On December 5, thousands of teachers, public employees, artists and cultural workers, carers and educators protested in Berlin against the Berlin Senate’s plans to cut billions of euros from the city’s budgets for education, culture, health and other areas.
Transit workers in over 80 cities across the country participated in the strike. WSWS reporters spoke to strikers in Berlin.
The new contract imposing cuts in real wages for rail workers in southwest Germany reveals the ugly collaboration of the state government, transit corporations and the GDL (German Train Drivers Union).
While there is enormous anger and willingness to fight among workers, who are not prepared to accept further cuts to real wages, the service sector union Verdi is doing everything to prevent a broad mobilization.
Hundreds of workers—full-time, freelance and trainees—at broadcaster Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB) went on a day-long strike on Friday.
The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei election statement calls for €100 billion for nurseries, schools and hospitals, instead of armaments and war, together with a massive hike in wages and the expropriation of all the war profiteers.
Workers’ protests are nipped in the bud by pitting workers against one another, either factory against factory or along national lines.
Without a common European struggle of Airbus workers, not a single job can be defended.
These latest developments at the Charité and Vivantes hospitals confirm that Verdi, in close cooperation with management and the Senate, is trying to end the strike as quickly as possible in order to prevent its spread.
Hundreds of employees of subsidiaries of the Berlin hospital enterprise Vivantes renewed their strike on Friday, demanding higher wages and better working conditions.
The third and latest rail strike in the contract struggle by the German Train Drivers’ Union ended early on Tuesday morning.
To defend their jobs and standard of living, workers must free themselves from the control of the trade unions. There is no alternative for workers outside of building independent rank-and-file committees.
The example of MAN-Steyr underlines that workers can only defend themselves if they take the initiative, free themselves from the straitjacket of the unions and organise themselves independently in action committees.
The supervisory board of truck manufacturer MAN Truck & Bus has decided to close down its plant in Steyr, Austria. The traditional plant, with over a hundred years of history, is to be shuttered if the workforce does not accept the terms of a sale to investor Siegfried Wolf.
1,200 jobs at the MV shipyards on the Baltic Sea are to be cut, according to the owners’ plans.
Commerzbank’s “Strategy 2024,” which will sacrifice 10,000 jobs, is supported by the Verdi trade union and the works council.
The trade union Verdi supports the jobs massacre at Commerzbank, which will destroy 10,000 posts and close half its branches.
The union supports company plans to destroy 3,500 jobs so it can make an 8 percent profit, which is the strategic aim of the shareholders.
Five hundred workers at the Airbus plant in Hamburg-Finkenwerder are quarantining after 21 of their colleagues were infected with COVID-19. The IG Metall trade union and its works council representatives refuse to take any responsibility for the health of the work f orce.
Lufthansa is considering reducing its current workforce by about 30 percent or almost twice as many as the German airline announced at the end of June.
