“The peace perspective”

german-foreign-policy.com: You are inviting people to a trade union conference for peace in Würzburg on 24–25 July. Why?

Ulrike Eifler: Because we want to shape and promote a conversation on war and peace within our trade unions. When society becomes militarised, the world of work will become militarised, too. And we must face up to the fact that militarisation has already penetrated every corner of the world of work. Colleagues who have spent decades building vehicles for use in civilian life suddenly find themselves working in defence sector companies. Teachers are being obliged to invite soldiers into their classrooms. Journalists are increasingly pushed into following the government’s foreign policy line. Case workers at job centres are being encouraged – indeed, explicitly trained – to place unemployed people in the armed forces. Dockworkers are having to load arms shipments, and so on and so forth. All this shows just how closely the imperatives of militarisation and the world of work are intertwined.

It is important to understand that the employers’ perspective is a perspective of war. For they profit from war or they have chosen to be part of a functioning war machine. This applies not only to arms manufacturers. State structures, too, have put themselves at the service of war preparations. Consider, for example, municipal bus companies that smother their vehicle fleets with Bundeswehr advertising. Think of the Bundeswehr’s career centres, which are already gathering data on young people for future conscription. Think of hospitals, where nursing staff must learn to treat war wounds and take part in evacuation drills. Or let’s think of the intelligence services: the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution is intimidating underage school students who organise anti-war school strikes.

It is vital to raise the question of peace because war preparations have become part of the world of work. And because our trade unions can only successfully wage the struggle for redistribution if we push back against the militarisation of work. Pay rises, shorter working hours or a better balance between family and career – none of this will work in wartime. That is why the peace perspective is our perspective.

And then we are seeing, of course, how rearmament is turning into a frontal assault on employees. The federal government has opted for a rearmament programme on a scale not seen for a century and intends to finance this programme by cutting into our pensions, our education and our healthcare. A tank costs on average some 28 million euros – for just one! All of this has to be financed. And the German government is taking the billions and billions needed for this from ordinary people. Since the coronavirus pandemic, people have been struggling with an ever-worsening cost-of-living crisis. This crisis will be exacerbated by a looming global economic crisis. If the government also opts for dismantling the welfare state – and everything now points in this direction – many people will be plunged into even great hardship and uncertainty. To organise an effective opposition, we must first agree on exactly what is actually happening. Our conference in Würzburg is intended to take stock of the real situation.

german-foreign-policy.com: This is already the fourth trade union conference for peace. How did the first three conferences go?

Ulrike Eifler: The previous conferences offered an important focus for the conversation on war and peace within the trade union movement. This is partly because they resulted in the publication of two collections of texts on the subject: written by trade unionists for trade unionists. They offer guidance and are intended to help colleagues better understand the emerging world. Events are now taking place all over the country where people are discussing the ways in which the so-called ‘Zeitenwende’ – the government’s proclaimed turning point to a new geopolitical and defence policy era – is negatively impacting on conditions for trade unionists. Some of these activities are organised by local peace initiatives and involve trade union members, and some are initiated entirely by trade union bodies. In any case, the conferences have become a key point of reference for trade unionists working for peace.

The political emphasis has, however, shifted over the course of the previous conferences. At the first meeting, it was still important to us to highlight the role of trade unions in the peace movement. This reflects, in a sense, a moral position that is essentially rooted in our own history as German workers. In subsequent conferences, however, we have come to realise that, due to the fierce attacks on social advances gained by the labour movement, we have to address and discuss some quite different issues. How, for example, should we as trade unions respond to the federal government’s decision to switch to a war economy? How should we respond to the rampant cuts to social services used to finance arms spending? How should we respond to an attempt to militarise the education sector. For instance, what do we do about teachers being obliged to invite soldiers into their classrooms? We have begun to engage in these discussions and put a wider variety of issues on our conference agendas.

german-foreign-policy.com: Meanwhile, more and more businesses find themselves in dire straits as they are impacted by the economic crisis, They are looking to enter the armaments sector as a way out. How do these trends affect discussions within workplaces and trade unions? Is it becoming harder to argue for peace?

Ulrike Eifler: On the one hand, yes; on the other, no. The problem is indeed that militarisation is taking place against the backdrop of an industrial crisis. And both the federal government and employers are trying to create the impression that the jobs lost in civilian production can be saved through arms production. This really does make it harder to organise anti-war protests. But there are certainly some hopeful developments here, too. For example, shop stewards at VW, Ford and ZF have passed resolutions in which they distance themselves from their companies’ decision to move into arms production.

But regardless of this, we must discuss the question of what the correct trade union strategy is in companies manufacturing armaments. We have to take account of the fact that our colleagues working in defence industry companies – and in companies that used to operate in the civilian sector and are now switching partly or even entirely to arms production – are in the same position as everyone else: they have to pay their bills and want to provide their children with a decent education. In my view, this means we still have the fundamental task of protecting jobs even in weapons factories – just as in all other workplaces. Yet in the case of arms production it is also critically important to develop strong shop steward structures and encourage political discussion of what the products of their labour are ultimately used for – what happens when they are deployed.

And, after all, we find that employees in the arms industry do indeed maintain a certain distance from the business of their own company. Political trade union work must engage with these reservations. The rapidly changing political developments can be accompanied by equally rapid changes in consciousness. Years ago, I met an elderly Italian worker who had worked in a weapons factory in the 1940s. He was always punctual, never off sick, always the fastest worker on the assembly line. And he didn’t give a thought to the weapons he was helping to produce. But when he witnessed the police firing with the weapons on a demonstration and people dying as a result, he quit his job and joined the Italian partisans.

Ultimately, however, it is consistent trade union representation that brings employees in an arms company into conflict with their management. The dockworkers in Genoa who refused to load arms exports bound for Israel were also concerned about their own health and safety. Working on containers holding explosives is dangerous. I have heard similar angle in accounts from the port of Piraeus. The Greek colleagues argued that handling arms exports would turn the port into a target, and they refused to load the cargo. Anyone fighting for good working conditions in arms factories will find themselves in conflict with management. The issue of wages is the crucial question. It lays bare the conflict. We need to engage more strongly with this debate in our unions.

german-foreign-policy.com: The classic debate on conversion – pursuing a strategy to convert military production sites to civilian production – has probably become harder to win today, hasn’t it?

Ulrike Eifler: Yes, this debate has certainly become a lot more difficult than it was in the 1970s and 1980s. Conversion was always a strategy to protect colleagues’ jobs and incomes by consciously turning military production into civilian production. Now, however, we are seeing the opposite. The shift from civilian to arms production has become a strategy to save jobs. At least, that is the narrative we are being fed. And the federal government is deliberately steering the economy in this direction. Its industrial strategy is now geared to promoting and expanding the arms industry. This turn to a militarised economy is achieved through public contracts, government purchasing guarantees, priority access to raw materials, support for skilled worker recruitment, and the application of the Act to Ensure the Provision of Labour Services for Defence Purposes. The latter is an emergency law governing the suspension of the right to strike and even compulsory labour in the event of the government declaring a “state of tension”, an enactment of NATO’s mutual defence clause, or a “state of defence”.

In the light of these dangerous developments, conversion no longer offers an adequate response to the contradictions we face, especially as the success of conversion projects would be very limited anyway. In the past it only usually worked when there was no money being made from arms production. But that is no longer the case today. In my view, it is therefore crucial that we embed the idea of conversion within a debate about what kind of industrial policy we actually want and need as a society, and organise our struggles on that basis.

And on this point I say quite clearly: an industrial policy that is not oriented towards peace cannot be an industrial policy in the interests of our colleagues. Why? Because the shift to an expanding defence industry does not prevent the deindustrialisation so often talked about, but actually accelerates it. Why? Because labour and financial resources are being diverted from productive industrial sectors and channelled into an industry that has no social benefit whatsoever. This fosters the development of an industrial monostructure that makes economic success dependent on the escalation of global conflict.

What’s more, we know that investment in the construction of hospitals, schools, nurseries or local public transport not only has greater social benefits but also generates significantly higher growth and has much stronger job creation effects. For every euro the federal government invests in our civil infrastructure, 1.50 euros flows back into the domestic economy. For investment in education, the figure is as high as three euros. But for investment in armaments, the benefit figure is between zero and 0.50 euros. This means that the money pumped into armaments is not at all, as sometimes claimed, without alternatives. Indeed, this investment is actually downright useless in terms of growth effects.

german-foreign-policy.com: Alongside the debate on war and peace within the trade union movement, is this debate also taking off in workplaces?

Ulrike Eifler: Yes, conversations in workplaces are certainly taking off. People sense that we are at a turning point in our history – that the eighty years in which we have lived in peace are giving way to a new era of war. I recently attended a school strike in protest against future conscription. A care worker for the elderly spontaneously took the floor and told the striking pupils how much the elderly people in her care home are still shaped by their war experiences. She said that even after eighty years they still speak of being deeply traumatised by nights of bombing, the loss of loved ones and, above all, their fear of war returning. A teacher was also present, joining in with his students’ action. In Leipzig, a young DHL employee was sacked for speaking out at a demonstration against arms exports to Israel. In Munich, three bus drivers are refusing to drive trams smothered in Bundeswehr advertising. And I know more than one colleague who says he would resign immediately if his company suddenly started producing for the arms industry. These are all great and inspiring examples. But they are not yet collectively organised, but remain individual actions. That is why those colleagues who do stand up against war are so vulnerable to victimisation.

On the other hand, we only have to look at current trade union resolutions and initiatives to see that a great deal is already happening. At the annual conference of the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB), which took place a few days ago, a resolution against the return of compulsory military service was passed by an overwhelming majority. Germany’s largest union, IG Metall, now offers support and advice at its Würzburg and Frankfurt branches for conscientious objectors as part of their employment and social law advisory services. Last year, the Baden-Württemberg branch of the service sector union, ver.di, Germany’s second largest, backed calls for big turnout at the 3 October anti-war demonstration in Stuttgart. A trade union-led initiative with the slogan ‘Social spending up – arms spending down!’ has been built in Munich. Those colleagues organised a demonstration through the unions by linking the issue of military spending with the question of the welfare state. A nationwide initiative called ‘Trade Unionists for Cuba’ has been launched. Germany’s education sector union, the GEW, has filed a public interest law suit in Bavaria against the Bundeswehr Promotion Act, which obliges teachers to invite soldiers into the classroom. There is a lot happening in our trade unions. What is missing so far is an organisational structure that brings these experiences together, generalises them and organises a strategic debate on the issue of war.

german-foreign-policy.com: Trade unions are also becoming very active internationally. An international anti-war conference is scheduled to take place in London in June.

Ulrike Eifler: At the international level, there have been some excellent and important statements by trade unions and umbrella organisations on the genocide in Gaza, on the US intervention in Venezuela, and on the bombing of Iran and Lebanon in violation of international law. At the same time, the labour movement is launching support for that major international peace conference on 20 June in London. This is already the second such peace conference. The first took place in Paris in October last year.

International networking of this kind is important because it gives us the opportunity to forge links, bundle our activities and coordinate them across Europe. The trade unions in Belgium have now formed a strong and inspiring movement against welfare cuts and rearmament. In Germany, by contrast, the protest movement seems to have stalled. Here, the decades-long tradition of social partnership has led to people no longer feeling that they can do anything personally to bring about change. It is this sense of agency that must be restored. All these developments show that the protests against the march to war in Europe are taking place unevenly, but they are taking place. Everywhere. It is important that German trade unionists in particular travel to London in June and draw ideas and inspiration from the international experience. I think we in Germany need the spark of international trade union protests to ignite a fire in our own unions.