German farmers and train drivers are scaring the country’s bosses

In GERManywhere, workers and bosses run many companies jointly, a big strike is unusual. A wave of big strikes is almost unheard of. Right now the country of “co-determination” is simultaneously facing an eight-day “action week” by irate farmers, who blocked roads with tractors, a three-day strike of railway workers and, to top it off, a looming strike of doctors, who already closed surgeries between Christmas and New Year’s Day. This (pitchfork mob), as some have taken to calling it, will test Germany’s harmonious labour relations in the year to come.The protests were ostensibly set off by the government’s decision to end subsidies for diesel fuel used in agriculture and to cut an exemption from car tax for farm vehicles. These measures pushed farmers over the edge. It also mobilised other angry workers, already straining under the pressure of inflation, recession and the government’s self-imposed austerity. On January 9th drivers of freight and passenger trains at Deutsche Bahn, the national railway, began a strike over working hours and pay.