Save the welfare state | When the class fighters at the DGB shake their heads

Hands off or hands up? Yasmin Fahimi gives a “powerful speech” in Essen last week. Photo: IMAGO / epd The Merz/Klingbeil government is currently carrying out the toughest attacks since the Hartz laws against welfare state benefits and for crimping the workforce. Everyone and every wage-earning employee is being severely harmed - whether through the health care reform, the new working time regulations, the pension or the nursing care reform. The DGB, in which eight individual unions are organized, explains: “We won’t go along with that! We need reforms that strengthen the welfare state and don't save money!" Last Saturday he called for a "Day of Action" to "send a strong signal: "Hands off our welfare state!"

In North Rhine-Westphalia, the central rally takes place in Essen. The DGB federal chairwoman Yasmin Fahimi should give a “strong speech” here, as the call says. Buses drive to the demonstration from many cities, including from Witten. When I arrive at the indicated location, there are about 20 people waiting - not exactly a lot for one of the poorer Ruhr area cities, I think. There will be a few more, but the bus isn't coming. Someone is on the phone. Then the announcement that we should take the train. “What am I paying my fees for?” complains a person waiting. It is then said that you can have your train tickets refunded by the DGB.

We stand together on the train. A ZF worker wrote on a cardboard sign: “Unite one force – against layoffs and job cuts.” Someone asks whether a demonstration that takes place on a Saturday is actually “a power”? General shaking of the head. Of course there has to be a strike, is the unanimous opinion. But the “fighting culture” has unfortunately been forgotten, says a pensioner.

In Bochum, a whole lot of demonstrators are arriving, equipped with high-visibility vests with the slogans of the last collective bargaining battles on them, and with flags in their hands. IG Metall dominates here. The train driver welcomes “the demonstrators on the way to Essen” and wishes them “good luck”. Everyone is laughing, the mood is good.

A professional system has been set up on the Burgplatz in Essen, with a screen and large boxes. The singer Nadu moderates and sings a few songs. Some groups are distributing leaflets – such as the MLPD, which is demanding an “appropriate response” after the “brutal attack by the state and monopolies”. A grassroots trade union initiative against “war, militarism and civil peace” states: “Defending the welfare state means stopping the course of war.” And the SAV (Socialist Alternative) demands: “DGB – strike instead of letting off steam”.

Little by little the demonstrators fill the square. You can see “the Ruhr area”, as they say here. The people look down-to-earth, sometimes even worn out. Many older people, but also young people, are there and many who have migrant roots. Quite a few made small cardboard signs; They mainly complain about health care reform. The announcement comes from the podium that there should be 17,000 participants instead of the expected 10,000 - and there is applause for that. Well, there are certainly a lot of people here; But now it is also a good DGB tradition to mercilessly increase the numbers, which the media happily accepts, in contrast to other demos.

Then Fahimi begins her “strong speech”. She praises us for being so many. “The Chancellor should hear us” in his Berlin. Then she talks about the “irresponsible decisions in the executive suites” – whatever she means by that. Does she seriously expect the so-called entrepreneurs in the middle of capitalism to think about the “dear employees” who depend on a job instead of profit? Or that politicians who want to make the EU a great power care about the everyday concerns of their population or even about swimming pools and a good life for everyone? At the latest with the Hartz laws it became clear what the perspective looks like for wage earners, namely "social is what creates work" - in plain language: work, no matter what the outcome is for the individual. Keyword: low wages and precarious working conditions.

In any case, Fahimi thinks that we “hard-earned” and “fought hard for” the welfare state. This is not a “gift from the state” and that is why we would not allow the welfare state to be taken away from us. Well, if the welfare state actually “belonged” to wage earners, then we probably wouldn’t need to be standing here now. However, it is the state that has social benefits and can, with the stroke of a pen, abolish the existing “acquis” of the working class if they no longer fit the current economic and political calculations.

But what would a “fair pension” for “45 years of hard work” look like? Could someone please calculate that?

The DGB chairwoman received the most applause when she attacked politicians' lack of "respect" for the lifetime achievements of hard-working wage earners, which for her was expressed in her attack on the pension without deductions after 45 years of contributions. However, the DGB, the lobby group for wage earners, has no major complaints against the fact that its members have to work hard for 45 years. Nor does it mean that they will then be fobbed off with a pension that, in view of rising housing prices and other inflation, will quickly lead to basic security for most of them.

But the fact that some of it is then tweaked – that would be too much. This is “unfair” and “disrespectful,” shouts Fahimi. But what would a “fair pension” for “45 years of hard work” look like? Could someone please calculate that? However, as intended, the grassroots on Burgplatz are upset for a minute about “those up there” who do not give enough recognition for lifelong servitude - even if only in the form of a materially more symbolic regulation.

The “strong speech” ends after Fahimi asked us all to shout to her that we stand together. The result remains – given the number of people reported – quite pitiful. But that doesn't seem to matter. Nothing more was aimed for. Now we should go home again. And that's what we do. We are going back to cities that are looking increasingly worse, especially in the Ruhr area, of which Gelsenkirchen has the highest child poverty rate in Germany and which are almost all under the budget control of the state government due to a lack of tax revenue.

We will meet again on the regional train. And something develops that almost never happens otherwise: the whole carriage talks to each other. I'm asked how I found the demo - and the person asking the question doesn't hold back for long about the fact that she didn't expect anything less from the DGB and its social partnership, which she considers "class treason". She is making a decidedly left-wing statement - but no one else is happy with the event either. What's the point of a demonstration on Saturday if there isn't a strike starting on Monday? Until the government gives up its attacks on the welfare state, someone asks. And receives general approval.

Someone asks whether Fahimi actually managed to leave out rearmament and war preparation in her speech, perhaps he just didn't notice it? No, the others explain: she actually didn't acknowledge “the elephant in the room” with a single syllable. “A thing,” he thinks.

I remind you of the enforcement of the Hartz laws. At that time, the DGB and its affiliated members in the Bundestag had the necessary majority; Then there was a lot of protest against it with the “Monday demonstrations” and it took the DGB a few months to take the lead in these protests and channel the discontent. Apparently we've learned something now. The supposedly “necessary reforms” are passed and protests against them are organized promptly. So that nothing gets out of hand. Approval from everyone.

What happened to the police, someone then asks. They are usually present at every demonstration in large numbers, equipped for civil war. He would have experienced it recently in Cologne, probably at the “Disarm Rheinmetall” demo. Yeah, what about the police? It was hardly visible in Essen, especially not in the aggressive, militant manner that is now normal at demonstrations against conscription or over Gaza. What does that mean in relation to the “DGB Day of Action”? Apparently this is considered harmless by the state alone.

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