Reiner Hoffmann speech to TUC Congress 2014

Address to Congress by the President of the German union federation DGB
07 September 2014, Liverpool

Dear Mohammad, Dear Frances, Dear Brothers and Sisters,

It is a pleasure and honour for me to speak at your congress. Let me convey to you the fraternal greetings and best wishes of the German Trade Union Movement.

Britain needs a pay rise! What an unmistakeably clear demand and clear signal to employers and government. The times of austerity-policies are over brothers and sisters.

The financial crash revealed the deep flaws in the economic model that many countries and also the UK has followed since the 1980s. Deregulation and unchallenged finance failed to deliver prosperity.

I know that people in Britain are currently facing the biggest squeeze on their incomes since Victorian times, and wages have fallen in real terms every year since 2010. Despite the fact that growth has returned to the UK-economy. But if this growth is to be stable and sustainable everyone needs to get a fairer share in the recovery.

One of the lessons some governments and certainly a lot of employers – not only in Britain - still need to learn is the following:

If you want to invest in the future of a country and its people, you need to invest in skilled employees, you need to invest in people, in their skills and potentials.

The first step in doing this is to pay them decent instead of pitiful wages!

Coming from one of the richest and most prosperous countries, it is still shameful to see that Germany has had a massive growth of the low wage sector over the years to such an extent, that one out of four is working for less than 9.50€ per hour.

The German Trade Union Movement struggled for ten years to finally get a statutory minimum wage of 8.50€ per hour. But this is not enough brothers and sisters, this is only a finishing line in the race to the bottom.

Therefore the DGB will support your campaign “Britain needs a pay rise” – German workers need one too.

Both our movements stand united in many respects. Both of us share the belief that building a fairer economy depends on giving workers a strong voice at their workplace.

What we call “Co-determination” in Germany is one way of giving workers citizen-rights in a company. The right to take part in decision-making processes lays the foundation for fair negotiations with the clear aim to reach a decent consensus. To use the words of the former German President Johannes Rau: “Codetermination makes a significant contribution to civilize capitalism.”

Acknowledging that there are quite some German owned companies that are important to Britain’s economic present and future, it should be self-evident that British workers should get the same right to seats on the board that German workers enjoy.

What proved to be a success for the German economy certainly doesn’t do any harm to the British economy. What is good enough for German workers can’t be bad for British workers.

Dear Frances, Dear Brothers and sisters,

Three days of Congress lie ahead of you. You will be debating good services and decent welfare, jobs, growth and a new economy.

Taking these debates to good and wise decisions will not only strengthen the TUC and therefore making the British workers’ voice even stronger. It will also be to the benefit of the whole trade union movement in Europe.

Let me finish with a cordial “Glück auf!” (Good luck)