Focus on Germany London Office The Chandlery Office 609 50 Westminster Bridge Road GB London SE1 7QY Tel 00 44 20 77 21 87 45 Fax 00 44 20 77 21 87 46 www.feslondon.org.uk Ausgust 2006 Better not cheaper ­How Trade Unions are Defending Manu­facturing Jobs in Germany Germany’s metalworker union is defending its member’s jobs by an innovative campaign that aims at making companies more competitive while defending existing wage and working time agreements. Christoph Mulitze Shrinking employment in traditional blue­collar jobs, decreasing membership num­bers and on top of that, the constant de­mand by employers to downgrade hard­fought social standards because the com­petition in Eastern Europe and the Far East is so much cheaper- there are varied and mutually reinforcing reasons why, since the fall of the Iron Curtain, the trade unions in Germany have had to go on the defensive. When your back's to the wall, you don't have many choices. One choice is to go on the offensive, and that is precisely what the IG Metall, the metalworker union in North Rhine-Westphalia has done with its" Besser statt Billiger" campaign, launched in No­vember 2004 to prove that better instead of cheaper should be the motto. The cam­paign has already proved successful in a short space of time. The aim of"better not cheaper" is to make businesses in the metalworking sector in North Rhine-Westphalia internationally more competitive through investment and innovation. IG Metall sees the campaign as a counterbalance to the softer option often taken by companies that lose their competi­tive edge. Employees often face more work without better pay or shorter hours, fewer days' holiday, and reduction or even elimi­nation of holidays or bonuses and special payments for night and weekend shifts."For years now, we have observed how works committees have been at the mercy of in­creasing pressure from employers to forego employees' legal rights in wage negotia­tions supposedly to ensure the security of their jobs. We simply had to do something to counter this," explains Detlef Wetzel, Chairman of IG Metall in North Rhine­Westphalia.