On strike

Hannover is going on strike.
Last Wednesday, Hannover city employees went on strike. There was no public transit for the day, and public kindergartens, libraries, swimming pools were closed, and no one came to pick up the trash. Everyone's back to work, but it's not over yet. As negotiations continue, the city employees' union is not backing off. They are demanding higher wages and more vacation time (guaranteed 30 paid vacation days per year). Since no agreement has been reached, they are planning a two day strike for this week.
If you want to get anywhere in town on Tuesday or Wednesday, you'd better have your own wheels.

For a not-so-big city, Hannover has a powerful transit system. There are 12 tram lines and 40 bus lines, moving 125 million passengers per year. That makes Hannover transit busier than the San Francisco BART or the Amsterdam Metro, and roughly equal in ridership to the Kyoto subway system. Not bad for Germany's 12th largest city. When the trains and buses stop moving, it throws our usually orderly town into chaos.

It's not only the Hannover employees who are pushing a for better contract. Teachers on both sides of the ocean are also standing up for their rights.

Back in Saint Paul, the state's largest teachers' union narrowly avoided a strike in February, after nine months of negotiation and an overnight session with a state mediator. The St. Paul Federation of Teachers fought for smaller class sizes, an increase in teachers' salaries, and keeping jobs for school librarians, nurses and counselors. They finally reached an agreement with the district, negotiating an 8% pay increase and a maximum class size of 27 for grades 1-3 and 37 for high schoolers.

At the International School Hannover Region, where classes average around 18 students, teachers and staff are defending their right to have milk. There was an employee outcry recently, as the management decided it would no longer purchase milk for staff to put in their coffee. Reasons included the cost of the milk and the fact that sometimes nobody puts it back in the refrigerator. Offering milk was, therefore, wasteful and unhygenic. Instead, the school would replace it with non-dairy creamer powder. And if financial and hygienic difficulties continue, the school might even stop buying the coffee. This announcement brought on immediate protest from the staff.

They complained to the Betriebsrat, which is the workers' council. Most German workplaces have one; it's a board of employees representative who negotiate with management. They defend employee rights in the event of disciplinary action, hiring, contract disputes or milk deprivation.

The Betriebsrat stood up to management, pointing out the importance of real milk to the school working conditions. After deliberations, a decision was reached. The school will continue to buy milk until the end of the school year, on a probationary basis. Staff must keep the milk in the fridge, use it only for coffee and tea and not for their cereal etc, and they should not open any new cartons of milk when one is already in use. If conditions improve, there will be no need for non-dairy creamer. The labor crisis has been averted for now.

Don't put those picket signs down yet. The milk is back only on a trial basis. It's important that we, as fellow laborers, stand up for the rights of the city employees who have even more serious workplace issues. But that probably won't happen on Tuesday or Wednesday. There trams won't be running, so we might as well call in sick.