West Germany, where it is practically a tradition that "Germans don't strike," last week faced a nationwide labor revolt.
In Hamburg (pop. 1,600,000), a strike of 13,000 transport and utilities workers left West Germany's largest city without gas, water, buses and streetcars for nine days. In Bavaria, 130,000 metal workers downed tools. Nine hundred thousand Ruhr metal workers demanded a 10-pfennig (2.5ยข) hourly increase.
The strikes, which started spontaneously, spread quickly because the great mass of German workers were no longer willing to be left out of the amazing postwar prosperity which their hard work helped make possible.
West Germany's gross national product...
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