Edition from Wednesday, January 3rd, 2023
Innsbruck (OTS) – Erwin Zangerl will remain President of the Chamber of Labor. The approaching elections are unlikely to change this. Despite a safe outcome, Zangerl throws himself into the race. To the chagrin of his party, the ÖVP, and the opposition.
There are more tense elections than those for the AK general assembly. At the end of January and beginning of February, around 285,000 self-employed workers vote to represent their interests. In Tyrol and also in the rest of Austria. The election results can be roughly predicted easily. The AK tip will most likely remain red in seven federal states and black in two. Vorarlberg and Tyrol are the only federal states where even the employee representatives are black. The recoloring of the chamber in Tyrol was probably the last time that something like an earthquake occurred in the AK elections. That was 1984.
Fritz Dinkhauser changed the color of the chamber and since then it has often been a thorn in the side of the ÖVP. Dinkhauser inflicted the biggest electoral defeat on his mother party and, with the Fritz list, placed a stubborn opposition party in front of it. His successor, Erwin Zangerl, continued Dinkhauser’s path and attracted criticism from within the party. He was one of the few who did not glorify former Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, but rather criticized him. This was unpleasant for Zangerl’s Tyrolean party friends at the time and later praiseworthy. The fact that Zangerl wants to know again became clear after his attacks last year on the state-owned energy supplier Tiwag. The AK President first drove Governor Anton Mattle ahead of him and then, at the end of the year, in a wash-out, he also drove the opposition by demanding a committee of inquiry into Tiwag. A U-committee is the sharpest weapon of the state parliament, not of social partnership.
Since the election results are already certain, voter turnout is coming into focus. In 2019 it was a low 34 percent. From the interest group’s point of view, it cannot be lower. Otherwise you will end up with a legitimacy problem. Not just within the party, but also among the members. To date, they are not allowed to choose in Austria whether they want to pay an average of ten euros a month and thus be an AK member.
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