workers on trial
•DENMARK Danish capitalism has been hit very hard by the economic stagnation and general recession that is spreading throughout the capitalist world. The Danish inflation rate, 16 percent, is one of the highest in Europe. At the same time, official unemployment figures run as high as 9.1 percent, which means that more than 76,000 workers are idle. And the outlook for the workers is gloomy. The unemployment figure is expected to surpass 100,000 this winter and spring. The influence of world economic stagnation is primarily responsible for the recession in Denmark, but the government's policies, which have centered on trying to ease the balance of payments deficit (more than 5 thousand million Danish kroner for the first half of 1974), have contributed heavily to deepening the crisis. The government has been carrying out a deflationary policy and has tried to use the increase in unemployment to crush the workers' resistance. But the workers have responded actively and in so doing have changed the entire political situation of the country. Last spring the government passed a tax reform that reduced tax levels but also cut social-welfare spending, the result being that the living standards of the most ill-paid workers de28 from the OUT corners MKBEJDE
NU RENTEN N D FRIDLIER ARSENIOSE RBEJD BYGGERIE: OP GØR IKKE
LMISSE: HARTLING ARB EODS LOS clined. The workers answered the government decision with a spontaneous strike wave (see INPRECOR No. 4, July 18). Some 300, 000 workers walked off the job. There were several demonstrations of about 75,000 people in front of the parliament building; the marchers demanded the dismissal of the government. Once one of the quietest counrries of Scandinavia, Denmark has now joined the ranks of European coun tries in which decisive class confrontations are in the offing. The bourgeoisie recognized the May strike wave as an important test and decided to respond by bringing 37,000 workers to trial for having engaged in "illegal" strikes. The workers are to be tried before the Labor Court, a body composed of three members representing the employers, three representing the trade unions, and one serving as a "neutral" chair• man. The Social Democratic trade-union leaders declined to withdraw from the Labor Court to protest this provocation and refused to mobilize the workers against the trials. In fact, they participated in the first trial, which was held on October 17. As a result, 400 workers of the Svendborg shipyard
were found guilty and fined 70, 000 kroner (about US$11,000). The workers throughout the country followed the trial very closely. Sympathy strikes erupted when the court's decision was announced. On the very evening of their "conviction, " the Svendborg workers themselves went on strike. At an assembly attended by all the shipyard workers, they voted a resolution stating in part: "We urge all the workplaces of the country to support us in the struggle against the capitalist system. " That same evening, 400 workers of another shipyard went on strike. During the following day (October 18) more than 25, 000 workers walked off the job. The workers of the B&W motor factory demonstrated in downtown Copenhagen, blocking traffic on one of the major avenues. The mobilization was stimulated by the action of an opposition to the Social Democracy that has developed within the trade unions. The opposition called on the workers to move against the Labor Court and to refuse to pay the fines. This stood in sharp contrast to the attitude adopted by Thomas Nielsen, national chairman of LO (Landsorganisation -- National Trade-Union Council), who said: "It is wrong to attack the decision of the Court, for the decision was juridically correct. " On Monday, October 21, the solidarity strikes were joined by many workers, especially harbor and shipyard workers. As of this writing, the outcome of the strike wave is not yet clear, but it is quite likely that the employers will now attempt to negotiate an arrangement with the trade-union leaders whereby the trials will not have to continue on a factory-by-factory basis. Instead, they will seek to use the first decision as a precedent and then judge the rest of the 37,000 workers at one •SWITZERLAND NO to