GERMANY: Mine Strike

About 80,000 lignite* miners in Central Germany went on strike and with it began a general movement for an increase of wages, long incipient.

The miners demanded an increase of 2½c an hour, equivalent to a 12½% rise on an average eight-hour weekly wage of $9.60, which, considering the high cost of living in the Reich, is unqualifiedly asserted to be far below decent living pay.

The mine owners were not unsympathetic, but pointed out that, as their industry is to a great extent run on borrowed capital and therefore has high interest charges to meet, they cannot afford to increase the level of wages, despite the fact that the total sum involved for the entire industry is something less than $100,000, unless they raise the cost to the consumer, and this the government, which controls mining, will not let them do.

The miners retort that lignite delivered in Berlin for $5.20 a ton retails for $9 a ton, which they claimed is too great a profit for the middleman. They therefore suggested that their claims could be met from this source without raising the price to the consumer. But the middlemen have to pay for unloading at the freight yards, transportation to the selling point and unloading there, not to mention high overhead cost.

The government’s policy is to prevent a rise in the costs to the consumers for the simple and obvious reason that it affects the price of the commodity on the international market. It holds that it is Germany’s prime duty to increase her foreign markets in order that she can build up credits abroad for transfer on account of reparations under the Dawes plan. To which the workers answer that such a policy puts the whole reparations burden on their shoulders.

After several days of negotiation the strike was ended by arbitration, the government decreeing the decision mandatory upon the operators and workers alike. An increase of 11½%, about $1.10 a week, was allowed and work in the mines was resumed at the beginning of the week.

The significance of the strike, however, was seen rather in its probable effects on other wage-earners than in the walk-out itself. Many workers are admittedly underpaid and a general move for increases is now envisaged, as was sometime ago predicted by John Maynard Keynes, British economist. This move has already received a fillip by the Federal Government which recently raised the salaries of its employes. In this connection other able economists pointed out that Germany is short-sighted in that she does not grasp that raising the standard of wages also raises the standard of living and promotes internal prosperity by increasing the purchasing power of the laboring classes.

*Lignite is wood-coal, a brown mineral composition midway between peat and bituminous coal. It is used in Germany principally in connection with the generation of electricity.