The HHLA Executive Board explains:
As an employer, HHLA has been trying for a long time to come to an agreement in the collective bargaining conflict over the general collective bargaining agreement with the HHLA service companies SCA and SCB. So far, however, ver.di has insisted on demands that, from HHLA’s point of view, lead to disproportionate cost increases and thus endanger the competitiveness of the company and the Port of Hamburg as a whole in view of the massively changing framework conditions. This warning strike is therefore disproportionate and irresponsible.
In essence, ver.di calls for a fundamental change in the standard working hours from Monday to Sunday to a model with voluntary weekend work. This is not acceptable to HHLA in this form. Like many other professional areas represented by ver.di, the Port of Hamburg works seven days a week. Shift and working time models with seven days of regular work and the corresponding compensation for free time are anchored in ver.di in house collective agreements at six of eight container terminals in the German Bight. It is all the more incomprehensible for the HHLA employers’ commission that ver.di insists on solutions at SCA and SCB that endanger employment.
Regardless of the fact that an agreement has already been reached between the negotiating partners on 14 out of 20 points, the employers’ commission continues to promote the compromise proposal submitted on January 25 with regard to weekend work. This would enable SCA and SCB employees, among other things, to voluntarily choose different working time models with different weekend coverage to be agreed with the works council. HHLA continues to refuse to respond to the ver.di demands, which consequently endanger both jobs and the company’s competitiveness, out of responsibility towards employees, customers and owners.
HHLA Labor Director Torben Seebold therefore again appeals to the employee representatives to agree to arbitration. Ver.di does not want to get involved in this tried and tested way of solving deadlocked collective bargaining. HHLA has no understanding for this attitude. A labor dispute is the wrong way to find solutions, and not just against the background of the challenges posed by the corona pandemic.
The three-day warning strike that has now been called is likely to have an impact on the handling activities of an infrastructure-critical company like HHLA. The customers were informed accordingly. The affected service companies SCA and SCB at the Altenwerder and Burchardkai container terminals are working flat out to meet their obligations to their customers despite the warning strike.
The accusation by ver.di representative Stephan Gastmeier that HHLA tried to put pressure on employees of the companies on strike, HHLA firmly rejects. Everyone has the democratic right to strike. But everyone also has the right not to strike.
Many HHLA employees are deeply irritated and concerned about the sometimes aggressive behavior of individual ver.di functionaries during the first warning strike last week. The fact that employees who did not want to strike were verbally threatened is a serious process that HHLA will not tolerate.
Against this background, HHLA has drawn up a joint declaration on how to treat people with respect even during a strike. Intimidation, verbal attacks and threats of violence are condemned in the strongest. Ver.di received this declaration last Friday and has not yet signed it. This is why the HHLA Executive Board calls on all those involved to act moderately and carefully during the strike, despite differing views.
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