June 26, 2000 Mission: Implausible BY SETH ACKERMAN What the media didn't tell you about the Chinese embassy bombing Trading Places BY DAVID MOBERG China trade deals a blow to labor Africa in Agony BY G. PASCAL ZACHARY Can Africans solve their own problems? Radio Free Burundi BY G. PASCAL ZACHARY Germany's New Identity BY DAVID BACON For immigrants, there is power in a union News & Views Editorial BY PAT AUFDERHEIDE Open access or else Appall-O-Meter BY DAVID FUTRELLE A Terry Laban Cartoon Mr. Clean BY JANE SLAUGHTER Hoffa says its time tor the union to police itself Clash of the Titan BY DAVID MOBERG After two years on strike, Steelworkers keep fighting Roma Wrongs BY TONY WESOLOWSKY Czech Republic launches a campaign for racial tolerance The Flanders Files BY LAURA FLANDERS The new federalist revolution Culture Psychlo Babble BY SCOTT McLEMEE FILM: The metaphysics of Battlefield Earth All Things New BY EUGENE McCARRAHER BOOKS: Slavoj Zizek's The Fragile Absolute Summer Reading Some of our favorites.

Germany's New Identity By David Bacon Frankfurt, Germany Twenty-six years ago, as a young theology student, Manuel Campos fled Portugal one step ahead of the secret police. Just before the fascist dictator Marcelo Caetano fell in 1974, Campos discovered his name on a list of "I'm a German citizen now, and they still see me as a foreigner," says Turkish immigrant Mahmut Aktas, a chief steward at DaimlerChrysler. "They don't like it if I have a more-skilled and better-paid job than many native Germans have." Credit: David Bacon people about to be arrested. A priest got him out of the country, and Campos suddenly found himself in Germany, a young man with no prospects, few skills and a head full of radical ideas. He arrived at the end of a long wave of immigration, promoted by big companies that advertised for contract workers throughout southern Europe. Asylum seekers like Campos were part of the mix, welcomed at a time when Germany's labor supply was low, and the need for educated workers was high. He wound up in an auto plant. "I saw the assembly lines filled with immigrants like myself," he remembers. "When I came here there was nothing for us. We had either fled our countries, like me, or we were looking for a way to send enough money home so that our families would survive. Lots of us were here for both reasons." Campos didn't forget the experience. Today he heads a unique department in the big German industrial union, IG Metall, where he organizes immigrant workers. He moves with frenetic energy - his fingers race through piles of paper as he talks a mile a minute, pulling out charts and numbers to back up his point: Immigrants have had a big impact on the German workplace.     TOP HOME SUBSCRIBE MAIL   In These Times © 2000 Vol. 24, No. 15