Fair mobility – actively promoting free movement for workers in a social and fair manner
Newsletter
February 2015
No. 2
Editorial
Guest article by Roman Zitzelsberger
Fair Mobility has been working as a nationwide project network for over four years, and now employs eleven advisors at six locations in Germany. The demand for advisory services has since grown to the point that we find ourselves forced more and more often to put on the brakes and turn people seeking assistance away. Fortunately, several German states have established advisory centres specialized in labour issues to serve workers from Central and Eastern Europe. Hessen and Schleswig-Holstein have now followed Berlin, Hamburg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony and Rhineland-Palatinate by taking this step. Together, Fair Mobility and the advisory centres funded by individual states form a nationwide counselling network. The next few months will tell whether we can maintain this network. In his article, Roman Zitzelsberger, Regional Director of IG-Metall Baden-Württemberg, discusses the practice of wage dumping on the basis of service contracts – a recurring issue with which we will be closely concerned for some time to come. With reference to two sample cases, we illustrate the unique blend of practices that is often involved in the posting of employees from abroad under the terms of service contracts. In a third example we discuss cases in which qualified nursing personnel are lured from abroad with contractual agreements that – expressed in cautious terms – place them at a disadvantage. In addition, we also take a look at case volumes at our advisory centres. As mentioned above, the cup is full! On the last page we document the current status of the European Fair Mobility Network, an EU project initiated as a complement to Fair Mobility and one in which we recognize a potential for expansion.
Outsourcing for the purposes of wage dumping and circumventing collective bargaining agreements must stop Production structures in all major branches of industry have changed fundamentally over the past several decades. These changes are the result of agency contracting Roman Zitzelsberger, and the outsourcRegional Director, ing of tasks under IG-Metall service contracts. Baden Württemberg Whereas the development, production and sale of products were organized by and within a single enterprise 30 years ago, a number of different suppliers and service providers are involved within a given value chain today. Presumably, the goal is to reduce permanent staffs drastically while cutting costs. All large corporate groups are situated in or near industrial estates in which services are rendered at each company’s facilities. This begins with IT and high-end development services and extends to maintenance, logistics and pre-assembly work performed directly at the plant. It is important to make distinctions here. Service contracts are not necessarily a bad thing. We trade unions don’t repair our automobiles ourselves and we don’t require car manufacturers to operate cafeterias that serve food they have produced themselves. Problems arise, however, when service contracts are used for the wrong purposes – when permanent jobs are replaced, labour laws circumvented and minimum collective bargaining standards are undermined. These are undoubtedly the cases with which the advisory centres established under the Fair Mobility project are concerned. And in these cases, the fact that many foreign work-
ers have insufficient German language skills is quite obviously exploited. That is inhuman in itself – but the use of “cheap” labour provided by agency workers for the production of highpriced products from the “Musterländle” (the “model state” of Baden-Württemberg) is even worse. It is difficult to say how often such abuses occur. According to surveys conducted by IG-Metall, roughly one-third of all metalworking and electrical technology firms award service contracts. Works council spokespersons are convinced that one out of every three people employed under such service contracts replaces one permanent employee. It is also a fact that, as a rule, working conditions are worse for nearly all agency workers (and not only those from other countries). Many of them are not covered by collective bargaining agreements; they are not represented by works councils; they are not entitled to paid leave, and receive no pay for overtime. And that applies not only to unskilled work. The position of IG-Metall is clear: Outsourcing for the purposes of wage dumping and circumventing collective bargaining agreement must be prohibited. This issue should be addressed by the legislature. The rights of works councils to information and codetermination must be strengthened. And last but not least, regulatory measures must be improved. The Illicit Labour Task Force of the Customs Service must be tasked with monitoring service-contract abuse, and personnel and financial resources must be increased accordingly. In addition, we need a complaint-management system that enables employees, trade unions and works councils to report evidence of abuse. The work of the Fair Mobility project can surely serve as a model in this context.
Project Fair Mobility www.faire-mobilitaet.de