TheAustro-Hungarian strike of January 1918 was a strike which spread acrossAustria-Hungary between January 3 and 25, 1918 demanding better living and working conditions and an end toWorld War I. It is known as the "Jännerstreik" as opposed to the "Januarstreik" – a similar strike movement which lasted from 25 January to 1 February 1918 in Germany – Jänner being the usual spelling for January in Austria.
There had been strikes in early 1917 by Viennese workers in response to food shortages. However by winter 1917, the situation had got worse. However news of theBolshevik seizure of power in Russia encouraged workers inVienna and more generally across Europe to emulate their example with the demand that the war be ended or more strikes would be organised.[1] The leadership of theSozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei Österreichs (SDAPÖ) was slow to react although the youth wing of the party started to organise and local sections also prepared for action. In early January the party took a clearer anti-war position, particularly in relation to theBrest-Litovsk negotiations and convened three large meetings in Vienna on Sunday 13 January. On 6 January, a demonstration by 4,000 angry Hungarian workers inBudapest occurred outside theGerman Consulate.[2] They actively supported the peace plan of the Bolshevik negotiator,Adolph Joffe, and several windows of the consulate were smashed. By 13 January, the three large meetings had grown to five and the topic was "The Peace Negotiation in Brest-Litovsk and Social Democracy". Ellenbogen, Domes andKarl Renner delivered speeches in which they said that a victorious peace was impossible. However they were heckled by workers calling out "Long Live the Austrian Revolution".[2]
When the flour ration was halved on 14 January 1918 the workers inWiener Neustadt, particularly the 4,500 working forAustro-Daimler downed tools and went on strike. The strike soon spread to the nearbyWiener Neustädter Lokomotivfabrik and through factories inLower Austria and to theLokomotivfabrik Floridsdorf which employed over 1,000 workers inVienna.[3][4] By 18 January, over 110,000 of the total Viennese workforce of 350,000-370,000 people were on strike. From the strike meetingsworkers' councils were established as a form ofparticipatory democracy. The executive of theSozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei Österreichs (SDAPÖ) had drawn up a list of demands to be presented to the government. These were accepted by the workers' council. On 19 January, Workers' Council received a delegation led by CountOttokar Czernin, theMinister of Foreign Affairs who promised that territorial demands would not jeopardise the peace negotiations. TheMinister-president,Ernst Seidler von Feuchtenegg promised to reform the war benefits and to establish a food service and the democratisation of municipal election law. In a turbulent session during the night of 19–20 January, the Workers' Council accepted the SDAPÖ proposal to call the workforce to resume work on Monday, January 21.
The strike was started byBudapestTram workers on the morning of 18 January. They were protesting about the ban on reports of the events in Austria. By noon the strike had spread across all industries, and 40,000 workers took part in fifteen different demonstrations which were prevented by the police from converging on the centre of Budapest. TheHungarian Social Democratic Party declared a general strike. The following day the strike spread toNagykanizsa andSzeged.[2]