Germany's trade unions: What's behind the wave of strikes?

Young German workers are showing renewed interest in unionizing and industrial action, as the country's winter of industrial disruption continues.

In the latest action, Lufthansa ground crews are striking Wednesday with major disruptions to Frankfurt and Munich airports. After a train driver's union called a major strike at the end of January,  security workers at most of Germany’s major airports walked off the job last week, while many local transport services were also out of action last Friday.

The union that called the latter strikes is one of Germany's biggest, Verdi, which has now described 2023 as its most successful year since its foundation in 2001. Representing 1.9 million service workers across a range of industries, Verdi welcomed 193,000 new members in 2023 — a net gain of 40,000.

Other unions have seen a similar trend. The small but high-profile train drivers' union GDL, which led last weekend's strike, recently reported an 18% rise in membership since 2015. Similarly, Germany's oldest trade union, the gastronomy union NGG, counted over 20,000 new members last year.

Stefan Körzell, a leading board member at the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB), an umbrella organization for several major unions, welcomed the development, which has seen five of its eight member organizations increase membership last year.

"First of all we're really happy," he told DW. "This is a positive sign. We have an age pyramid like all the other membership organizations, like parties, churches and clubs. I think through some intelligent politics and intelligent representation of interests in the last two, three years we have managed to turn the trend."

A blip or a trend?

But Körzell was alert to the fact that last year appeared to be an anomaly, with union membership in Germany in a steady decline for decades. DGB membership overall has dropped from 9.3 million in the mid-1990s to 5.6 million now, mainly because of demographic shifts as an older generation of workers slowly disappears into retirement.

Just to keep up with these "natural" losses, a major union like Verdi needs to find at least 150,000 new members every year. In that context, the new rise in membership figures might be a blip. But it's a blip with good signs for the unions, as the numbers also show renewed interest among younger generations. According to Verdi, more than 50,000 of its new members are under the age of 28.

"We have that across the board," said Körzell. "Even those unions that didn't have more members in total at the end of the year did have more young people."

Thorsten Schulten, researcher at the Hans Böckler Foundation, which is associated with the DGB, believes Verdi owes its many new members mainly to recent labor disputes. But that doesn't mean the unions are deliberately driving the strikes to increase their own power.

"I think the unions are surprised themselves by how strong the support and the participation is from members," he said. "I think in certain areas they're being driven by the members."

Schulten thinks the current wave of industrial action is mainly the result of increasing social hardship. "We shouldn't forget that in the last few years, we've had historically high inflation rates, that employees have had to take some massive real-terms salary losses," he said. "And this has created real problems for people on low incomes […] and who if not a union can ensure that a compensation can be achieved?"

For his part, Körzell also thinks the development is partly down to the unions' roles in the recent economic crises caused by the COVID pandemic and the war in Ukraine. The unions, he said, have been instrumental in ensuring that there has been no mass unemployment, by collaborating with the government and companies to adjust to short-time contracts and negotiating compensation packages.

Increasing pressures, more confident workers

Another important factor, according to Schulten, is that workers are realizing that the companies need them more than ever, in light of shortages on the labor market. "They're not scared of losing their jobs," he said. "But the shortage of skilled labor has not led automatically to better working conditions — there is a need for active engagement."

Marcel Fratzscher, head of the German Institute for Economic Research, agrees. "We have 1.8 million open jobs, and employees are getting more confident and saying: 'We want better working conditions and better pay,'" he told DW.

The problem, however, is that fewer jobs in Germany are tied to the collective bargaining commitments, which is what unions negotiate. Only 50% of jobs in Germany are covered by collective bargaining agreements designed to ensure certain industries pay decent wages — a long way behind the 80% target set by a European Union directive in 2022. That means that half of jobs in Germany are effectively out of reach for the unions — a problem the unions are trying to address.

"Of course, it's difficult to reach workers who don't have collective bargaining agreements," said Körzell. "But we have seen, for example, that even delivery riders are fighting together with us so that their companies also get such agreements."

This article was originally published on February 2, 2024. It has been updated with the latest strike action.

Edited by: Rina Goldenberg

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