An airline pilots’ strike in Germany last week has highlighted the power comparatively small groups of employees have to cripple key areas of Germany’s economy in pursuit of their own interests.
The German government is looking to draw up legislation later this year to prevent recurrences.
“One company, one wage agreement” is the motto behind a proposed Tarifeinheit or unified wage-bargaining mechanism masterminded by German Federal Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Andrea Nahles.
Over three days last week, the pilots’ union effectively grounded Germany’s biggest airline, Lufthansa, in a dispute over pay and early retirement entitlements.
Between Wednesday and Friday, Lufthansa — which employsabout 117,000 — was forced to cancel 3,800 flights, stranding nearly half-a-million passengers, because of a dispute concerning as few as 5,400 employees.
While Lufthansa generally avoided travel chaos by warning passengers and helping them to rebook, the walkout affected more people than any of the rare strikes held by the massive IG Metall metalworkers’ union with its more than 2 million members.
Other unions representing smaller professions — such as the Marburger Bund for hospital doctors and UFO for airline cabin crew — 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.
Hagen Lesch, an expert from the IW economic think tank which is close to employers, analyzed 123 wage disputes and found that unions representing narrower interests were more likely to strike.
Lufthansa knows all about this.
Last summer, its Germanwings unit was threatened with walkouts by the cabin crew union, following similar strikes the previous year.
In a country used to such negotiations by sector giants such as IG Metall or Verdi, the smaller unions tend to flex their muscles most, such as the train drivers union, which halted rail traffic in 2007.
However, Nahles, of the Social Democrats, is keen to make it clear that employees’ fundamental right to strike is not under threat.
“The project is not aimed at tampering with the right to strike, but at reorganizing unified wage-bargaining. We want a single wage deal applicable across the entire company,” Social Democrat member of parliament Katja Mast said.
However, for the time being “it’s still at a consultation stage on a ministerial level. There is nothing concrete,” she said.
The interior and justice ministries are involved, and Nahles hopes to present a draft law “this year.”
The issue is delicate, because if smaller unions are prohibited from making demands while a principal wage agreement is still in place, it is difficult to see how it cannot impinge on their right to strike.
The unions seem torn.
While the DGB trade union federation said in 2010 that it was in favor of such a rule, it has backpedaled since.
“Fundamentally speaking, we don’t think it can be good if divisional unions push through their own interests without considering the wider good,” DGB official Rainer Hoffmann said.
“We as unions are in favor of wage-bargaining that is based on solidarity. But only on the condition that the right to strike is not interfered with,” Hoffmann added.
The head of the giant services sector union Verdi, Frank Bsirske, said he was critical of the government’s plans and skeptical about their implementation.
Employers will be less difficult to convince.
“The smaller a group of striking workers is, the higher the obstacles should be for industrial action,” Lufthansa chief executive Wolfgang Franz told the business daily Handelsblatt.
The pilots’ strike ended on Friday, but no new negotiations are yet in sight.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure