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Unions and Striking in Germany · 2004-06-01

I have just heard a feature at Deutschlandfunk concerning unions and current political trends in 'developing' social security systems in Germany. At first, you have to know that strikes for political reasons are not legal in Germany. That means you may strike for higher wages, that your employer will have to pay but you may not strike for a different social security system, which your employer is clearly not responsible for. Since your employer is not responsible for political decisions he cannot be punished for them. This rule seems quite fair.

...but experiences show that the big employers here in Germany can influence political decisions by arguing that they will migrate jobs to somewhere else. This threat has proven to be quite a big one and it is a threat against those who work as well. The Unions argue that this is some kind of reciproce political strike and therefore strike as a threat to those who run companies as well as to those who make political decisions must be used level the playground again.

I was a defender of the abolition of strike as a means of political struggle but considering the arguments above I'm not sure anymore. I know the reasoning above is quite simple and does not take into account that most of those running businesses actually cannot influence any political decision for they lack size. On the other hand there are the big ones who do 'reverse striking' and therefore break the abolition of political strikes in Germany and they cannot even be sued for doing that.

What now?

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