Германиядағы кәсіби одақтар: Verdi туралы мәліметтер

Trade union in Germany

Vereinte Dienstleistungsgewerkschaft (Verdi (stylized as ver. di; [ˈvɛʁdiː]); English: United Services Trade Union) is a German trade union based in Berlin, Germany. It was established on 19 March 2001 as the result of a merger of five individual unions and is a member of the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB). With around 1.9 million members, Verdi is the second largest German trade union after IG Metall. It currently employs around 3000 members of staff in Germany and has an annual income of approximately 454 million Euros obtained from membership subscriptions. The trade union is divided into 10 federal state districts and five divisions and is managed by a National Executive Board (Bundesvorstand) with nine members. Frank Bsirske was the chairman of Verdi from its founding in 2001 until September 2019, when Frank Werneke was elected.

Verdi's highest body is its National Congress (Bundeskongress), which convenes once every four years to stipulate the basic principles of the union policy and to elect and formally approve the actions of the National Executive Board and the Trade Union Council (Gewerkschaftsrat). The matrix system is designed to not only represent the organisation Verdi as a whole, but also the interests of the individual professions of its members. The equal treatment of men and women in all organisational units is stipulated in the Verdi Statute and has been a central topic of the trade union ever since it was first established.

Verdi is committed to using collective agreements to secure and shape working conditions for employees. In the past, Verdi argued for maintaining collective agreement unity on several occasions, claiming that it supported the assertiveness of staff and the acceptance of collective bargaining. Verdi rejected all attempts to change employees' right to strike and announced that it planned to take action against corresponding statutory limitations, even by taking cases to the German Federal Constitutional Court. Within the scope of its collective bargaining policy, Verdi particularly focuses on achieving equality between men and women. Gender mainstreaming additionally plays a role when it comes to the composition of the trade union's own executive board. Another objective of Verdi's collective bargaining policy is to bring wages and pensions in Germany's old and new federal states into line. Verdi's collective bargaining policy has above all attracted widespread media attention due to labour disputes in the public service. In 2006, the members of the trade union accepted a new collective agreement for the Public Service of the German Federal States after having previously gone on strike over a period of three months. The Marburger Bund chose to reject the result of the negotiations at the time, leading the media to report that it was "on a collision course" with Verdi. The collective bargaining association between the two trade unions had already been dissolved in the previous year. In 2007, Verdi and the German Civil Service Federation (DBB) launched an advertising campaign costing three million Euros with the motto of "Genug gespart" (Enough saved). The aim of the campaign was to drawn more attention to the work carried out by the public service in the run up to new collective agreement negotiations. After a wave of warning strikes and several rounds of negotiations, the parties called for conciliation in March 2008. Although this failed, Verdi ultimately agreed on a new collective agreement with the German Federal Government, the German federal states and local authorities. The trade union achieved a wage increase of eight percent, which some observers labelled a heavy burden for the public budgets. Verdi attracted a total of 50,000 new members during the trade dispute. It later managed to repeat that success in similar negotiations in 2018, with an agreement which provides for a cumulative 7.5 per cent increase in salaries over a period of 30 months and includes top ups and extra payments designed to make the public sector a more attractive employer. Notably, Verdi held a series of strikes at Deutsche Post in 2015 in a dispute over pay and plans for a new parcel division. Those walkouts, one of which lasted four weeks, cost the firm 100 million euros at the time. In 2023, airports in the major German cities of Berlin, Bremen, and Hamburg all announced that no flights would depart from the airport on 13 March due to a strike for security staff organized by Verdi over a dispute in pay.

Verdi runs a number of educational centres throughout Germany, all of which aim to support the exchange of experiences and expertise between its members. These services are particularly, but not exclusively, aimed at active works councils. The educational centres are also used as venues for job related and general further education programmes on a wide variety of different topics. Verdi currently runs educational centres in Berlin, Bielefeld, Brannenburg, Gladenbach, Mosbach, Naumburg (Hesse), Saalfeld, Undeloh and Walsrode. It closed its site in Hörste at the end of 2015 and the building is now being used as a home for refugees. Alongside the educational centres specified above, there are also a number of independent ver. di educational institutes that were taken over from the former German Union of Salaried Employees (DAG) in several federal states. ver. di Bildung + Beratung Gemeinnützige GmbH
ver. di Bildung + Beratung, known as ver. di b+b for short, is Verdi's educational institution that operates throughout Germany. It is responsible for running seminars for statutory special interest groups, namely works council, staff council and Youth and Trainees Council (JAV) members, as well as members of representative bodies for disabled employees and employee representation committees. ver. di b+b has been examined and certified by the independent institute for "Learner Oriented Quality Testing in Further Education and Training" (Lernerorientierte Qualitätstestierung in der Weiterbildung). ver. di b+b also works as a book publishing house and publishes guidebooks, work guides and legal commentaries. The company's head office is based in the German city of Düsseldorf. ver. di b+b is represented in 25 locations throughout Germany. Its subsidiary "Rat. geber GmbH" advises boards and committees and runs the public bookshop at Verdi's administrative headquarters in Berlin.

Verdi is a member of multiple global union federations such as the UNI Global Union, the International Transport Workers' Federation, the International Graphical Federation, the International Federation of Journalists and the Public Services International. It is also a member of the European Movement Germany (EBD) and a partner of the Tax Justice Network.

Verdi publishes a multitude of different magazines for its members. All members receive the magazine "Verdi Publik" for free eight times a year. Other Verdi publications include the media policy magazine "M – Menschen Machen Medien" (M – People Make Media), which, like the publications "Druck + Papier" (Printing + Paper) and "Kunst + Kultur" (Art + Culture), is published by the National Executive Board and the Media, Art and Industry division.

Ever since Verdi was first founded, its complex organisational structure has repeatedly been the subject of criticism: In as early as 2001, for example, the German daily newspaper Der Tagesspiegel warned readers about the threat of "losses and inefficiency due to friction". The Sunday newspaper Welt am Sonntag also reported on "frictions and budget disputes" within the trade union. The daily newspaper Die Tageszeitung claimed that Verdi's matrix model was "so complicated" that even full time Verdi employees "had a hard time" explaining it. The weekly news magazine Stern also reported on Verdi, stating that its divisions, state associations and districts "worked against each other more than with one another". On top of these media reports, Verdi's organisation structure also received criticism from within its own ranks time and time again, so much so that a response to this criticism was factored into the "Perspektive 2015" initiative. Critics also accused Verdi of taking a strong stand in favour of employee rights and fair wages in public but not aiming to achieve these goals on an internal level. One example was the canteen at Verdi's headquarters in Berlin, which was operated by the international catering company Sodexo. As is typical of the industry, Sodexo does not conclude industrial collective agreements but instead uses collective agreements on a company level. According to information presented by the Neue Ruhr Zeitung newspaper, the wages of employees at the German Employee Academy (DAA), which is closely linked to Verdi, were below the rate that Verdi had negotiated with rivals such as the charitable organisations de or Diakonie. Verdi's actions during strikes are also constantly the subject of criticism, with some reports claiming that in individual cases, employees have been forced to strike, which the trade union denied. Critics have also labelled several strikes organised by Verdi as out of proportion.