Clea and David from RSO, a revolutionary socialist organisation in Germany, spoke to Solidarity
S: Is there a strike wave happening in Germany at the moment?
C: There was, but it is decreasing now. Wage negotiations happened at the same time, first for the public services and the post, and then the trains came in. Not only train drivers, but also infrastructure. So there was this moment where the whole public service and the trains were striking at the same time. A few weeks ago they did a strike together on the same day. That was hospitals, regional trains and train infrastructure: they called it a “mega strike”. There are two unions on Deutsche Bahn (German state railway company): you have EVG which is more infrastructure and some drivers, but also a lot of technicians, and then you have the GDL which is mostly only drivers. The EVG have done two strike days now. Their effect was quite good: on both days, there were no trains all day.
Now, the public services have accepted an offer, so that will stop now. The postal service took a very bad offer. EVG is still in dispute and GDL won’t have their pay negotiations until Autumn. So to answer your question: no, not any more.
S: Class struggle has been fairly quiet in Germany in recent years? So why did these strikes happen now, and is there any independent voice at the grassroots of the unions?
C: There were strikes in hospitals in western Germany and Berlin in 2021. These were quite powerful, and were against cuts and for reduced workload. Those movements were quite big. In western Germany, the hospitals were striking for over a month. They are in Ver.di, and that union started to use organisers. They were really good and created a movement around hospitals which has come back to life now for the pay dispute, it’s called Hospital Movement. That is people who are quite connected with each other and also with the union. The organisers stopped their work two weeks into the strike but they left that movement behind. Ver.di and other unions are now recruiting more members now than they have in over 40 years. That’s a lesson for German unions: it’s like, “wow, if we do something, people actually join us!” They messed up because the deals they struck were really bad, but now people are actually joining the unions.
During the recent strikes in general workers were quite content with the union because the union leadership was being unusually militant. Workers raised slogans like “nothing less than 500 euros”. Now, the union agreed on 340 euros. Some people are looking at this critically, but not many.
Gilette wants to lay off a third of its workforce in Berlin and impose a speed-up on another third. And people accepted this, even though it is Proctor & Gamble, a huge company. So that’s the mood in Germany.
Nobody remembers the last time that more than two unions went on strike together. It is often said that such a coordinated strike is impossible, but it has happened now. So I think people will not let the unions get away with not doing that again.
S: What was the level of public support in the most recent strike? How did the media respond?
C: It was a little better in hospitals. After Covid, people are quite understanding for the people who work in healthcare. But with trains, it’s impossible. People freak out as soon as there is no train. Friday was the last EVG strike day, I took a train on the Thursday and it was delayed by five minutes. People were getting angry and saying that it was because of the strike. But this wasn’t even true, the strike was the next day. If there is even a suggestion of strikes in the newspapers, people really get mad in Germany. I don’t know why but it is hard to promote solidarity in this sector.
S: Are the strikes in Britain and France having an effect on the public consciousness in Germany?
C: The French strikes are, especially, but more like “oh, look what they are doing over there: and that’s just for retirement, that’s crazy, why are they doing this?” I talk to people on picket lines and people say, “maybe we should do like they do in France”. But the German strikes were a part of negotiations – “Warnstreik” or warning strikes. There are two rounds of negotiations in which you are allowed to do “warning strikes” lasting a couple of hours or a day or so. And, years ago, they agreed that there would be mediation in this round of pay negotiations which would last two weeks. Those two weeks of mediation resulted in a scarcely-better new offer. But by law they were not able to strike during those two weeks, and that’s how you lose a lot of drive. People got tired of waiting. Only the unions said yes to the offer, not the members yet. But the same thing happened in the Post. After the second round, workers voted for a longer strike and then the union agreed on the offer in the middle of the night. Members then voted 56% in favour of taking the offer. You need a two-third majority in order to decline an offer.
S: Is union organisation concentrated in the public sector?
D: In chemicals, pharmaceuticals, mining, steelworks and manufacturing, those are really well-organised. IG Metall has more than a million members. Maybe, because the unions are very strong, the wages are quite good. They have got wage increases by doing the same thing as ever, which is warning strikes where one shift stops work; whereas other sectors that aren’t as well organised or are less-willing to strike, have to strike more. If IG Metall called a strike one day, not a single car would get made in Germany. They have generally been able to get reasonable wage rises year-on-year.
C: “Konzertierte Aktion [Concerted Action]” is the name given to agreements between the government and the unions in Germany. One was signed last year. The government said that instead of paying higher wages, they will pay tax-free bonuses. IG Metall had a deal in December under which workers would be paid two bonuses totalling 3,000 in all. But the actual percentage wage increase over 24 months was well below inflation. This is a terrible deal but people see, “I’m getting 3,000 euros, that’s great!”
S: Are these strikes encouraging organisation in previously unorganised sectors?
C: The numbers are clear: people are really joining unions more and more. Some strikes are happening out of this context. There was a dockers’ strike in 2022, in Hamburg, Bremen – all the northern port cities.
D: That was the first strike on the Hamburg docks in 30-40 years. Dockworkers were very active at the base, had demonstrations where people had made their own signs.
S: Can you say something about the activity of the RSO and the rest of the Marxist left in these recent strikes?
C: In Berlin there were strikes in the hospital where we run a bulletin; and we also run a bulletin on the regional trains. When those two were on strike together, it was impossible to get to the picket lines at the hospital because there were no trains! When we were leafleting at the hospital, people were a lot more interested, asking questions – that is really something at 5am when someone is coming on or off shift. And there was a lot less skepticism towards weirdos like me stood there with leaflets. The bulletin at the hospital is called Vitamin-C – the C stands for Charité.
During the EVG strike, GDL members crossed the picket lines and went into work, but they weren’t able to move any trains without the EVG members. The head of GDL, Weselsky, wrote a letter saying that these strikes are really bad. But when GDL last struck, I went to their pickets and their members were saying how much they wanted EVG members to come out with them. And they also thought that the deal they got was terrible. In Germany, if you have two unions in one sector, the pay deal for everyone is determined by what is negotiated by the bigger union. So if EVG wins a good pay deal, that’s good for GDL members. But still GDL are making propaganda against the strike. A comrade of ours is trying to bring GDL members out alongside EVG members. In Germany, if a valid strike call has been made by any one union in your workplace, you can strike regardless of what union you are in. But it isn’t like GDL is explaining this to people. So we are trying to at least educate people that it’s possible to go on strike. Our rail bulletin is called “Zugfunke” or “railway sparks”.
S: Are there any big public figures who have emerged from these strikes in Germany, in the same way that Mick Lynch has in the UK?
C: There is one guy, the leader of the GDL rail union, and he is really famous: rhetorically he is somewhere between Stalinism and the Conservative Party. He’s actually a member of the CDU. He is called Claus Weselsky and he’s been the leader for a long time.
D: The GDL, as the minority union, has been able to build up a reputation for being more militant. They have put on strikes every few years in recent decades.
S: Are there other big important social movements going on Germany at the moment?
C: There was a bill put to referendum in Berlin in autumn 2021 to expropriate all landlords who own more than 3,000 housing units. In particular, a company called Vonovia. There was a big movement for it. The recruitment for this movement happened a lot in the outer suburbs of Berlin. Everyone knew that you’d get everyone in the centre of Berlin, where there are lots of leftwing or alternative people. But in the outskirts you have conservative voters, you have to get there. So the campaign made that happen – they went out every Sunday to those areas to collect signatures, and in the end 59.1% voted yes to this measure. But the government isn’t obliged to do it. It’s a law that they could use, because now they know that a lot of people would be for it, but they don’t have to do it. So the SPD government just ignored it for a year and a half. And now we have a CDU mayor in Berlin who is ruling alongside the former mayor, Franziska Giffey (she is really spooky). And so they won’t do anything about this, either. Their plan is to build luxury apartments in the park of Tempelhofer Feld. There was a referendum a few years ago saying not to do that – but that doesn’t matter, either!
This has been quite bad for social movements in Germany. People are devastated. People tried to raise it in the most recent elections but the movement collapsed.
There is also ecological activism with [anti-open-cast coal-mining movement] Ende Gelaende and [direct-action climate movement] and Last Generation. One woman associated with Last Generation glued herself to the frame of a painting – not even the painting, just the frame! – and she has been sentenced to four months in prison. This has produced quite a scandal.
S: Is there still a lot of school student participation in Last Generation?
C: Last Generation has people from all different age groups. The woman who glued herself to a painting had entered radical politics as a school student through Fridays for Future. There are a lot of people like that, but also there are a lot of old hippies, too. There aren’t a lot of political discussions in this movement. It’s not the biggest movement in Germany right now but it is the most talked-about. That’s because Germans go crazy if someone glues themselves to the road. People are running over them in their cars, driving over people’s heads, over their legs, because they wanted to get to work, and the traffic light was green. The police are very aggressive towards these protestors, using stress holds.
There was also a series of big protests at Luetzerath by Ende Gelaende. WE, a big energy firm, bought a plot of land and they really wanted to start digging there. But there is no need for it. Digging up this hole and burning this coal means that Germany will easily go over its 1.5 degree target. There were big protests there.
The former Fridays for Future people are split into these more radical parts and a part that went into the Green Party, which is in the government. But there isn’t a lot of movement out of the Green Party. You have those two wings and they don’t do big demonstrations together any more: they are divided.
The “Genug ist Genug” movement was launched by people around Jacobin magazine as a conscious import of the “Enough is Enough” campaign in Britain. But it really didn’t work. I went to a few meetings. They wanted to try to make a general assembly of students, but really the meeting was only members of other left groups who had come to check it out. They had all these slogans that you had to use: it was like a trademark. It felt like an advertising campaign for a movement that doesn’t really exist. They tried it in Austria, too.