Public sector workers launch major warning strike ahead of collective bargaining round: ver.di increases pressure

According to the trade union ver.di, more than 300 employees took part in the first major warning strike in the public service wage dispute in Stuttgart and Metzingen (Reutlingen district). Around 200 housekeeping staff and gravediggers temporarily stopped working in Stuttgart on Monday. According to ver.di, more than 100 employees were involved in the campaign in Metzingen.

Ver.di country chief Martin Gross said: “The work of housekeeping staff in daycare centers or gravediggers at the cemetery offices often remains invisible.” Their incomes were among the lower in the public service.

Many daycare centers in Karlsruhe could remain closed on Tuesday

In Karlsruhe at noon, employees from eight rehabilitation clinics in the state handed over a signature campaign to the director of the German pension insurance. On Tuesday, the union called on the employees of around 40 childcare facilities in Karlsruhe to go on warning strikes. Parents must expect that most day care centers will remain closed.

Ver.di is initially limited to individual actions and strikes. Citizens therefore do not yet have to expect any impairments from the actions. The reason for this is the collective bargaining conflict with municipal employers before the second round of negotiations on February 22nd and 23rd in Potsdam.

Strike start in Schwäbisch Hall

The strike in Schwäbisch Hall began on Friday. According to ver.di, around 100 employees of the city of Schwäbisch Hall and the local public utility first laid down their work. Daycare centers were also on strike. Above all, it is about more wages, according to ver.di district manager Katharina Kaupp. This should increase by 10.5 percent, but at least by 500 euros and for trainees by 200 euros, according to Kaupp in the SWR.

In Baden-Württemberg, around 350,000 people are affected by the collective bargaining, as reported by the local employers’ association. The term of the new collective agreement is to be twelve months.

Ver.di: “Pressure in the boiler increases”

“The pressure in the boiler is increasing day by day,” said ver.di official Hanna Binder on Thursday. Municipal employers should finally take note of what their employees expected of them in this collective bargaining round. “No warm words, but sufficient payment for warm apartments and skyrocketing food prices,” said Binder.

Is the union’s demand justified?

“In the last few years we have had a real wage loss for the third year in a row,” Thorsten Schulten from the Institute for Economic and Social Sciences (WSI) of the Hans Böckler Foundation, which is close to the trade union, told SWR. The employees therefore expected high wage demands from the unions. The aim is to keep the real wage losses low and thus to create a balance. Gunther Schnabel, head of the Institute for Economic Policy at the University of Leipzig, sees the state and entrepreneurs “at least as a tendency” as winners of inflation. He assumes that they will bow to the demands of the unions, Schnabel told SWR.

Strikes on Thursday in NRW, Berlin and Hesse

In other federal states there was already a strike on Thursday last week. Thousands of employees in North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse and Berlin temporarily stopped working. Among other things, there were restrictions on buses and trains, and clinics and city cleaning services were also on strike.