Unified Service Sector Union (ver.di) created

After a merger process between five trade unions lasting more than three years, Germany's new Unified Service Sector Union (ver.di) was created at a founding congress in Berlin on 19-21 March 2001. With nearly 3 million members, ver.di is thought to be the largest union in the democratic world.

On 19-21 March 2001, five trade unions merged to create the Unified Service Sector Union (Vereinigte Dienstleistungsgewerkschaft, ver.di) at a founding congress held in Berlin. The unions involved were:

• the Public Services, Transport and Traffic Union (Gewerkschaft Öffentliche Dienste, Transport und Verkehr, ÖTV);
• the German White-Collar Workers' Union (Deutsche Angestellten-Gewerkschaft, DAG);
• the Postal Workers' Union (Deutsche Postgewerkschaft, DPG);
• the Commerce, Banking and Insurance Union (Gewerkschaft Handel Banken und Versicherungen, HBV); and
• the Media Union (IG Medien).

Background

The creation of ver.di concluded a process which had started in October 1997 when the presidents of six service sector unions – the five unions mentioned above plus the Teaching and Science Union (Gewerkschaft Erziehung und Wissenschaft, GEW) - signed a joint declaration in which they expressed their common aim to reorganise trade union structures in the service sector (DE9803256N). While GEW abandoned the joint initiative in July 1998 (DE9807169N), the five other unions continued the merger process which enabled them in November 1999 to adopt a joint framework paper, approved by the congresses of each union, outlining the basic structures of the new union, and to set spring 2001 as the date for ver.di's establishment (DE9911225F).

In November 2000, the process suffered a setback at the ÖTV congress (DE0011292F), when the formation of ver.di was not approved by the required 80% of congress votes, receiving only 65% support. While a great majority of the delegates at extraordinary congresses of the other four unions voted in favour of the further development of ver.di (DE0012295N), the fact that the merger did not immediately receive the full support of the membership of ÖTV - which, with nearly 1.5 million members, was the largest union in the merger process - raised concerns in some circles that the process might fail. However, immediately before the founding congress on 19-21 March 2001, all five unions held extraordinary congresses in order finally to decide on their own dissolution and the creation of ver.di. At all five congresses, a very substantial majority of delegates voted in favour of ver.di - see table 1 below.

Source: ver.di.

Members and organisational structure

With nearly 3 million members - see table 2 below - ver.di is able to claim to be the largest trade union in the "free" democratic world. Women make up about 49.5% of the membership.

Source: ver.di.

Ver.di represents members in more than 1,000 professions and with different employment statuses - see table 3 below.

Source: ver.di.

Ver.di is structured as a "matrix" organisation with a vertical and horizontal structure. The vertical structure follows geographical lines, with a central organisation at national level, located in Berlin, and further organisations at regional, district and local level. The horizontal structure involves 13 "sectoral areas" (Fachbereiche) - see table 4 below. Each sectoral area will have its own suborganisation at the various geographical levels, as well as at establishment level. In addition to the geographical and sectoral structures, there will be special departments for female members, young members, older members, blue-collar workers, civil servants, "master" craftspersons, technical engineers, freelancers and unemployed members. There is also the opportunity to form optional working groups for other groups of employees such as migrant workers, workers with disabilities or gay and lesbian workers. Although the main decisions were taken at the founding congress, the integration is not completely finished yet. In the near future, ver.di is to take some more practical measures to give the new union its final shape.

The largest participating union, ÖTV had the right to propose a candidate for president of ver.di and proposed its last president, Frank Bsirske, who was voted in by a large majority of delegates at the founding congress. The four vice-presidents, Margret Mönig-Raane, Gerd Herzberg, Gerd Nies and Michael Sommer, were proposed by the other four unions. In addition to the president and vice-presidents, the board of ver.di has 14 other members. Apart from Beate Eggert, who is responsible for the ver.di personnel department, the other 13 members are each responsible for one of the sectoral areas - see table 4 below.

Source: ver.di.

Rationale and aims

The five trade unions involved explain the foundation of ver.di as a reaction to the change from an industrial society towards a more service-oriented, "knowledge-based society" and the emergence of new industries and professions, with traditional areas of employment losing importance. The service sector unions expect that ver.di will successfully coordinate and influence these processes to the benefit of workers and that it will exert greater influence on collective bargaining and politics. Within the trade union movement, the creation of ver.di brings an end to the previous situation of competition between individual unions in services and brings together union activities in the public and private sectors. In addition, the members of DAG will once again be members of the German Trade Union Federation (Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund, DGB), thus ending a 50-year split within the German trade union movement. Another reason for the foundation of ver.di is the declining number of union members (DE0103210N), which also affects the five participating unions - they now have 2.6% fewer members on average than they did in 1999. As organising employees in the service sector has been a central problem for unions, the foundation of ver.di is also an attempt to become more attractive to those employees who seem to associate unions with industrial, blue-collar work.

One of the main aims of the merger is to achieve an integrated trade union policy for the entire service sector, including a common collective bargaining policy. The five former unions were responsible only for individual parts of the service sector and were not in a position to reach unified collective agreements. With a coordinated collective bargaining policy, ver.di will strive to achieve more effective results and combat "wage dumping" and the tendency of companies to drop out of the collective agreement system.

"Gender democracy" will be a central issue for ver.di's policies. As women make up not only nearly half of its membership but also the majority of employees in the service sector, ver.di aims to include gender aspects in its collective bargaining policies. Ver.di intends to rise to this challenge by creating non-discriminatory jobs for women and men on an equal footing and with equal rights. It hopes thereby to attain the objective of achieving various types of social protection for forms of employment which do not fit into the employment relationship, by promoting new working time arrangements which allow a more equal distribution of paid and unpaid work, and by fighting against the wage gap between men and women.

On 24 March 2001, ver.di launched a promotional campaign with the motto Wegen Umbau geöffnet ("Opened because of reorganisation"). ln the period up until autumn 2001, ver.di will run an advertising campaign showing the variety of service sector professions which are now organised by the new union.

Commentary

There are high hopes in many quarters that the establishment of the ver.di will breathe new life into the German trade union movement. Ver.di clearly intends to face up to the changing situation in the world of work, as outlined above, and sees itself – according to its president, Mr Bsirske, in his statement of principles– as a union for people in low-paid jobs or on fixed-term contracts, for teleworkers, for unemployed people and the self-employed. This means that ver.di finds itself facing a daunting task with respect to its ambition of representing highly divergent interests in the extremely heterogeneous group of occupations comprising the service sector. To fulfil this ambitious task, a spirit of solidarity will have to be cultivated and the various professional groups represented in ver.di will have to agree on a joint policy with regard to the representation of their interests. Even if ver.di only partially succeeds in this endeavour and also opens itself up to fresh alliances and new forms of action when organising activities to protect its members' interests, then the hopes that ver.di will revitalise the trade union movement as a social movement will turn out to be more than justified. (Alexandra Scheele, Institute for Economic and Social Research, WSI)