A Quick End to an Efficient Strike

ALL IN ALL, LAST WEEK'S STRIKE OF GERMANY'S 2.3 million transport and public employees was remarkably well managed. On any one of the 11 days it lasted, only about 400,000 of the union's workers actually stayed off the job. That was sufficient to throw commuters into confusion, ground airplanes and pile up a moderate heap of uncollected garbage. It demonstrated the union's power but did not produce the elemental disorder Germans find so distasteful.

The issues the confrontation presented, however, were absolutely basic. Would German workers accept the government's call to continue making sacrifices in order to help westernize eastern Germany?...