Migrant labor – “The strike helped me build up strength as a young person”

Germans fought freely »: This was the headlines in“ Bild ”and other right-wing media when on August 30, 1973 police and work protection together brutally reflected a labor dispute in the Ford works in Cologne. The predominantly migrant workers had strike against their miserable conditions in the factory. It was about a D-Mark more hourly wages-but also about the dignity of the employees. They reported chicane through masters and parts of the German employees – some of whom took part in the attacks on the strikers on August 30th and under the protection of the police made their migrant colleagues bloody.

More than five decades later, the Ford strike is again an important topic-especially for a younger generation. In anti -racist contexts, it was rediscovered as the beginning of migrant self -authorization. On the 50th anniversary of the strike there were congresses and events, where some strikers at that time also had their say. The band published by Nihat Öztürk, Nuria Cafaro, Bernd Hüttner and Florian Weis now published the bookmaker with the somewhat bulky title «The strike helped me to build strength as a young person. Migrant struggles against exploitation and racism »document the debate impressively.

Perspectives on the union

The title is a quote from a Ford colleague who did not primarily understand the strike as a defeat. The book is recommended to everyone for reading who want to deal more intensively with the history of migrant labor in the Federal Republic. In 15 articles, the different lines of conflict are presented and controversies are clearly named-especially between the two former left IG Metall officials Witich Rossmann and Nihat Öztürk, each of which have written several posts.

There are different perspectives on the role of the works council and the IG Metall during the Ford strike. Rossmann admits errors of the union, but the IG Metall attests that it shared the goals of the strikers in terms of better working conditions – but not their methods. Anarchosyndicist and small-scale small parties attribute that the Ford workforce was split-down, which in his opinion operated a sectarian policy and fought the works council and IG Metall. Öztürk does not contradict this point either.

In fact, the KPD/AO propagated the establishment of a “revolutionary union opposition” in a clear demarcation to IG Metall. However, Öztürk emphasizes that the reason for the support of such groups was among the strikers in the politics of a works council who ignored the interests of the migrant employees and continued to split the workforce through agitation. The very positive role of Jewish left-wing socialists such as Max Diamant and Jakob Moneta, who campaigned for an opening of the IG Metal towards migrants-is recognized-supported by the then IG Metall Chairman Otto Brenner. At the end of the 1970s, this line also prevailed under the aegis of the DKP member Walter Malzkron in Cologne IG Metall.

Current fights

In several posts, the book’s book addresses migrant industrial action, such as those of the bicycle couriers who – like Duygu Kaya in a speech before the Berlin Labor Court in 2023 – deliberately stand in the tradition of fighting 50 years ago. The basic union Freie Workers-Union (FAU) has been significantly involved in this organization since 2017. It is all the more irritating if Witich Rossmann claims that these fights have “under the leadership of the autonomous and the FAU a strictly anti -work organization”. In doing so, he speaks its status as a union outside of the DGB – although it was and is ready for common trade union actions. Such exclusions should be overcome if it is seriously meant seriously with an internationally intended trade union solidarity, as the sociologist Nicola Mayer-Ahuja is committed in the final chapter.

In addition, two articles on important strikes, predominantly carried by migrants, were discussed in 1973, which despite the violent resistance of management – for example at Ford in Cologne with agitation and police operations. Dieter Braeg and Peter Leipzig report on the strike of migrant women at Pierburg in Neuss, while the Greek communist Irina Vavitsa remembers the lesser -known strand at the car supplier Hella in Lippstadt. In both cases, it was often migrant women with left-wing socialization who got involved in union and works council work and thus played central roles in the arguments.

Nihat Öztürk, Nuria Cafaro, Bernd Hüttner, Florian Weis (ed.): The strike helped me to build strength as a young person. Migrant struggles against exploitation and racism. The bookmaker 2025, 467 p., Br., € 22.