West Germany: Endangered Miracle

One of the mainstays of West Germany's postwar "economic miracle" was its skilled and disciplined workers, who willingly accepted low wages while producing first-class products that won quick acceptance on the world market. In the rush to rebuild the war-ravaged nation, both management and workers proudly summed up their common attitude, Deutsche streiken nicht—Germans don't strike. But Germans now do, and last week West Germany was in the grips of its severest labor crisis since the depression of the early '30s. The strike put 400,000 workers in the southwest state of Württemberg-Baden out of work...

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