Give me a break

Heiko: Your ramblings do not sound like you really would like to have an explanation, but – as I often get similar feelings reading my morning newspaper – I will try to give you one anyway:

As a practicing capitalist raised as a “rational thinking” engineer I tend to aggree with you at first. But these kinds of processes often can not be understood in a straightforward rational kind of way. You can look at it from – at least – two additional, different angles which might explain the seemingly irrational behavior of the unions:

Angle 1. If you would like to win, you have to choose a time and battleground, where your forces are strong and your tactical position is a favorable one. If 500.000 workers in 200.000 small to medium enterprises all over the country face unemployment, that’s not a good battleground – from the viewpoint of the unions. That is because it is hard to mobilize the workers in this very wide and open battlefield. It’s a lot easier for the unions to mobilize some 90.000 workers in 1 big company on such a seemingly minor issue. You get a lot more media coverage too.

Angle 2. I think it has to do a lot with “face saving” too, which obviously is important not only in the Asian culture. When the DaimlerChrysler management made its ultimatum to “adjust” work aggreements (“... or else ...” ) some days or weeks after the much publicised move at SIEMENS to go back to a 40hour work week, this was seen by the union leaders as a kind of provocation – or “testing the enemys strength”. May be it even was. But that is not important. If the union leaders would have aggreed to DaimlerChryslers demands “in the interest of the greater good”, that would have lost a lot of credebility with their peers and inside the unions membership.

And, please don’t see this as a confirmation of your opinion that the Unions actions are not rational. They are perfectly rational from their point of view. Furthermore … industry leaders are as likely to base decisions on the "will to win" (even if the battle does not make sense in the long run) or “saving face” as are union leaders.

Markus, thanks for your remarks.

And yes, I guess union members expect their leaders to rumble whenever work agreements are being challanged.

From the outside though, it still looks like unions should open their eyes and look at what is going on in Europe and the rest of world.

When will the first union leader show his face in public and declare that, yes, there is something fundamentally wrong. What's so bad about more flexibility when the world around is changing faster and faster? We can't stop that process.

Heiko, I couldn't aggree more with your (anticipated) intentions, but the answer to your last question ("When will the first union leader ...") is definitely "Never!" That is because it is not the job of the union leader to concede anything to the other side without a fight. That ist part of his/her job description.

Furthermore what you euphemestically call "flexibility" are working conditions that are "worse" than the union members have right now. (It does not matter that there are a lot of people in the world who face job conditions which are a lot more worse ....) And, honestly, I don't know that many people that like to give up what they have now without resistance (do you?). You could say that they should do so because of advantages in the long run (employment vs. unemployment, for example). But please consider: what is asked of them is to give up something NOW. What they gain are vague promises for some time in the future. It's not easy to persuade people with that kinds of offers.

Aditionally, I have to admit that I don't believe that the long term solution for the German economy's problems are continually rising working hours. At least in the foreseeable future German workers will never be able to compete on the basis of hourly wages or weekly hours. So, I understand (not sympathize with) the workers/unions position in this fight, I understand (not sympathize with) the industry's position. But this simply is the wrong (at least not the decisive) battefield if our long term objective is an internationally competitive German economy.

(isn't it nice to have an earnest conversation on politics on the pages of a blog? kind of a startling experience to me ...)

I have never been a metalworker. I did work in unionized environments (finance). I also went through union meetings when IG Metall wanted to get German internet agencies under its wings.

Yes, flexibility is a bad word. Even though many of us *wanted* flexibility, that very concept seems to be against everything the unions ever stood up for.

And yes, many things in Germany have to change in order to compete with other labor markets. Or we simply have to accept that there might not be enough work for everyone, and roll-out a social structure that deals with it. Currently, I see too little emphasis on creating new jobs. I only see complains. But that's a whole different subject ;-)