Under pressure from the works council at ArcelorMittal Bremen GmbH (AMB), management and the council together have developed a ‘social charter’. It targets companies looking to sign service provisions contracts with the steel company or with one of its subsidiaries. The charter sits within the group’s agreement (Konzernbetriebsvereinbarung) that was implemented on July 1, 2014. The charter sets out rules over ‘social measures and good conduct’ that companies have to respect or risk losing their contract. Much research by the works council went into designing the charter. The research showed that the effective time worked by people employed under such contracts often exceeded the maximum legal time allowed.
Work hours oftentimes illegal. “At the start, management didn’t want to believe us”, explained Klaus Hering, President of the Works Council at ArcelorMittal Bremen GmbH to Planet Labor. During a meeting of personnel in 2012, the Works Council presented some alarming statistics concerning the working hours of those people employed by the outside companies providing services at the factory. The Works Council hammered home the numbers with a diagram showing that these people often worked up to 10 hours, or even 11 hours or even up to 12 hours or more a day.
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