In November the German Trade Union Congress (DGB) will hold a special meeting in the city of Dresden. The only topic of the agenda: Discussion and adoption of a new political programme. In the run up to this congress there has been a rather broad and violent discussion on both the content of the draft of the programme and the way of introducing it to the membership. Those who doubt S. Tell's prejudice against the German trade unions as formulated below and who are interested in some information at first hand can visit a web site with some articles [written in German] that examine the draft in a critical view. Amongst the authors are some trade union officials and Frank Deppe, Oskar Negt, Heinz Bierbaum, Joachim Bischoff etc. I think the articles [first published as a supplement to the June 96 issue of the theoretical and discussion journal Sozialismus] provide a good overview on what's going on in the German trade union movement as seen from the socialist left. The URL is: http://staff-www.uni-marburg.de/~rillingr/pla/dgb/verz.html Hinrich Kuhls At 21:14 14.09.96 -0700, SHAWGI TELL wrote: >The German trade unions as >elsewhere are desperate to work out a new arrangement with the >bourgeoisie to save their own entrenched positions in society and >their lucrative trade union businesses. To this end they are using >the anger of the working class to force a new arrangement and have >suggested "new and radical policies" to save capitalism from its >crisis, and are organizing demonstrations and other agitations to >this end.
