| BERLIN — Ford workers angry about the automaker's plans to shutter a plant in Belgium broke windows and burnt tires in a demonstration outside the company's European headquarters in Germany. Cologne city police spokesman Karlo Kreitz said about 100 of the protesters were taken into temporary custody after three officers suffered minor injuries in the fracas Wednesday morning. Police say the protesters arrived on buses from Belgium and blocked the entrance to the plant. Then a group of 20 to 40 stormed the building and threw stones through windows while others burned tires and set off firecrackers. Ford has announced plans to shut an assembly plant in Genk, Belgium, jeopardizing some 5,000 jobs, and union representatives are currently meeting with company management in Cologne. Copyright The Associated Press www.rf-news.de informs: Police operation against Ford workers – no criminalization of workers' struggles! 7 November 2012 More than 250 auto workers from the Belgian Ford plant in Genk drove to Cologne this morning in five buses. After ongoing contacts, mutual visits of the auto workers in Cologne and Genk, the colleagues set a further important signal for organizing a joint cross-border struggle for each and every job. They wanted to protest at the meeting of the European Joint Works Council, which is taking place at the Ford plant in Cologne, and express their opposition to the closure of Genk and the destruction of 4300 jobs (plus 5 500 at suppliers). The colleagues showed their determination. To stop their protest the plant fire brigade and hundred-strong units of police were massively deployed. Two local police reporters reported concurrently: „We have seldom seen so many police in a single operation – and that although everything is completely peaceful in the meantime.“ First media reports maintained that the workers were on the rampage and were throwing stones into windows. This is simply not true. But the mass media have been constantly spreading reports defaming the workers as troublemakers. The workers themselves aren't even being asked. In other countries fireworks are often taken along to demonstrations in order to show loud support for the protests. That is being used against them by maintaining that they entered disruptively and were armed. The real crimes are being committed by the managers who cold-bloodedly drive thousands of workers into unemployment and destroy their means of existence for maximum profits. While the workers in Germany do not even have a right to strike together for their rights and jobs. And if they do not let themselves be held up and then take their cause independently into their own hands, the media slander them and, in the end , police clubs are taken out. The police themselves show who is actually being violent by encircling the workers, massively threatening them and taking up their personal data. That aims at criminalizing a workers' struggle. For a long time the German state apparatus has not dared to take open action against working-class struggles. Is this aiming at making a first example again? The MLPD and its factory and trade-union groups are doing everything to contribute their know-how so that they will not succeed with this in the future. Solidarity is the order of the day and the auto workers in Germany are called up to organize solidarity actions, protest rallies, solidarity strikes, etc. No criminalization of the struggling workers from Genk! Stop police operations immediately! Struggle for each and every job – together, corporate-wide and internationally! |