The recent election in Germany showed that trade unions are no longer an overtly progressive force nor are they a safeguard against German Neo-Nazis. 

Instead, in the 2025 election, trade union members favored the conservative CDU as well as the neo-fascist AfD. By contrast, the traditional home of trade union members in Germany – the social-democratic SPD – was only their third choice.

Traditionally, and this applies to up and down the country, virtually all major German trade unions are led by members with an SPD party membership card. 

This includes Germany’s peak body, the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) with 5.7 million members. 

Yet, there are exceptions, for example, the former Verdi – a public service union – head Frank Bsirske. He was a member of Germany’s last parliament – the Bundestag – as a Green MP, Germany’s environmentalist party. 

In Berlin, the head of the powerful metalworkers’ union – IG Metall – Jan Otto also has a Green membership card. 

Despite a handful of exceptions, it was always possible to rely on the fact that the social-democratic SPD and its members led Germany’s trade unions. Meanwhile, unionized SPD voters tended to represent the votes of the working class at the ballot box. 

With the recent federal election in Germany, there can no longer be any talk of a traditional “SPD–union” link. For the first time in Germany’s post-Nazi history, the SPD has been falling behind the conservative CDU in terms of the support of union members. 

This is not surprising given the sustained anti-coalition campaign run by virtually all of Germany’s non-tabloid quality media. The government image the media presents matter.

Unsurprisingly, a whopping 23.2% of trade unionists voted for the conservatives rather than the progressive SPD. So much worse is the fact that a monstrous 21.8% of unionized workers opted for the neo-fascist AfD. 

In short, only 1/5 of union members voted for the traditional home of the trade unions – the social-democratic SPD. Slightly less than half voted for the petty-bourgeois-neo-fascist bloc of CDU+AfD.

Beyond that, the environmentalist The Greens received 10.7% of support from the union members; the progressive and semi-socialist The Left got 10%, while the pro-Putin BSW received 6.3% of support from trade union members. 

Compared to Germany’s overall election result, it turns out that the SPD gained 4.2% more support from trade union members than from those who are not in a trade union. 

Still, the neo-fascism AfD received 1% more votes from trade unionists than from non-union members. The latter is particularly insulting to the trade union movement and to democracy. 

Worse, some of these results and trends seem to replicate the final Weimar years of late-1920s and early 1930s. At that time, Hitler’s Nazis got “some” support from union members but his Nazi-party was in no way a working class party.

In the 2025 federal election, the neo-fascist AfD got further ahead among trade union members compared to the average voter and among those voters who do not belong to a trade union. This is a bitter defeat for trade unions. 

On the contrary, a public polling held “after” Germany’s 2021 federal election and after several recent state elections, pointed to the same phenomenon: trade union members no longer support their traditional political party, the SPD. 

While in West-Germany, 19.7% of trade unionists and 17.3% of non-members voted for the neo-fascist AfD, in East-Germany, the figure was 34% for trade union members and 35.7% for non-members. In other words, East-German trade union members are twice as likely to vote for the neo-fascist AfD compared to the West.

Sadly, this cannot obscure the fact that the neo-fascist AfD became “the strongest force” among trade unionists in East-Germany – by far. Worse, at 19.9%, the gap to the second-placed CDU is larger than for non-members (17.5%). 

Just when one thinks it cannot get worse, it does. In addition to all that, there is a suggestion that even the most direct influence of a trade union on workers, hardly changes anything in electoral behavior. 

A study conducted at the end of 2023, stated that the presence of trade unions, works councils and even the positive effects of collective bargaining agreements have little influence on the electoral choices of worker.

What happens at work appears to be rather disconnected from what happens in politics. In one survey, 41% of AfD voters stated that they were not represented by a works council. Among all other voters, this proportion was 35%.

Most surprisingly, 53% of AfD voters said they would benefit from a collective bargaining agreement. For all other parties, this figure was 57 percent. 

In other words, about half of all AfD-voting workers know that collective bargaining benefits them but still vote for a neo-fascist party that seeks to destroy trade unions and end collective bargaining.

At the same time, right-wing sham “unions” and AfD-run works councils have started to undermine established industrial relations structures. In Germany’s most neo-fascist state of far-east Saxony, AfD politicians doubled their numbers in recent works council election at Volkswagen.

Again, in Germany’s most neo-fascist state of Saxony, in this state-wide election held on 1^st September 2024, 29.2% of trade union members voted for the conservative CDU. Even more – a massive 31% – voted for the neo-fascist AfD. 

In that state, a measly 8.2% voted for the traditional political party of the union movement, the social-democratic SPD. And it got worse. 27.6% of workers who are trade union members voted for the conservative CDU. 

Still worst is the fact that a huge 40.3% of workers who are trade union members voted for the neo-fascist AfD in that region. 

In other words, 2/5 of all unionized workers voted for a political party that is set to destroy trade unions. This, too, is not new: millions voted for Hitler in 1932. By 1942, millions were dead. 

Another figure who is set to diminish the role of trade unions, is the overpaid corporate lobbyist and leader of Germany’s conservative, Friedrich Merz. 

Recently, his wife suggested that the multimillionaire should wait until after the election to buy a new private jet. While the corporate press celebrated him as the winner of the election, in reality, it was the neo-fascist AfD that won.

Germany’s neo-fascists became Germany’s second strongest force increasing its share by 10.4%. The AfD has basically doubled its result compared to 2021. The neo-fascists will have 152 seats in Germany’s parliament – up by 69 seats.

Worse, the neo-fascists won in 46 constituencies. They also won a whopping 21 constituencies from the social-democratic SPD marking an SPD-to-Nazi shift. 

On a positive note, the Swiss (she tends to reside in Switzerland) lesbian and AfD deputy-Führer – Alice Weidel – lost her own constituency to Germany’s conservatives. 

The clueless painter, ex-CDU stooge, and now official AfD-Führer Tino Chrupalla won his Görlitz constituency with 48.9% in the East-German state of Saxony. 

Bordering Poland and being locked deep in Dunkeldeutschland, almost 50% of Görlitz’s locals support neo-fascism. 

Overall, the neo-fascist AfD performed – and worse, continues to perform – significantly better in East-Germany than in West-Germany. In East-Germany, the neo-fascists are the strongest force with 32.0% – increasing its voter share by 12.7%. In West-Germany, it got 18.0% – up by 9.8%. 

Neo-fascism is also strong in East-Germany’s Thuringia (38.6%) – home of the AfD’s “behind-the-scene” Führer: Björn Höcke. The AfD got its worst result in Hamburg (10.9%). Even Adolf Hitler hated the working class’ Red Hamburg.

In quite a number of East-German constituencies, the neo-fascist AfD received above 46%. In one constituency – East-Germany’s Börde-Salzlandkreis – the neo-fascist AfD increased its voter share by around 20%. By contrast, the neo-fascist AfD did worse in social-democratic Cologne (6.3%) and nearby Münster (6.9%) – both in West-Germany.

All in all, the neo-fascist AfD benefited from an engineered fragmentation, well-crafted polarizations and the online mobilization based on hate, xenophobia, and racism. 

Worse, the neo-fascist AfD benefits the most from former non-voters by a very large margin of all parties – 1,810,000 more people voted for it. 

Meanwhile, most of the AfD’s electorate remains largely isolated from arguments in political discourse and is strongly focused on communication within the AfD itself. Its voters and supporters live in filter bubbles.

As a result, their far-right ideology-based attachment to the AfD is strongly pronounced. Supporters of neo-fascism are united in the rejection of democratic parties, a massive dissatisfaction with politics and politicians and a rejection of any social change. 

As much as the neo-fascists like to present themselves as a protest movement, AfD supporters are no longer protest voters. Instead, they vote for the neo-fascist AfD mostly out of conviction. They are committed Neo-Nazis. 

This means, they will follow their Führer to the end fighting against democracy, pluralism, multiculturalism, individualism, feminism, freedom, progressives, democratic political parties, and trade unions.

If German trade unions want to fight off these attacks, a realignment is needed that goes beyond paying lip service to fighting the right – within and outside trade union membership.

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