This book documents the last ten hard-won years of Opel Plant 1 in Bochum from 2004 to 2014. It is not a book about cars, not a book about managers, and not a book about works council functionaries. It is a book about workers. A book about an unbending workforce that prevented the closure of its plant for ten years and so became a symbol and example across national boundaries. A workforce that gained the sympathy and solidarity of the entire working-class movement for its struggle, but also incurred all the hatred of those in power and their cronies. This struggle provides impressive confirmation of what Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote in 1848 in their Manifesto of the Communist Party: “Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever-expanding union of the workers.”
