‘Strike Madness’ hits Germany as the economy stumbles

For those standing at the gate of SRW’s scrap metal plant, just outside the eastern German city of Leipzig, time can be counted not only in days – 136 so far – but also in the thousands of card games played, the liters of coffee brewed were sucked up and the arms full of firewood were burned.

Or it can be measured by the length of Jonny Bohne’s beard. He vows not to shave until he returns to the job he has held for 20 years. Wearing his red baseball cap and fighting an oil barrel fire, 56-year-old Bohne looks like a scruffy Santa Claus.

The dozens of workers at the SRW recycling center say their strike has become the longest in post-war German history – a dubious honor in a country with a history of harmonious labor relations. (The previous record, 114 days, was set by shipyard workers in the northern city of Kiel, who struck in the 1950s.)

While months-long strikes are common in some other European countries such as Spain, Belgium or France, where workers’ protests are something of a national pastime, Germany has long prided itself on its unhindered collective bargaining.

A wave of strikes this year has Germans wondering whether this will change. By some measures, the first three months of 2024 have seen the most strikes in the country in 25 years.

Striking workers have brought railways and airports to a standstill. Doctors have left hospitals. Bank employees left work for days.

“Germany – strike nation?” asked a recent headline in the German magazine Der Spiegel. Jens Spahn, deputy leader of the conservative Christian Democrats in parliament, denounced a “strike frenzy” that he said could paralyze the country.

The strikes are the latest chapter in the story of how Germany, the “economic miracle” of the 20th century, risks becoming a cautionary tale for the 21st century.

Germany has long been Europe’s economic powerhouse and is now the slowest growing of the twenty countries that use the euro. The country entered a recession in 2023 and is expected to stagnate in 2024. Under the weight of rising energy prices and declining production, the country experienced the highest inflation in 50 years last year.

The burden has fallen heaviest on low- and middle-income workers. Since 2022, their real wages have been according to a recent studyhave shrunk more than ever since the Second World War.

At the same time, Germany is facing increasingly severe labor shortages and an aging population, with officials estimating that there will be a shortage of seven million workers by 2035. This poses problems for the generous social security system on which German citizens have long depended.

It is a unique moment of opportunity for workers, at a very vulnerable time for the national economy.

“Germany is coming out of the crisis slower than expected,” Robert Habeck, the economy minister, said last week, criticizing what he called “a bit too obvious.”

“We really cannot afford this,” he says.

For decades, the German economy chugged along profitably, supported by exports to China and cheap gas from Russia. But Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine led Europe to wean itself off the Russian gas that powered German industry. And Beijing’s deepening “Made in China” strategy is turning a huge Asian market, once a source of growth for Germany, into an industrial rival.

The impact on Germany has been worse than elsewhere in Europe precisely because of its huge manufacturing industry, which accounts for a fifth of the country’s total economic output – almost double that of France or Britain.

For lower-income workers, who are now bracing for a future that is less prosperous than the current one, there is little to fall back on. About 40 percent of households have little or no net savings, said Marcel Fratzscher, president of the German Institute for Economic Research.

“The concerns, dissatisfaction and fears of young people are fully justified – and of course of parents who fear for their children,” he said.

“People had trusted that Social Security could provide,” he added. “It can no longer offer what it used to.”

At the metal scrap plant, workers like Mr. Bohne are taking shifts to continue their 24-hour strike outside the main gate, warming themselves in construction containers or around makeshift fire pits fueled with scrap wood.

The outages have forced the factory to stop night shifts and only one of its four production lines is operating. The strikers, who want an 8 percent wage increase, feel encouraged.

“You notice that solidarity has become stronger,” says Christoph Leonardt, 35, one of the picket workers.

Yet it’s not just about the reward. Workers are also demanding better working conditions, the ability to plan shifts and vacations well in advance, better work-life balance and shorter hours.

“The worker has become more confident,” said Katrin Heller, a 61-year-old security worker who marched with hundreds of striking colleagues in Day-Glo vests through Berlin airport’s shiny new departure hall last week, forcing flights to be canceled. cancelled.

“We know we have value to employers, so we expect to be treated fairly,” she said. Officially, airport security workers are demanding a 15 percent pay increase to keep up with inflation, but many seemed more frustrated with the shifts that force them to stand for up to six hours without a break.

Robert Wegener, 56, a security researcher for 19 years, warned that jobs like his were no longer attractive to younger people: “If we don’t get these perks, there’s not much reason to work here.”

His employer, Securitas, agrees. Jonas Timm, a company spokesman, said recruiting has become increasingly difficult since the pandemic, when he started noticing a “change in mentality” about shift work.

Many employers have expressed frustration that more and more applicants are demanding shorter hours or four-day work weeks, for example.

Analysts disagree on why Germans want to work less, but many say a major problem is Germany’s tax system, which taxes incomes far more heavily than private wealth, disproportionately affecting low- and middle-income workers.

Clemens Feust, president of the Ifo Institute for Economic Research, says working full-time can be more expensive than staying at home. A Ifo study showed that, because of the way taxes for married couples are structured, a family where one partner worked full-time and the other worked part-time had more income at the end of the month than two full-time working parents.

“The fact that it’s not worth it to work in our middle-income bracket is a real problem,” he said.

As striking workers use their power, costs to the economy as a whole threaten to pile up as critical infrastructure across Germany grinds to a halt.

The one-day strike at Berlin and Hamburg airports last week grounded about 570 flights and affected 90,000 travelers, according to an industry group.

The Kiel Institute for the World Economy estimates that train conductors’ strikes cost the German economy around 100 million euros per day.

Mr Feust said such costs are often incurred as companies and affected travelers have made adjustments. The most serious damage, he said, is to the economic mood.

“This is more about psychology,” he said, especially at a time when Germany feels polarized by both economic and political struggles, including the war in Ukraine and the resurgence of the far right. “It leads to an increased sense of crisis.”

Striking workers say they too are looking for a sense of security and higher wages.

“We need more reliability, and we need to be able to plan for the long term,” Mr. Bohne said.

Only then, he said, will he shave his beard.