Collective 
resistance in France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Serbia." There are also all 
references to the text.