Germany’s big companies are taking advantage of the deepening economic crisis to maximize their profits, while workers pay with their lives and health.
ThyssenKrupp Steel’s Duisburg plant has reported two serious industrial accidents in the past eight weeks. A 26-year-old cleaner died in mid-October and a 23-year-old electrician was seriously injured just over a month later.
The electrician was crushed to death by a slab ferry weighing several tons in a furnace at the company’s hot-strip rolling mill at around 8pm on November 21. He was supposed to make repairs while continuing to operate. Contrary to the regulations, the young man was alone. The shift coordinator is said to have known that the plant manager had sent young electricians to make repairs.
It is unclear how long the critically injured 23-year-old lay at the scene of the accident before he was found. In the hospital, he fought for his life for over a week. He is said to be on the road to recovery now, but his health will be permanently damaged.
More than a month ago, the young casual worker Refat Süleyman died under unexplained circumstances. On October 14, the 26-year-old suffocated to death in a basin of industrial waste, sludge and slag. He was only found three days after he went missing.
The police and the company works council have declared both cases “tragic accidents” for which the victims themselves are responsible. “We can exclude the possibility that someone else was responsible,” police spokesman Jonas Tepe said of the young electrician’s accident. Just as hastily done. In both cases the message was clear: the victims themselves were at fault.
Talk of “tragic accidents,” “human error,” etc. is an attempt to whitewash the system that caused these deaths and those who benefited. This year alone, Germany’s Thyssenkrupp Stahl has seen at least five fatal accidents, among others, some of which resulted in serious and permanent injuries.
Victims are not responsible for the tragic accident at the steel mill. A system of profit maximization at any cost – even at the cost of workers’ lives – is to blame. To cut costs, ThyssenKrupp has been laying off workers for years.
Oliver Burkhard, HR director at ThyssenKrupp’s parent company and former regional head of IG Metall in North Rhine-Westphalia, proudly announced three weeks ago that the company’s “restructuring” was almost complete. What he means is that 10,000 of the planned 13,000 jobs have now disappeared. “As a result, we are slowly putting the necessary restructuring phase behind us and can focus on focus and ‘normal’ productivity growth,” Burkhard commented.
Cost-cutting measures include widespread use of low-paid temporary workers who are poorly equipped and unable to perform the tasks assigned to them, which include cleaning and other tasks in hazardous areas.
Refat Süleyman was one of the victims of this system. He is one of as many as 4,500 temporary and contract workers who work daily alongside some 13,000 permanent employees at the Duisburg steelworks, which is five times the size of the Principality of Monaco. The works council has its own committee to deal with so-called “outside employees” (“Eigen und Fremd”).
In addition to exploiting temporary workers, management is trying to cut costs by rationalizing 1,300 jobs in Duisburg, mostly in the white-collar sector. In recent years, the continuous layoffs of steel workers have led to a shortage of employees. The Duisburg main plant is currently recruiting 220 steel workers.
Workers have reported that factories and furnaces have been idle due to manpower shortages. As a result, companies are losing millions of euros, while pressure on workers to keep producing at all costs is mounting. It is because of this pressure that dangerous work and repairs are carried out alone – sometimes with fatal consequences.
Once production is shut down, maintenance workers will be under tremendous pressure from management to ensure production resumes as quickly as possible. This was the night the 23-year-old electrician was seriously injured.
WSWS has repeatedly reported on workplace deaths in Germany, including last summer when management at an Amazon warehouse in the East German city of Leipzig covered up the death of a worker.
In Germany, 510 people were killed on the job last year alone. This is the price workers pay for the enrichment of shareholders and managers.
The same pressures are prevalent in U.S. factories and workplaces, where worker deaths in accidents are often covered up by management in collusion with unions and state regulators.
While this production-at-all-costs and disregard for safety killing at the factory has resulted in many victims, it has also enriched shareholders and executives like Burkhard, whose multimillion-dollar contracts were recently overturned. extend.
The drive to keep blast furnaces running uninterrupted is fueling current steel prices. Just three weeks ago, ThyssenKrupp AG announced that it could increase its profit to 1.2 billion euros in the 2021/22 financial year – mainly due to higher steel prices. Sales rose 21 percent to 41.1 billion euros.
Those profits, of course, went to shareholders, not workers. For the first time in four years, thyssenkrupp will pay shareholders a dividend. Meanwhile, the company rejected a proposal to pay a special inflation compensation of 3,000 euros per employee for its steel subsidiary.
In Oliver Burkhard’s case, however, unions and their affiliated works councils at large corporations were able to share some of the profits generated by the brutal workplace system, either directly or indirectly through high salaries, protection from firing and furloughs Thousands of job commissioners. That doesn’t stop these same bureaucrats from time to time decrying increasing job stress and its consequences, ignoring the fact that they themselves help organize and apply the pressure.
This brutal exploitation cannot be brought to an end by trade unions and works councils, only by fighting them. Workers seeking to end layoffs and intolerable work levels, and to fight for decent wages, health, and safety must organize independently in action committees to wage a real fight. WSWS will provide all assistance to workers seeking to form such committees. You can contact us via WhatsApp +491633378340.
