No ghost towns here when mines close

ae

World

INTERNATIONAL FOCUS

Tom Morris

The people
prevailed ...

“It was the message of the soul and
authenticity of Jesse Jackson versus
money and technology — and the people
prevailed”, said the victorious candidate
March 27 following his stunning Michigan
victory in the Democratic caucuses. “It’s a

and grow...”

Jackson certainly has baffled the pun-
dits. He’s stunned a usually self-confident
media and perplexed the powerbrokers
and kingmakers in the Democratic party.

Two front-runners emerged from the
Michigan fray: Dukakis with 596 dele-
gates and Jackson with 584. Gore sits
third with 362 and then the others.

The Michigan result retained and
strengthened a trend not witnessed when
Jackson went through the same process in
1984 — the fact that his campaign for
peace and justice reaches far and wide and
is supported by Americans from all com-
munities.

It’s a multi-racial, labour-farmer based
campaign which, for example, has now
captured some 95 per cent of Afro-
American votes compared to 65 per cent
in 1984.

For a world weary of Ronald Reagan’s

campaign of hope that will continue to win —

right-wing agenda, weary of military
brinkmanship and weary of neanderthal
ideology, the coalition building around
Jackson is a breath of fresh air.

The American people, and particularly
the working class, the millions of jobless
and homeless, have most certainly paid a
terrible price for eight years of Reagan and
his California-Texas mafia.

The bill is yet to be added up, but retro-
gression in women’s rights, in seniors’
rights, in civil rights, in labour’s rights are
part of the picture. A bloated military
feeding from a bottomless money pit is

Sea.

JESSE JACKSON ...

opposition to
Reaganism coalescing in his campaign.

another. Some 50,000 ‘Nicaraguan dead
another; loss of Grenada’s courageous yet
overwhelmed revolution another.

The force and strength of the healthy
America, the people’s America as seen in
part in Jackson’s stunning showing, is
quite heartwarming and promising.

Hand-picking a
United Nations

The United States’ effort to close down
the Permanent Observer Mission of the
Palestine Liberation Organization to the
UN raises anew the question of whether
the U.S. is able to retain its position as host
of the United Nations.

The PLO Mission is accredited to the
United Nations, not to the United States.
The 1947 UN-U.S. Headquarters Agree-
ment provides that the UN, not the U.S.,
decides which missions are accredited.

By deciding that its national policy. (in
this case its anti-PLO policy) overrides the
agreement, the U:S. stands in clear viola-
tion of the agreement signed with the UN.

Two. weeks ago, the UN General
Assembly voted 143-1 to condemn the
U.S. expulsion order against the PLO Mis-
sion as illegal. It then voted 143-0 to sub-
mit the dispute to the International Court
of Justice.

Whether Washington finally sees the

light, time will tell. But imagine the arro-
gance and short-sighted stupidity of this
administration which believes it can
decide who may and may not take part in
the United Nations.

What a precedent this would set.

Imagine a United Nations hand-picked
by Reagan & Co. — a room filled with
Duvaliers, Pinochets, Stroessners, Mar-
coses, Duartes, Shamirs, Thatchers, Mul-
roneys ...

& a
A ‘high

a age a J
civilization

Almost 40 years ago, the first Israeli
president, Chaim Weizmann, wrote that
the new zionist state of Israel would build
a “high civilization.”

Last week, that state, after a closed trial
following a kidnapping, sentenced one of
its citizens to 18 years imprisonment for
revealing Israel’s secretly built nuclear
arsenal.

Last week, the Israeli military colossus
entombed the Palestinian West Bank and
Gaza, cutting phone lines, prohibiting
Palestinians from leaving or arriving.

Last week, the media was barred from
Gaza and the West Bank; military actions
increased, arrests escalated, as did beatings
and shootings.

A high civilization indeed.

By WILLI RAHN
~ ZWICKAU, GDR — The last ton of
hard coal was hauled out of the Martin
Hoop pit here a decade ago, bringing an end
to more than a century and a half of coal
mining in this region of the German Demo-

cratic Republic.

For the 20,000 miners and _ fantilies
affected, this move meant they were faced
with a profound adjustment problem, but
unlike the victims of similar developments
in the capitalist world, at no point in the
process were either the workers’ livelihood
or job security in question.

Their experience provides an illuminat-
ing contrast between how a socialist econ-
omy deals with the social impact of a
natural resource’s depletion, and the way
pit closures are handled in Great Britain,
the U.S. or West Germany.

In Britain, for example, the government
used pit closures, four years ago as a cudgel
to try and smash the National Union of
Mineworkers. Aside from buying out the
older miners’ jobs with redundancy pay-
ments, little if any thought was given to the
survival of the mining communities, as the
current devastation of the country’s former
industrial heartland now attests.

But in the GDR the story is quite a bit
different.

The decision to close Martin Hoop and
the other exhausted pits in the region was
made by the GDR’s Ministerial Council in
1967. From day one, the ministry laid plans
to set up new industries in the communities
to replace the collieries as they were phased
out over the decade that followed.

“Our foremost concern (in 1967) was
what would happen with those affected,”
said Lothar Fichtner, chairperson of the
leading executive body in the region, the
Council of Karl Marx Stadt county.

“State officials, managerial personnel
and trade unionists then combined their
efforts to create the best possible conditions
for them.”

Following a precise timetable, new plants
were built or existing industries expanded as
the region adjusted to the exhaustion of the
natural resource that had defined their

8 « Pacific Tribune, April 6, 1988

future for so long. Where necessary, the
miners were re-trained, at state expense, for
the new industrial jobs.

The experience at Martin Hoop reflected
the process that took place in all of the
disappearing coal pits. A full three-and-a-
half years before the planned closure date,
commissions made up of management offi-
cials, the union, government representatives
and rank and file miners called in each of
the 5,400 miners at the colliery to talk over
their future plans, including job openings,
wage levels, living accommodation, their
pensions and public transport.

About 1,000 of the former miners found
new jobs at the August Bebel coking plant,
while another 750 started work at the Sach-
senring car plant in Zwickau.

For the remaining 3,650 workers, there
were jobs to be had in the newly created
enterprises which included a plant manufac-
turing pre-fab houses, and a factory making
small electric motors.

Construction of these new enterprises
went ahead while the miners were hauling
out the last of the Martin Hoop coal or
retraining for new jobs. As the colliery was
being decommissioned, carpenters and con-

“Following a precise timetable,
new plants were built or existing
industries expanded as the region
adjusted to the exhaustion of the
natural resource that had defined
their future for so long.§

—_— en

In the end, as many as 10 of these consul-
tations took place with each worker so that
the needs of each individual could be
addressed.

Meanwhile, a similar co-ordination pro-
cess was taking place at the central govern-
ment level with four deputy ministers,
representatives of the Free German Trade
Unions (FDGB — the country’s counter-
part to the Canadian Labour Congress),
and members of the Martin Hoop colliery
executive of the coal miners union. They
worked as a team to put the structural
changes for the community into place.

struction workers were on site building the
new facilities, or modifying the old build-
ings for their new purposes.

Some of the miners didn’t want to give up
their trade, so opted for jobs mining lignite
in the regions of Leipzig and Halle. The
majority, however, opted to stay near
Zwickau where they were rooted into
community life.

Karl Fritz and his family had mined coal
here for several generations. He spoke of
how the social considerations of the transi-
tion were handled.

“For example, the apartments once run

by the mine have been taken over by the
new enterprises, so the miners didn’t lose
their homes. They’re still entitled to subsid-
ized coal for heating, and the pensions that
miners got five years before the normal
retirement age have also been made availa-
ble to the people who’ve taken jobs in the
other branches,” he said.

Former miner Rolf Vogel took the
retraining option and has moved on to an
electronics firm. That training took place
during work hours and he got his full min-
er’s pay.

‘**When I started my new job I was earn-
ing 70 marks less than what I made as a
miner. But I was granted 11,000 marks for
the transition period until I got used to the
new job,” he said.

The job opened up new horizons for
Vogel, who is now a production manager in
the new enterprise.

Guenter Loeschner, chairperson of the
Zwickau district FDGB executive, emphas-
ized how the social security of the former
miners was guaranteed at every step of the
transition.

“Not a single miner in the region around
Zwickau and Oelsnitz has been unem-
ployed or will become so,” Loeschner
noted. In addition to working in the auto,
pre-fab, and small motors plant, many
turned to construction work to recapture
the independent kind of work they were
used to in the pits.

This was a factor that was reflected in the
large majority who quit their jobs in the
auto plant because the switch to an assem-
bly line was too much of transition for them
to handle. Everyone who quit, however,

found jobs in the other regional enterprises.

Despite its changing industrial base,
Zwickau still hangs on to some of the tradi-
tions and customs of a mining town, partic-
ularly in the way the traditional miner’s
salute “Glueck auf” persists as a greeting
among its citizens.

The stamp which a century of mining has
placed on this town will likely be seen for
some time to come, even though the only
place mining utensils are to be found today
is in Zwickau’s Museum of Mining.

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