Trade dispute: Post officials may use as strikebreakers – ZEIT ONLINE

defeat for ver.di in wage dispute with the post office. The Arbeitsgericht Bonn allows the use of civil servants on strike on items – if they work voluntarily there

Updated 26th May 2015 20:08 clock

Deutsche Post employees in a warning strike in front of the union headquarters in Hamburg | © Bodo Marks / dpa

The post may continue to work in the collective struggle with ver.di officials to replace striking employees. This was decided by the Arbeitsgericht Bonn and therefore rejected a complaint of the union back.

In warning strikes in April, the company had sent officials to bestreikte jobs. There had been about “voluntary” offsets, the Post had the works said then. Ver.di saw the officials as strikebreakers and wanted to forbid their use for bestreikte activities entirely. The union accuses the Post to have massively seconded particularly in Frankfurt am Main and Wiesbaden officials as strikebreakers. Officials in Germany have no right to strike.

However, the Bonn Court referred to a precedent of the Federal Constitutional Court of 1993. After that, only the “forcible” prohibited use of officials, but do not volunteer work, said the presiding judge
.

According to ver.di,

the court dropped because of the fundamental importance of the dispute appeal against his decision. The union reserved the right to appeal against the decision. A settlement proposal submitted by the court had rejected ver.di.

The Post said it had always pointed out that all applicable laws are complied with and would be tested in each individual case, whether an official should be used during an industrial action at another workplace.

In addition to the official, the Post also plans to use delivery man from Poland to Germany, to cushion the impact of the strikes. This was confirmed by a company spokeswoman said Tagesspiegel on Wednesday. “These are experienced delivery staff who are voluntarily in support in the Berlin area in use.” The volunteers from the neighboring country had been on the road in Berlin already during the Whitsun weekend.

The Polish temporary messengers are hired according to Tagesspiegel at the new DHL subsidiaries whose founding ver.di as a breach of contract called. The use of the helper is the union believes “unprecedented scandal”. It is a completely new strategy, “to subvert the labor dispute in their own country, which is expected to come even with the federal policy on interest,” said ver.di speaker January Jurczyk.

The strikes in the labor dispute continued, however. According to ver.di initially about 2,000 employees in several states participating in the strike. On Wednesday, several thousand employees will travel to the Annual General Meeting of Deutsche Post to Frankfurt-Höchst and protest in front of the gathering. In the round of collective bargaining, the union is demanding shorter working hours for about 140,000 public employees and 5.5 percent wage increase.