The Federal Statistical Office of the reactionary German state recently published figures on the fall in real wages in the summer months of this year. According to these figures, real wages fell by 5.7 per cent in the summer months of July to September 2022 due to inflation and price increases. This figure represents the lowest since records began.
The inflation rate averaged 8.4 per cent in the summer months. This does not include general price increases. This 8.4 per cent contrasts with the current 10 per cent inflation reached last month. Thus, the current level of the real wage is presumably even lower than in the summer months.
According to the figures of the Federal Statistical Office, employees in Germany are confronted with the longest lasting decline in real wages since records began. Real wages have not only been declining since the summer of 2022. In the second quarter of 2022, real wages had already fallen by 4.4 per cent. In the first quarter of this year by 1.8 per cent and also in the last quarter of 2021 a decline of 1.4 per cent was recorded.
These figures, whether embellished or not, show once again how extremely the situation of the working class in the FRG has worsened. At the same time, it shows that the economic crisis did not develop only with the imperialist war of Russian imperialism against Ukraine, but was already there before and the war was only a catalyst. The measures of the federal government, which tries to fob off the workers and the people with ridiculous one-mail payments, cannot cushion this crisis at all. Nor have the self-styled workers' representatives from the yellow unions at any time demanded full compensation for inflation in the numerous workder struggles of the past months. The working class cannot rely on the government, and just as little on the trade union bosses, to fight for its own livelihood. What is needed is a militant organisation of the working class that unconditionally serves the interests of the working class and breaks the vicious circle of recurrent crises.
