Martin Suchanek, Neue Internationale 194, Berlin, November 2014
Strikes by the train drivers’ union, GDL and the airline pilots’ union, Cockpit, have spurred the Grand Coalition government’s SPD Secretary of Labour, Andrea Nahles, to new reactionary levels. After years of business associations and important parts of the trade union bureaucracy demanding it, a new law on the “bargaining unit” is now being hurriedly prepared.
On December 2, it will have its first reading in Parliament and is expected to be adopted quickly. In addition to the coalition itself, it is certain that many Greens will support it. In all probability, only the Left Party will vote against it.
As always, the exact wording of the Bill is not yet clear but two things are certain: first, the law will not be stopped solely by parliamentary means or by lobbying. Second, the statutory definition of the “bargaining unit” will mean a further restriction on the already limited right to strike. It will mean that only the union with the largest number of members will be legally entitled to undertake collective bargaining and, therefore, have the right to organise strikes in the course of negotiations.
Employers’ associations and trade unions
The advantage of such a law for capital is obvious. It will raise even higher the legal hurdle that has to be overcome before strike action is possible. It will be even more difficult to pull smaller unions, which can organise militant and powerful sections of workers, out of the passivity prescribed by the dominant ideas of “social partnership”.
Of course, it is not surprising that some limited strikes are presented in the media as if “small groups” were holding the country “hostage”. No wonder either that bourgeois politicians are demanding not only new legislation on the bargaining unit, but also new obstacles to strike action in such sectors.
It is more difficult to understand why there is also support for the proposed legislation from the side of the unions, since it clearly runs contrary to the elementary interests of workers and inevitably also shifts the balance of forces away from them.
The reason why the individual unions, which are organised primarily in the biggest companies and plants (IG Metall, BCE, EVG) are backing the new law is certainly short-sighted, but easy to explain. Together with the employers’ associations and the state, they want to free themselves from unwelcome competition from smaller unions which would no longer have the right to take part in collective bargaining or disputes and so could not put them under pressure or, in time, attract away their members.
It is no coincidence that the supporters of the “bargaining unit” are those unions and works councils that are particularly closely connected to “their” corporations. So the EVG rail union has cooperated with all the privatisation and restructuring chicanery, even at the expense of its own members, which is why the GDL has now grown in strength.
Similarly, the engineering union, IGMetall, unconstitutionally cancelled its last serious strike, for the 35-hour week in the East in 2005, under pressure from the union barons on the Central Works Councils of the auto companies. The last strikes by the industrial union BCE, in the chemical industry, were so long ago that there are virtually no workers in the factories now who took part in them.
It is also no coincidence that more critical voices are heard in the public sector union, Verdi, which organises workers in companies where it is the smaller union and so would be a victim of the new legislation on “bargaining units”.
The proponents of the “bargaining unit” argue that it would solve a real problem, namely the division of the workforce between different unions, including unions affiliated to the DGB, the main German confederation of unions. But this is wrong. It does not solve the real problem, which is a result of restructuring in industry. What is really required is a reorganisation of the trade unions according to sectors and value chains on a class-struggle and democratic basis.
For example, today, just in the transport and logistics sector, there are several unions that negotiate their “own” contracts and wage rates, in addition to numerous craft unions and also more general unions such as Verdi and EVG.
The “bargaining unit” law would not help the workers here. By giving sole rights to whichever union had the most members, which might still be a minority of the workforce as a whole, it would “solve” the question only at the enterprise level and by involving the state, restricting the trade union rights of other workers and further undermining the fighting capacity of the workforce as a whole.
The political attack
The “bargaining unit” represents one of the most important political attacks on the working class by the Grand Coalition. The fact that parts of the unions are backing it, or regard it as “benevolent”, changes nothing in that respect, but it does make it more difficult to organise the necessary resistance in the plants and trades unions.
Therefore, we support the establishment of the nationwide action alliance, “Hands off the Right to Strike!” The immediate task is to build the opposition to the law in the unions and workplaces. It is vitally important to counter the propaganda from the government, the employers and the trade union bureaucracy in meetings of union members in the workplaces. It is necessary for more and more workplace and union bodies to openly oppose the “bargaining unit”.
But it is not enough just to be against it. The government can, of course, force such a law through against the will of the unions or parts of them. In order to broaden the resistance, a protest and demonstration should be organised on the day of the Bill’s first reading in parliament.
That would be a start. However, the struggle for an open rejection must include the preparation and implementation of mass actions, including political strikes, because, without such actions, the law will not be stopped.