October strikes 1950

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The October strikes were strikes in the fall of 1950 in occupied post-war Austria . In the course of the negotiations on the fourth wage-price agreement , a strike movement broke out among the Austrian workers at the end of September 1950.

prehistory

Between 1947 and 1949 the social partners concluded three wage-price agreements that were supposed to stimulate the Austrian economy and keep inflation low. The agreements were intended to guarantee that product prices would rise to realistic levels, but that working-class households could continue to meet their basic needs. The government and companies, both private and the numerous state-run companies , wanted to keep wages at a low level in order to be able to use the profits generated for investments and thus stimulate reconstruction, while the workforce had more purchasing power for them demanded higher consumption.

Negotiations on a fourth wage-price agreement took place in September 1950, the contents of the meetings being kept secret. The first key points were announced on the radio on September 22nd: As of October 1st, flour should be 64 percent more expensive, sugar by 34% and bread by 26%. On September 26th, the ÖGB approved the agreement.

procedure

Strikes in Upper Austria (September 1950)

The first strikes began in Linz on September 25th , starting with VÖEST , where both communist works councils and representatives of the VdU had jointly passed a majority resolution for a one-hour warning strike at a general assembly . The next day, September 26th, strikes began throughout Austria, mainly against the price increases announced for October 1st. A total of around 120,000 workers took part, 40,000 of whom came from USIA companies in the Soviet-controlled zone (see Occupied Post-War Austria ). In Linz, around 15,000 demonstrators took the Landstrasse to the Linz Landhaus and managed to get a 20-strong delegation of members of the state parliament to assure that they would also take action against the premature price increases. Other strike centers in Upper Austria were the industrial companies as well as the post office and railroad in Steyr, Gmunden, Attnang-Puchheim, Lenzing and Nettingsdorf. The reaction of the executive was initially the declaration of alarm level 4 (state alarm) and over 1,000 gendarmes were concentrated in Linz.

On September 27, the strike movement intensified and all public transport, especially in Linz, came to a standstill. A large number of workers from the VOEST and the nitrogen works besieged the building of the Chamber of Labor , where the state executive of the ÖGB met and demanded in choruses “ Away with the shame pact! ". The VdU-led strike committee occupied the Chamber of Labor building and demanded the resignation of the President of the Chamber for Workers and Employees of Upper Austria, Heinrich Kandl (1875–1968), which he pronounced under the threat of being overthrown from the balcony. The police and gendarmerie advanced with steel helmets and mounted bayonets, but tried in vain to break into the building. Only when the demonstrators dispersed in the evening did the situation relax and the executive could take over the Chamber of Labor building without resistance.

On September 28, it was initially unclear whether the strike movement would be supported by the Soviet occupying forces. After the Americans had left their posts, the gendarmerie in Linz therefore occupied the access to the Nibelungen Bridge in order to prevent communication with the Soviet zone north of the Danube. The state government, meanwhile, spread via the media that the strikes were " a provocative machinations of political renegades ". Even the union leadership and the SPÖ publicly distanced themselves from the actions and spoke of illegal action.

Thereupon the situation calmed down in all of Upper Austria and already on September 29th the strike movement lost support.

Strikes in Vienna (October 1950)

The next day, September 30, in Vienna, mainly communist workers' representatives organized a “ All-Austrian Works Council Conference ” in the Floridsdorf locomotive factory , which gave the government an ultimatum and threatened a general strike, which however never came about. The other events then shifted from Upper Austria to Vienna and the Soviet occupation zone. In Upper Austria, there was only another major protest rally in Steyr on October 5th, in which 5,000 workers took part. But the wage-price agreement was already in force at this point.

The strikes in Vienna reached their climax on October 4th. Rolling squads of the strikers tried to paralyze public life and occupied streets and squares. Car of the Vienna tram were filling up the tracks extend prevented and concreting of the points in it. Numerous other strikebreakers were also prevented from continuing their work.

For a long time, the then trade union leader for construction and woodworkers, Franz Olah , who had excellent contacts with the American occupying forces, was one of the key leaders in ending the strikes . On October 5, Olah equipped activists from his construction workers' union with batons and trucks in order to "effectively counter the strikers" in the Soviet sector of Vienna, while the police were not allowed to intervene here on the instructions of the occupying forces. According to historian Peter Autengruber , however, it was already clear by then that the strike would collapse.

On October 6, the Austrian Works Council Conference finally decided to break off the strikes. Immediately afterwards, a start was made on identifying strike leaders and communists within the ÖGB and expelling them from the union, including the Vice President of the ÖGB Gottlieb Fiala . 78 communist trade unionists lost their functions or their jobs.

Political background

In the large Linz companies, the strike was organized by members of the KPÖ and the newly founded VdU , the right-wing predecessor party of today's FPÖ , which saw itself as a collecting tank for former National Socialists and had supporters, especially among those who had been expelled from their homes. The strikes in Vienna were mainly organized by the works councils of the former USIA companies. The communist works councils in the western occupation zones also followed suit.

The reading given by the ÖGB after the strike and the expulsion of KPÖ functionaries was that the aim of the strikes was to bring the Austrian Federation of Trade Unions (ÖGB) under KP control and to establish a government in Austria under communist influence. As a result, the view prevailed for a long time that the October strikes were an attempted coup by the KPÖ . The KPÖ decidedly denied coup plans. There is no doubt that the communist party wanted to use the economic crisis to regain lost support from the population. According to a statement by the Vienna KPÖ politician Viktor Matejka, if the KPÖ had a resounding political success, Josef Dobretsberger , a professor from Graz, would have been the new Federal Chancellor. Matejka also emphasized that there must have been a communication problem between the Austrian CP and the headquarters in Moscow - the Soviet Union had no real interest in the CPÖ taking power in Eastern Austria, which would necessarily result in full NATO integration of the western zones of occupation would have drawn, but at that time its goal was the neutralization of Austria as a model for West Germany. By the ÖGB broadcast and based on today's historical knowledge, it was refuted that the intention was to take power with the strike. Thus, in 2015 the ÖGB revised its view of the October strikes and rehabilitated the excluded union members.

Companies on strike

The workers of the following companies took part in the October strikes:

literature

  • Christian Koller : Strike Culture: Performances and Discourses of Labor Struggle in a Swiss-Austrian Comparison (1860–1950) (= Austrian Cultural Research, Vol. 9). Münster / Vienna: Lit-Verlag 2009. pp. 472–505.
  • Jill Lewis: Austria 1950: Strikes, "Putsch" and their Political Context , in: European History Quarterly 30 (2000). Pp. 533-552
  • Michael Ludwig , Klaus-Dieter Mulley, Robert Streibel : The October strike in 1950. A turning point in the Second Republic. Picus, Vienna 1991, ISBN 3-85452-220-7 .
  • Mathias Wittau: The union behind you. September and October strike in Austria in 1950. In: Holger Marcks, Matthias Seiffert (Ed.): The great strikes. Episodes from the class struggle. Unrast, Münster 2008, ISBN 978-3-89771-473-1 , pp. 188-122.
  • Peter Autengruber, Manfred Mugrauer: October strike . ÖGB-Verlag, Vienna 2016, ISBN 978-3-99046-204-1 .
  • Helmut Konrad : No Putsch: Turning legends out of the October strike in 1950 , in: Neues Forum 24/286 (1977). Pp. 39-43
  • Eva Priester: The big strike: factual report on the 1950 October strike . Vienna 1980

Individual evidence

  1. a b c d Peter Mayr: Late justice for the strike victims. April 24, 2016. Retrieved May 9, 2016 .
  2. On Kandl's impending fall from a window. Incidentally, he remained AK President until 1959
  3. ^ Hugo Portisch , Sepp Riff : Austria II : The long way to freedom , Kremayr & Scheriau, Vienna 1986, ISBN 3-218-00442-X , pp. 414-438
  4. ^ Roman Roček, Austrian PEN Club: Glamor and misery of the PEN , Böhlau Verlag Wien, 2000, ISBN 9783205991229 (page 313, 314)

Web links