BERLIN: A pilots’ strike in Germany last week has highlighted the power comparatively small groups of employees have to lay low key areas of the economy in pursuit of their own interests. And the German government is looking to draw up legislation later this year to prevent this from happening again.
“One company, one wage agreement” is the motto behind a proposed “Tarifeinheit” or unified wage-bargaining mechanism masterminded by Labour Minister Andrea Nahles.
Over three days last week, the cockpit pilots’ union effectively grounded the country’s biggest airline Lufthansa in a dispute over pay and early retirement entitlements. Between Wednesday and Friday, Lufthansa—which employs a total workforce of around 117,000—was forced to cancel 3,800 flights, or most of its scheduled services, stranding nearly half a million passengers, because of a dispute concerning a group of as few as 5,400 employees. While Lufthansa largely succeeded in averting widespread travel chaos by warning passengers and helping them to rebook in advance, the walkout by a relatively small number of employees affected more people than any of the rare strikes held by the massive IG Metall metalworkers’ union with its more than two million members.
Other unions representing smaller professions—such as the Marburger Bund for hospital doctors, GDL for train drivers, UFO for airline cabin crew and GdF for air traffic controllers—can have similar sway. “I would wish that the most powerful employees within a company would use their strength to support the weakest and not merely in their own interests,” Nahles said, underlining a need for solidarity.
Hagen Lesch, an expert from the IW economic think tank which is close to employers, analysed 123 wage disputes and found that unions representing narrower interests were more likely to lay down tools.
Lufthansa is one company that knows all about this.
Last summer, its Germanwings subsidiary was threatened with walkouts by the UFO union representing cabin crew, following similar strikes the previous year. And in a country used to wage-negotiating by sector-wide giants such as IG Metall or Verdi, it is the smaller unions that tend to flex their muscles most, such as the GDL train drivers union which brought rail traffic to a standstill in 2007.
“The project is not aimed at tampering with the right to strike, but at re-organising unified wage-bargaining. We want a single wage deal applicable across the entire company,” a Social Democrat MP, Katja Mast, said.
AFP
