On the overall balance sheet of industrial actions and strikes in 2023, it has been a rather unusual year for German unions. The sheer number of industrial actions moved Germany up on the international scale where Germany usually takes a “lower midfield” position.

Compared to the past two decades, 2023 was a conflict-intensive year for Germany’s rather well-oiled industrial relations system. Both the number of industrial disputes and the number of free working days gained because of strikes had increased significantly compared to the year 2022.

Important and highly publicized labor disputes dragged on for months – with some of them persisting well into the year 2024.

Nevertheless, both the number of strike participants and the number of working days without actually having to work remained below the peak of the strike-intensive year 2015. Yet, some years in the last decade have been above-average in terms of strikes.

Given what happened in 2023, there is a reasonably high probability that 2024 will also be a dispute-intensive year.

However, it is still an open question whether the intensity of strikes in the past year will be exceeded. Much will depend on how collective bargaining in Germany’s powerful metal and electrical industry will pan out this autumn.

In countries such as Belgium, France, Finland, Canada and Denmark, for example, the number of industrial actions is several times higher compared to Germany.

For example, there were 103 working days without having to work per 1,000 employees per year in Belgium, while there were 83 in Canada and 53 in Denmark per same number of employees. In Germany, however, there were a measly 18 – this number is way too low in comparison.

Because of capitalism’s exceptionally high inflation of up to 7% in recent years and the resulting real wage losses for workers, these two factors almost determined a particularly high level of conflicts. These industrial conflicts led to weeks of tensed collective bargaining negotiations during the year 2023.

At the core of the years 2022 and 2023 was the question, how should the costs of inflation to labor – that was caused by capital, not labor – be distributed between capital and labor? Luckily Germany’s demographic development and the resulting shortage of workers had been strengthening the collective bargaining position of employees.

One study identified 312 industrial disputes in 2023 – 87 more than in 2022. And about 1.5 million working days (exactly: 1,527,000) without work were gained by workers collectively – more than twice as many “workers’ holidays” (strike days) as in 2022.

On the other hand, the development of workers’ participation in strikes paints a somewhat different picture. While a total of 857,000 workers participated in strikes in 2023, there had been around 930,000 in 2022.

By comparison, in the year 2015 – considered as the most intense year for industrial actions since 2006 – more than 1.13 million workers went on strike.

And across the country, there were two million working days without work brought about by all of the 135 strikes and industrial actions that had occurred.

Yet, the level of industrial actions was even higher in the mid-1970s and 1980s. The fact that Germany was nevertheless perceived by the corporate media as a “strike republic”, given these numbers, they were totally wrong.

Nevertheless, never let the facts get into the way of a good story – as the saying goes – particularly when the story is spun by the corporate media. In short, Germany was not overwhelmed by strikes as the media pretended it to be.

The distorted and perhaps even wrong picture presented by the media in 2023, and in the first half of 2024, might have also occurred because the effects of several labor disputes were directly felt in the everyday life.

There were clashes in the public service, in local transport, at airports, at the postal service, and the railway. On those, corporate media likes to focus on the impact of strikes on the public rather than the reason for the strikes, the legitimate demands of workers, and the plight of workers.

However, the extent to which collective bargaining is conflictual never depended solely on trade unions. The reason that there are strikes in the first place has something to do with bosses, companies and, obviously, capitalism.

Yet, in 2023, there was also a determination and willingness to compromise on the part of workers. Unfortunately, the same cannot always be said about bosses and employers.

In 2022 and 2023, the tenacious attitudes of Germany’s employers had contributed significantly to the “labor-vs.-capital” escalation in 2023, and in the first half of 2024. This also shaped some major collective bargaining negotiations that were less seen in the media spotlight, such as, for example:

• the labor dispute in the retail trade industry that has been going on for over thirteen months and,
• the strikes in the construction industry that was provoked by the employers’ refusal to accept the result of an arbitration.

The same applies to a rather large number of disputes over enterprise bargaining. These disputes – often rather smaller and limited to individual companies – accounted for the vast majority of industrial disputes in 2023.

In some of these cases, the trade union’s goal was to persuade companies to join Germany’s existing industry collective regimes. Not infrequently, strikes occurred to achieve a collective agreement for workers.

Perhaps the Danish wind turbine manufacturer Vestas is a prominent example of this. A collective agreement was reached for the first time only after a whopping 123 days of being on strike.

Similarly, industrial disputes at the Chinese-owned scrap and recycling company SRW Metalfloat in Germany’s most right-wing state – located in the former East-Germany’s “Saxony” – lasted even longer: 180 days. Corporate managers reacted to work stoppages with lockouts.

This level of escalation has hardly been practiced in Germany for decades. Despite this, the industrial dispute ended in May 2024 “without” a collective agreement. Workers had lost the fight.

In the year 2023, collective bargaining faced special challenges. It should come as a no surprise that in times of high inflation, workers have the right to limit real wage losses.

On the whole, wage increases through strikes delivered positive macroeconomic outcomes through private households’ increased consumption. This is a classical contradiction to capitalism. Consumer capitalism depends on high wages and disposable income while companies seek the lowest wage possible.

Even though some of Germany’s recent industrial disputes might have temporarily inconvenienced the everyday life of some people, the past 1½ years have shown that Germany’s collective bargaining system works.

Nonetheless, and almost self-evidently, corporate bosses have continued to reissue their usual demands to restrict the right to strike. Yet, the high level of workers’ participation in strikes is a positive sign that more employees are getting involved in trade unions again.

Such a commitment promotes self-confidence and the ability to positively influence one’s own working life and living conditions. This, in turn, also strengthens democracy.

Meanwhile, demands to restrict Germany’s right to strike are highly baffling from a constitutional point of view as the right to strike is enshrined in Germany’s constitution. Besides, it would move Germany into the wrong political and economic direction as Germany’s strikes in 2023 have shown.

In 2023, a series of work stoppages underlined the fact that the trade union “Ver.di”, for example, was sticking to its demand for more collective agreements.

As practiced in previous years, one of Ver.di’s key focus on strikes was again on bargaining at Amazon. Amazon’s discount days called “Prime Day” were selected because it was the highest sales day of the year – apart from “Black Friday”.

On “Prime Day” in 2023 (mid-July), workers at all ten of Amazon’s so-called “distribution centers” (managerial talk for “warehouses”) downed their tools and stopped work. At Amazon’s second “Prime Day” (in October), there were also work stoppages in numerous Amazon locations.

On November 24, 2023, Amazon’s Black Friday day, Ver.di workers at five major Amazon warehouses – in Koblenz, Leipzig, Rheinberg, Dortmund, and Bad Hersfeld – organized an all-day strike.

Shortly before Christmas, there were additional work stoppages at some locations. Amazon’s Black Friday also became an established protest day – internationally.

As part of the “Make Amazon Pay” union campaign that was coordinated by the international trade union UNI Global, protests and strikes at Amazon were held for the fourth time in more than 30 countries in 2023.

In Europe alone, thousands of Amazon employees went on strike in Germany, France, Spain, Great Britain, and Italy.

Although Amazon has joined the bosses’ employers association called “Handelsverband Deutschland” (HDE) in 2020. Yet the HDE-membership is an OT-membership.

These are members of the employer federation HDE “ohne Tarifvertrag (OT)”, i.e. companies without a collective bargaining agreement with trade unions. OT does not bind the online retailer to the collective agreement of the HDE.

Worse, Amazon still rejects trade unions and collective agreements – largely for ideological reasons.

Still worse, Amazon also takes a hostile attitude towards Germany’s legally enshrined works councils. Despite Amazon’s recalcitrance, these works councils now exist at almost all Amazon locations.

In the former East-German right-wing state of Saxony, three Amazon works council members were terminated at the beginning of 2023. Amazon did this because of their trade union involvement.

In other cases, the Amazon corporation did not extend the contracts of some works council members with fixed-term contracts. Despite ongoing mobilizations and work stoppages, the power and resources of the union were still not sufficient to dissuade Amazon from its anti-union and anti-works council stance.

In addition to the strikes and the industrial disputes at Germany’s railways and in the retail sector that were reaching deep into the spring of 2024, a large number of other work stoppages in every different industries indicate that 2024 will also be more of a labor-intensive year.

As a result of wage increases, Germany’s unions will achieve full alignment of wages and salaries in Eastern and Western parts of Germany by April 2026. This will end decades of inequality between Germany’s western and eastern parts.

In January 2024, there were strikes in Germany’s aviation again. There were also strikes in some of Germany’s states public transport, where the Ver.di union sought improved wages and improvement of working conditions. Wage disputes were accompanied by strikes at Deutsche Telekom as well as the Postbank – owned by Deutsche Bank.

While a collective bargaining agreement was reached at Deutsche Telekom in April, eventually, Postbank employees, too, reached a collective bargaining agreement.

Meanwhile, Germany’s chemical workers’ union “IG-BCE” expanded its “strategic options” to organize more strikes. However, this does not “automatically” mean that there will be more strikes in the chemical industry in 2024.

In the end, the outcome of industrial actions in the year 2023, might easily mean that 2024 will look like another year of strikes in Germany. Of importance will be the upcoming collective bargaining in Germany’s metal and electrical industry scheduled for autumn of 2024.

Collective bargaining negotiations have been running since April 2024. In other words, the second half of 2024 is likely to continue to see more strikes and industrial actions.

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Born between Castle Frankenstein and the place where Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, Thomas Klikauer (PhD) is the author of 990 publications, including 15 books.

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