At the time of writing, hundreds of thousands of civil service workers in Germany are on strike to demand higher wages and a shorter work week. Turnout is high: most public day care centres are closed, rubbish is not being collected, trams and buses aren’t running, many clinics and hospitals are running emergency services only, and many public pools are closed as well. Around 2.5 million public and municipal employees are directly affected, along with a further 4 million people who work in churches, social welfare organizations, charities, associations, and welfare institutions.
Bernd Riexinger was co-chair of Die Linke from 2012 to 2021 and an MP for the party from 2017 to 2025. He is currently a member of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s Executive Board.
Unlike those of the industrial unions, ver.di strikes usually take place in the streets and squares and in front of town halls. Participation in the strikes tends to be very diverse, often containing large numbers of women, young union members, and migrants. Ver.di has grown substantially amongst workers in the public sector, increasing its capacity to strike, which has made it a key force for workers. Even so, municipal and federal employers cannot be forced to submit that easily, since — with the exception of airports or hospitals — they seldom bear the brunt of strikes’ economic impact. If day care centres don’t open, or trains and buses stop running, public agencies ultimately save money on personnel costs. These closures to public infrastructure instead generate pressure with the backlash from angry parents or residents, or from companies that complain when their employees arrive late or fail to show up for work.
This is not the only reason why it makes sense to bring wage disputes out into public space, so as to influence the climate of opinion and leverage political pressure. Wage disputes for civil service employees are political by nature. They concern the general state of public finances, fundamental questions of wealth distribution, and tax policy. On 15 March 2025, the German metalworkers’ union IG Metall organized mass rallies in several cities in order to put pressure on the new federal government to incorporate its demands regarding industrial policy into its government programme.
From this it is clear that unions hold an important political mandate alongside their role within the workplace and in collective bargaining. For Die Linke, they are thus a force that represents the interests of the working class in direct confrontation with capital, and fights for the demands of the class. As such, unions are an indispensable touchstone for left-wing policy. Die Linke actively supports fellow workers who go on strike and their struggles in the workplace, in wage negotiations, and in the political arena. Yet this does not mean that union positions and agreements, nor their mostly social-democratic political orientation, are adopted without criticism.
Unions Represent the Interests of Wage Earners
The basic idea behind unions is simple. It is based on the realization that those who own capital have so much power over wage earners that the latter — when selling their labour power — must work together to assert their interests. Unions organize wage earners in particular industries so that they are not defenceless when it comes to regulating pay and working conditions. Solidarity is the key principle of these associations. One example of this solidarity is found in strikes, in which workers collectively refuse to work for the capitalists. However, solidarity is also an everyday practice, which involves showing social responsibility and concern for colleagues, neighbours, or friends, instead of pursuing individual gains in everyday competition.
In the roughly 150 years of their existence, the struggles led by unions have achieved remarkable social progress: collective agreements on minimum wage, working hours, and working conditions; workplace representation by employee councils; pensions and health and unemployment insurance. A great many of these social rights were successfully fought for in major strikes. For example, the right to sick pay in Germany is the result of a 13-week strike in Schleswig-Holstein in 1956. Not infrequently, the policies won through collective bargaining were later enshrined in law.
The last 20 years have seen the development and implementation of new approaches to strike organization, not least by left-wing trade unionists.
Thanks to high growth rates in the 1960s, Germany adopted an approach to unions that was strongly oriented towards social partnership. Germany was one of the industrialized countries with the fewest strikes. Collective wage negotiations won in one sector (usually by industrial unions) were frequently applied to other sectors as well. In the 1990s, this welfare state model was overturned by radical neoliberal policies which went in step with a capitalist offensive, aimed at weakening workers and unions, that was unprecedented in the post-war period. Working hours, wages, and working conditions were deregulated, Europe’s largest low-wage sector was created, and the welfare state was put on the chopping block with Agenda 2010.
These changes were compounded by a massive restructuring of the economy. Today, more than 70 percent of employees work in the service sector, resulting in a shift in the composition of the working class. Proportionally there are now more women and more migrants in the workforce, workers on the whole have spent more time in education, and all the while, they have also been made increasingly precarious. At the same time, employment in the mining, steel, textile, chemical, and metal industries has massively declined: precisely those sectors in which the trade unions had the greatest organizational and fighting power. Today, only 10 to 15 percent of workers in these sectors are in the DGB unions, which amounts to less than 6 million unionized employees out of a total of around 45 million. In western Germany, just over 50 percent of the workforce has signed collective wage agreements; in the East, the figure is less than 40 percent. Only one in five companies has a works council.
More Workplace Struggles in the New Millennium
Strikes and workplace struggles have been on the rise again in Germany since around 2006 and have largely shifted to the public and service sectors. This is consistent with the broader changes in the composition of the working class. Unions also have more female and migrant members, and precarious workers are also getting organized. For example, childcare workers in public daycare facilities often comprise the largest group of strikers. There has also been a significant increase in the strike capacity of hospital workers. Collective bargaining history has been written in this sector, as major victories were won increasing staffing levels (e.g. at the Charité hospital in Berlin or at university hospitals). The Food, Beverages and Catering Union (NGG) was successful in expanding its ability to strike, and IG-BAU was also able to secure important collective wage agreements for cleaning staff, a sector where organizing is difficult. Postbank and the postal service were also able to win collective wage agreements after several warning strikes. In the retail sector, an industry with over 2.5 million employees and in which the majority of companies are not bound by collective wage agreements, a year-long wage dispute resulted in the first nationwide wage agreements in May 2024.
The IGM is still the union with the largest membership and has a very strong capacity for strike action, even if it is deployed relatively infrequently. In 2024, more than 1 million IG Metall members went on strike for higher pay and more time off work.
New Types of Strikes and the Democratization of Workers’ Struggles
The last 20 years have seen the development and implementation of new approaches to strike organization, not least by left-wing trade unionists. Novel approaches to organizing have bolstered strikes in workplaces with a low level of organization, and efforts have been made to link warning strikes with organizing drives. Strikes were combined with actions in public spaces, giving rise to new and lively forms of cultural expression (strike songs, performances, diverse demonstrations, etc.). In sectors such as retail and waste collection, for example, “in and out” strategies were adopted: strike assemblies were regularly organized in front of customer entrances and moved from entrance to entrance. In the hospitals there was strategizing around which departments should go on strike in order to create economic pressure. New forms of organization for trade union recruiters and contact persons emerged.
Most importantly, the strikes were democratized: regular strike meetings served to provide updates on the situation of the involved parties, and space to debate and decide on next steps and new ideas for collective action, the status of the negotiations, the strikers’ expectations of the negotiators, and much more. In the social and educational services strikes, nationwide strike delegates’ meetings were convened to vote on the results of the negotiations or the continuation of the strikes. There were also votes on negotiation outcomes that were organized without a prior strike ballot. Democratization has given workers much more opportunities to participate in strikes than was offered by the traditional methods for conducting a strike. The result has been to boost workers’ fighting power, and the formation of new spaces for solidarity and reflection.
None of this is to suggest that these strike methods have been implemented across the board. That is still a distant prospect. The Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung is making a vital contribution to strike organizing with its nationwide “strike conferences” (2,000 participants have already registered for the next instalment). The conference will create a place for union organizers of all different sectors to network and interface.
Political Strikes
Unlike in most European countries, political strikes or even general strikes are not technically legally permitted in Germany, though the issue remains highly controversial. Since its foundation, Die Linke has been working to extend the right to strike and to assert the legitimacy of political strikes. The fact that the Social Democrats have never seriously put this issue on the agenda in numerous coalitions is no accident. They are stuck in the past, clinging to an ideal of social partnership which capital has long since abandoned.
However, there are numerous examples of how unions can extend the existing legal boundaries to organize “political strikes”. One example is by calling for demonstrations during working hours, or by organizing simultaneous strikes by the railroad and transport union (EVG) and ver.di in both the long-distance services (the Deutsche Bahn) and local public transport, a tactic which paralyzed traffic in 2023. The joint strikes by Fridays for Future and ver.di in the local public transport sector also asserted a clear political demand for better-funded public transport alongside the concrete wage demands. Similar things have been tried in joint strikes by students and educators. Left-wing union organizers, in particular, advocate for proactively seizing the available opportunities and politicizing industrial action.
Taking the Political Mandate Seriously
Unions have a political mandate by definition. Following their fragmentation and destruction under fascism, unified trade unions (Einheitsgewerkschaften) were set up in Germany, overseen by an umbrella organization called the Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (German Federation of Trade Unions, DGB). (I will not go into the specifics of the Gewerkschaft Deutscher Lokomotivführer, GDL, or the German Civil Service Federation). Although most DGB trade unions (and especially their leadership) have ties to social democratic politics, they do not see themselves as party-political organizations. However, they claim a political mandate for themselves so that they can represent the interests of their members and workers vis-à-vis the parties and the government.
Left-wing union activists in particular are the ones advocating for taking a proactive and high-profile political stance. For example, Die Linke, and previously the PDS, played a major role in the introduction of the statutory minimum wage. It was the first party to put the concrete demand for a statutory minimum wage on the political agenda and to mobilize for it. After the NGG and ver.di trade unions in particular (later also the DGB) launched high-profile minimum wage campaigns, there was so much social pressure that the Merkel government had to sign a minimum wage law with a minimum wage of €8.50 in 2015.
Die Linke has not only achieved a major electoral success, it is also experiencing an unprecedented influx of new members.
Particularly where there are few collective wage agreements, legal regulation of the general applicability of wage agreements, minimum conditions in terms of working hours and statutory holidays, on sick pay, but also on the provision and financing of pensions, health insurance, unemployment insurance or, currently, the basic income for citizens, are fundamental for the working and living conditions of employees and their families. This applies to social infrastructure as well: for affordable housing, education, health, transportation and social security, access to the arts, culture, climate protection, etc. Under a government led by Friedrich Merz that wants to give billions in tax breaks to the capitalist class, there will be fierce debates on these issues in the coming years — and thus on the central question of the distribution of social wealth. Die Linke has taken up these issues and pushed them into the political arena. At the same time, left-wing activists within the unions are campaigning for the politicization of union work, for going on the offensive in the broader political sphere, and for targeted mobilization around key political issues.
Connective Class Politics
As a result of neoliberal policies, the social situation of the working class is more fragmented and divided: there are those with temporary and permanent contracts, those with and without collective wage agreements, essential and precarious employees, temporary agency workers and permanent employees. Forms of precarious work such as being an independent contractor are on the rise.
Wage gaps have widened, for example between those working in various kinds of care and service work and those in industrial work. Migrants are at greater risk of precarious employment and being subject to dire working conditions. Millions of workers cannot plan their future, and any unexpected extra burden can put them in a practically impossible position. Capital exploits the division and stratification of the working class to weaken the unions. “Divide and conquer” has always been a fundamental instrument of power. To counter this, the approach of connective class politics pursues multiple related goals:
- Strengthening class consciousness on the basis of today’s class composition;
- strengthening an inclusive concept of class — migrants and refugees as part of the working class;
- instead of division and exclusion, identifying the unifying interests and demands of different groups of workers and forging alliances of solidarity;
- alliances with activists in social and ecological movements where interests overlap, e.g. with the tenants’ movement for affordable rents, with the climate movement for socially just climate protection, with welfare organizations against the closure of hospitals or welfare cuts;
- changing the balance of power in the fight for a socially just society based on solidarity; against authoritarian capitalism and fascist creep in party politics.
Whether we call this connective or organizational class politics is not so important. What is crucial is that leftists formulate these common interests as class interests and implement them in practical politics: that is, advocating for reduced working hours and expansion of employment as an alternative to the splitting of the unemployed and the employed, collective wage agreements for all, and new standard employment contracts instead of the division into essential and nonessential workers. What is important is to establish the connection between direct trade union struggles and social and ecological movements and to forge alliances of solidarity, thus broadening the scope of class struggle.
Strengthening the Party’s Roots in the Workplace and in Unions
Die Linke has not only achieved a major electoral success, it is also experiencing an unprecedented influx of new members. Many of them are waged workers or will become so in the future. Therefore, it is important to focus on the unions and develop an understanding of left-wing union politics. The comrades should join the unions, run for works and staff council positions, take on union roles, establish themselves as trusted figures, and in doing so become important players in strikes and union struggles.
The societal slide to the right, the menace of German and European rearmament, and the emergence of authoritarian capitalism, all threaten unions’ scope and opportunities for action. Unions are key players and allies in the fight against the far right. It is more than worrying that many union members vote for the AfD and that up to 38 percent of workers voted for this party.
It is imperative that we take a stand against looming rearmament and the beginning of a new arms race. Unions have little to gain, and an enormous amount to lose, from such developments.
Translated by Hunter Bolin and Sam Langer for Gegensatz Translation Collective.