Achtung] Strikers offer shops satirical prices: People want 48 per cent off everything to bring them into line with Western wages, writes Steve Crawshaw in Rostock

'WE'LL GO on for months, if we need to. After all, the employers have already signed the deal. Now, all they need to do is keep their word.'

At the Neptune shipyard, in the port of Rostock, strikers insist time is on their side. Certainly there is no mistaking the determination in the first legal wave of strikes in eastern Germany for 60 years. Tens of thousands of steel and engineering workers have downed tools in anger at employers' refusal to honour an agreement on wage rises made two years ago.

The strikes are due to spread further. Negotiations aimed at ending the strike collapsed last night when IG Metall said they could not reach even a framework for talks to continue.

Hasso Duevel, head of the union's negotiators, said talks to end the strike over broken management pay promises had ended 13 hours after they began because employers would not rescind their decision to cancel an existing wage pact.

The bitterness is likely to be considerable.

Employers argue that times are so hard it would be impossible to honour the 26 per cent deal agreed in 1991, as part of a series of rises that would bring east and west German workers to parity by 1994. Instead, the employers say they will pay 9 per cent. A large poster in the centre of Rostock announces: 'Whoever goes on strike, strikes against himself.' It warns of job losses if workers insist on the 26 per cent rise and adds: 'Don't saw off the branch we are all sitting on.'

But workers in Rostock see this as just another form of blackmail. A defiant fatalism has set in, against what they see as an insulting refusal to stick to the rules. Peter Ribbecke, a worker at the Neptune yard argues: 'They'll close the yard anyway if they want to. But at least they'll have to give us more unemployment money.' Already in Rostock two out of three of the shipyard workers have lost their jobs; unemployment in the city is around 20 per cent. It is difficult to find anybody who does not agree with the strikers' cause. In the words of Petra Lehmkuhl, a shop assistant: 'Here in the east our incomes are much lower but we pay the same prices. Enough is enough.'

The people of Rostock argue that the tough policy in the east is merely the thin end of the wedge, and that workers in the west will be next in line. It is argued too that if wages in the east remain low the exodus of skilled workers will threaten jobs in the west. But Ralf Schriever, a union leader at the Neptune yard, acknowledged: 'We've got to do our own fighting. People in the west hear the figure 26 per cent, think of their own incomes and say: 'My God] A rise like that is more than I've had in 10 years.' But they are starting from a different base.'

IG-Metall has issued mock discount cards, stating that the card entitles the holder to pay only 52 per cent of the price for all goods and services, in accordance with their incomes. 'The difference will be paid for by the local employer,' the card adds. Just in case of misunderstandings, there is a printed warning - 'Achtung] Satire]' - at the top of the card.

As throughout east Germany, the changes in Rostock have been enormous. Many of the houses in the old Hanseatic port are being restored and all the shops have changed. Volkswagens, Opels and a few BMWs easily outnumber the few remaining Trabants. East German living standards are already much higher than in former Communist countries. But, for most people, that is no longer a valid comparison. It is the contrasts with the west that are conspicuous, and have serious implications. In the words of Rudiger Klein, leader of IG- Metall in Rostock, 'The country is bleeding away - especially young families, and the highly skilled workers, who seek a future in the west.'

German growth to decline, page 27