German rail strike shows the way

Submitted by AWL on 20 May, 2015 - 8:36 Author: Paul Cooper

A much needed reminder of the power of organised labour in a rich and advanced economy is currently being demonstrated in Germany.

Freight and passenger train drivers for Germany’s Deutsche Bahn recently completed the latest of their strikes over wages and conditions. Their confidence and determination is growing in what is already a 10 month-old dispute.

The latest action was the longest strike in the rail operator’s history, lasting for six days and costing German business an estimated £360 million. The wailing of German bosses at that £360 million hit was still echoing around marbled boardrooms  when kindergarten staff walked over pay and postal workers are now threatening industrial action.

The GDL union is the smallest union in the rail industry, only 15,000 members, but that is more than enough to do two things to focus the mind of German employers: cripple the rail network and put pressure on its much larger sister union, the EVG, to be more militant; it is now demanding higher pay too.

Karl Brenke of the German Economics Institute sees the significance:

“In the last decade, Germany’s large trade unions were accused of being too modest and not fighting hard enough for higher salaries.

“So, as a result, wages didn’t match inflation or productivity.

“Now, the smaller unions do that and there is a knock-on effect on the bigger unions — they will have to be more aggressive to remain attractive.”

The professors are warning the bosses. Germany has had a much lower history of strike action than the UK in recent years. Politically it has often been held up as a “sensible and conservative” labour movement, integrated into the needs of it’s employers. A model for British trade unions. 

What is scaring the German employers is that the huge industrial unions are losing control over the small craft unions. Such is the fear that Chancellor Merkel is now driving through a law to remove this freedom from the small craft unions. Union representation in a company will be restricted to just one — the largest.

The European labour movement is beginning to stir. Its power is shocking to the bosses and they are beginning to “shape the battlefield”. Legal limitations on the ability of workers to strike and organise are the high ground on that battlefield.

Chancellor Merkel must gaze with longing at the set of crippling anti-union laws we have in Britain. Militancy walks on two legs: action and solidarity. These laws attempt to break both legs. We are limping but not broken.

The best solidarity we could make with our German brothers and sisters is to kick over the anti-union laws.

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