Germany - Call for solidarity between civil servants and public employees - January 21, 2010

The DGB union confederation and the ver.di services union have joined in responding to claims that civil servants are a privileged group of workers. They point out that civil servants in the Berlin region, for example, are effectively paid no more than they were in 2003 as a result of cuts to Christmas and holiday payments. Far from being privileged, according to the DGB and ver.di, civil servants such as teachers have to move to stay in work while the emergency services are on-call at all hours of the day. Civil servants also have no right to strike. The key issue for confederation and union is that in the lead up to pay negotiations for federal and local government workers, there needs to be solidarity between civil servants and public employees and they should not be played off against each other.

English: http://www.epsu.org/cob/335;    

German: http://www.verdi.de/nachrichten/newsArchive?channel=nachrichten&id …

This article was published in the Collective Bargaining Newsletter, which presents up-to-date information on collective bargaining developments across Europe. It aims to facilitate information exchange between trade unions and to support the work of ETUC's collective bargaining committee. For more information, please contact the editor Maarten van Klaveren, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) M.vanKlaveren@uva.nl. You may find further information on the ETUI at www.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net. © ETUI aisbl, Brussels 2009. All rights reserved. The ETUI is not responsible for the content of external internet sites. The ETUI is financially supported by the European Community. The European Community is not responsible for any use made of the information contained in this news section.