Verdi union wants to paralyze ports with warning strikes

WThe great potential for conflict in the collective bargaining dispute between the Verdi union and the German ports became apparent on Wednesday night in Bremen. There, rioters threw bags of paint against the facade of the seaport and logistics group BLG. A window pane was also broken.

“We condemn this blind vandalism,” said the morning after the Central Association of German Seaport Companies, in short: ZDS, the mouthpiece of the companies in this country. “We call on Verdi to immediately enter into an orderly mediation process with us and thus to live up to our joint responsibility at this time, which is characterized by multiple crises.”

After the fourth round of the ongoing collective bargaining this week failed to bring any agreement, the signs are now pointing to industrial action. At the beginning of June, employees in Hamburg, Emden, Bremen, Bremerhaven and Wilhelmshaven stopped working. Verdi has again called for a 24-hour warning strike for this Thursday.

The union wants to increase the pressure on employers

“We would have liked to have avoided another warning strike, but the offer now available, which has mostly been worsened, is unacceptable to us,” said Verdi negotiator Maya Schwiegershausen-Güth. “We will increase the pressure and call on the employers for further negotiations. Your offer cannot be the last word.”

The strikes are a hard blow for the ports, because they have been struggling with disruptions in the logistics chains for months. After the first corona shock, a boom broke out, which caused a flood of containers and is now overloading the terminals. Hard lockdowns in China and the major port of Shanghai there had recently increased the global imbalance.

But ships with more than 2 percent of the international container capacity are also stuck in traffic jams off the European North Sea ports. According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, 20 container ships are lying off Heligoland alone, waiting to be able to enter Hamburg or Bremerhaven.

corporate outrage

The fact that Verdi is on a confrontational course in this situation is enraging companies. “The announced 24-hour warning strikes are not proportionate,” said ZDS negotiator Ulrike Riedel on Wednesday in Berlin. Politicians and companies met there for the kick-off event for talks about a “national port strategy”, a project that the traffic light coalition had agreed to in its coalition agreement.

In the collective bargaining for around 12,000 employees, the ZDS presented its “final” offer at the beginning of the week. According to this, the hourly wage of port workers should increase by 1.20 euros for a collective bargaining period of 18 months, with a special rule for employees at terminals who load vehicles: their basic hourly wage should only increase by 90 cents because difficulties in the automotive industry are affecting logistics and transporting numbers have fallen.

In addition, the allowance in the container segment is to increase by EUR 1,200. Employees at facilities such as the Altenwerder terminal in Hamburg, which as “full container companies” concentrate solely on steel boxes, should also receive a one-time payment of 1,000 euros. For conventional terminals, such as those that load both steel boxes and general cargo, the ZDS offers 500 euros.

Higher wages demanded

Verdi, on the other hand, is also demanding an increase in hourly wages of EUR 1.20 for a term of only twelve months and an increase in the annual allowance of EUR 1,200 in full container operations. In addition, the union wants to push through an unspecified “actual inflation compensation”. In view of current wages of just under 15 euros to a good 28 euros an hour, their demands mean a salary increase of up to 14 percent.

“We offered an immediately effective volume of up to 11 percent, including a permanent increase in wages of up to 7.2 percent,” said ZDS negotiator Riedel. This goes beyond securing real wages and is well above comparable wage agreements. Riedel accused Verdi of not making any compromises and called on the union to seek solutions together in a mediation process. The situation is made more difficult by the fact that some positions are apparently controversial even within the union. The lines of conflict run, among other things, between employees of the full container companies, who earn particularly well, and colleagues at conventional terminals who are worse off.