April 29, 2005: Create jobs - 30-hour workweek with full wage compensation now!

How can millions of jobs be preserved and new ones created?
From Schmidt to Kohl and finally to Schroeder - no matter which government is doing the business of the monopolies - all of them have failed. Since 1975, mass unemployment in Germany has risen continually from one million to 5.2 million (March 2005) according to official figures. Taking into account non-active reserves, people with one-Euro jobs and people participating in training and job creation schemes actually 8.6 million people are unemployed. Clement's miracle cure of the Hartz reforms turns out to be a real flop. Instead of jobs it creates mass poverty.
It is a declaration of failure of 30 years of bourgeois labor market policy! The same old story of the necessity of "reducing the labor costs" is worn out. 30 Dax enterprises alone made profits of officially 35.7 billion Euro in 2004. This created not one single job. Unemployment is rising mainly due to the rapidly increasing exploitation in the enterprises. From 1991 till 2004 turnover per worker has more than doubled from 167,800 Euro to 382,420 Euro.
Labor has to be redistributed!
Isn't it crazy that on the one side fewer and fewer people are being exploited, and on the other side more and more people are forced into idleness? Labor has to be distributed among more people. How can this be achieved? By means of a radical reduction of the working hours to the 30-hour workweek with full wage compensation! And this as a regular workweek from Monday till Friday. The workers have actually already worked for the full wage compensation through the rising labor productivity. If implemented rigorously, the 30-hour workweek with full wage compensation will preserve and create 8.5 million jobs. In this way mass unemployment can at least be relieved.
It is no wonder that this demand is met with fierce opposition from those who gain from unemployment. It can only be enforced at the expense of the profits, by means of mass strikes and demonstrations. Let us start on May Day. In France more than 500,000 people took to the streets against the extension of working hours on February 5. In Argentina people demand the six-hour workday with full wage compensation. Instead of allowing themselves to be blackmailed into undercutting the standards, the workers should unite internationally.
Onward with the working-class offensive!
The bourgeois mass media claim that the corporations are overpowering and the workers condemned to powerlessness! This is not at all the case! The seven-day independent strike at Opel (GM) in October 2004 caused a sensation with its spirit of class struggle and opened the door to the working-class offensive on a broad front. Corporation-wide militant actions like those at DaimlerChrysler in July 2004 are more and more becoming the standard of the workers' struggles. In the anti-fascist struggle against the brown rat-catchers, young people are at the forefront. The movement of the Monday-demonstrations against the Hartz IV laws demonstrates courage and determination and is experiencing a new upswing. Against this trend, the rightist trade union leadership as a factor upholding order is desperately clinging to a declining government coalition and an outmoded social system. For the workers this system means exploitation, oppression, unemployment and an insecure existence. Therefore it must be allowed to think beyond the limits of the constitution! Even more: it is necessary to look for an alternative!
The reorganization of international production has rapidly developed the revolutionary productive forces! Today it would already be possible to feed 12 billion people; instead, 40,000 children die of malnutrition every day. In order to create a society in which human life is at the center and in which everyone has a means of living, monopoly rule must be abolished. Genuine socialism - that is no scheme which someone has thought out, it is the sum of the most progressive achievements of mankind applied for the benefit of society. Therefore: International Working-Class Unity for Work, Peace and Genuine Socialism!

Only in an organized way
All alone you will lose -we are only strong if we join our forces. The blue- and white-collar workers need strong trade unions as ueberparteilich militant organizations for the defense and improvement of working- and living conditions. Struggles beyond national borders must be coordinated! The MLPD is active in all important working-class struggles and mass movements. If you want fundamental changes in this country, you must join the MLPD. Strengthen the MLPD and its youth league REBELL.

Out onto the streets on May Day!
· Actively participate in the May Day demonstrations and rallies of the DGB (German Trade Union League)! Demand the right to speak for colleagues from the factories and representatives of the unemployed! Carry your demands onto the streets. Visit the May events of the MLPD!
· Down with Hartz IV - we are the people! The country needs new politicians!
· Full payment of social-security contributions by the enterprises. Taxation according to their turnover!
· Fight for higher wages! Hands off the national collective bargaining agreements and workers’ rights!
· Fight youth mass unemployment at the cost of profits! Obligatory 10 percent quota of trainees in big industry! Give regular and unlimited jobs to young people completing training in a company according to their vocational training!
· Full legal right to strike in all matters! No restriction of political and trade-unionist activity at work!
· Turn the trade unions into fighting organizations! Down with the incompatibility rulings against Marxist-Leninists!
· Ban all fascist organizations and parties, as well as all fascist propaganda!
· Equal wages for equal work - worldwide!
· Active resistance against Bush’s “New War”! German troops out of foreign countries! Fight imperialist EU policy!
· Active struggle for the liberation of women!
· International working class unity for work, peace and genuine socialism!
· Workers of all countries, unite!