West Germany: Burnt-Out Coal

In the drab coal-mining towns of the Ruhr and the Saar, the mood was as grey as the fall weather that lay over the countryside in a chill and foggy blanket. The roll of muffled drums echoed through the streets as thousands of miners and their families silently marched in protest, bearing black flags and signs pleading for government action to save their jobs. Their protest was too late. Last week the German coal industry announced plans to close down 36 mines that produce a quarter of West Germany’s coal and employ more than 60,000 miners, fully 17% of the industry’s working force. At the Amalie mine in Essen, center of the industrial Ruhr, dust-covered workers were handed “death warrants” as they emerged from the mines, and went off to brood over their beer.

Germany has been brooding about her mines for years. Once the power source of the nation’s industry and still a politically potent force, coal has watched its share of the country’s fuel market plunge from 92% in 1950 to 49.8% today. Rising production and labor costs in the old mines are partially responsible, and so are cheaper foreign coal prices; U.S. coal, highly automated and easier to dig out, undersells German coal by $2 a ton in Germany, and only a miserly quota keeps it from flooding the German market. Coal’s greater rival is oil, which has been sweeping the country as a heating and industrial fuel at the same time that better technology has enabled such industries as steel to use less coal.

In six years, the use of oil in West Germany had jumped 421%.

Bonn imposed stiff excise taxes on fuel oil some time ago, and persuaded coal companies to close 37 mines and 122 coalpits by offering aid and incentive payments. Coal’s decline has continued inexorably, and mountains of unsold coal have piled up throughout the Ruhr, the Saar and other coal-producing regions. Last week’s mine closings were to meet the deadline for federal aid, since most of the mine owners-even some who are operating at a profit-see little hope for the future.

The government was reluctant to put import quotas on oil, as the coalmen wish, but tried to cool the crisis by giving the mines until Dec. 31, 1966 ‘beyond two crucial elections-to begin phasing out. Though miners are reluctant to leave their trade and their homes, they should have no trouble getting new work. In prosperous Germany, jobs are still going begging.