A major conflict is currently taking place in the cooperative banking industry in Germany. Several hundreds of DZ Bank employees took part, on November 5, in warning strikes in Frankfurt, Hanover, Stuttgart and Munich, to ask for a new “company collective agreement” between the bank’s management and the Verdi services union. The union blames the Employers’ Association for Cooperative Banks (AVR) for terminating all the collective agreements they signed together for cooperative banks, DZ Bank included, and for signing, instead, much less advantageous collective agreements with two small “compliant” unions. As a consequence, Verdi, whose membership increased after the agreements were terminated, now intends to fight to get a “company collective agreement” for DZ Bank employees, which the management refuses. This dispute sheds new light over the German collective agreements system, which translates into more conflicts at company level. (Ref. 130684)
All collective agreements signed with Verdi terminated. With over 28,000 employees, DZ Bank, whose headquarters are located in Frankfurt, is the 4th largest bank in Germany. As the “central bank” of cooperative banks (Volks- und Raiffeisenbanken), its primary task is to support the activity of all mutual banks. According to Beate Mensch, member of Verdi’s management, there’s a “huge gap” between, on the one hand, the values advocated by the mutual banks (“equity, solidarity, team spirit”) and their good image in the public opinion and, on the other, the way they treat their employees.
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