The Merkel Government in Germany Has More Than Enough Challenges

A small sample of the goings-on in Germany getting almost no attention in the U.S.:

• Arbitrator Sought to End Germany Strike — “German authorities and a labor union said Tuesday they were bringing in arbitrators to help end a five-week strike by public workers protesting plans to make them work longer.”Yeah, 90 minutes a week:
  

  Ver.di launched Germany’s biggest public service stoppage in 14 years on Feb. 6, staging brief strikes in most of the country’s 16 states.

  The dispute has left mounds of garbage piled up in some places, and has forced hospitals to cancel non-urgent operations. Still, not all workers have walked out simultaneously, limiting disruption.

  Local authorities have been pressing some employees to work 40 hours a week, compared with 38.5 hours at present, without extra pay. The union argues that lengthening hours would destroy jobs, but employers say more work and greater flexibility are needed.

  That’s worth a 5-week strike by tens of thousands of workers?

• VW Workers Launch Warning Strikes:
  

  VW wants a two-year wage freeze, saying it is the only way it can guarantee jobs. It is seeking to cut labour costs by EUR two billion, or 30 percent, by 2011 to retain competitiveness.

  The union is pressing for pay increases of 2.2 percent and 2.7 percent in a 26-month deal, along with job guarantees.

  IG Metall began the work stoppages as soon as allowed under law governing wage negotiations in Germany. The warning strikes could soon affect more of the 103,000 VW workers in the company’s six western German plants.

  The talks have come against a backdrop of falling profits at Volkswagen, with the company reporting Thursday a 65 percent drop in third-quarter net profit from the same period a year ago.

• Previous BizzyBlog Post — “Germany: A Sneak Preview of the US Without Social Security Reform and Entitlement Reform”: “A glance at the state’s finances shows how dramatic the situation is: Of 190 billion euros in tax revenues, 80 billion is passed on to the cash-strapped state pension system, 30 billion goes to the unemployed, and another 40 billion belongs to the banks, just to service debt. The rest is not even enough to pay the bureaucracy and to build roads. Ever-new credits are constantly needed so that Germany at least has the appearance of a prosperous country.” (original source: The Wall Street Journal during mid-September 2005)
• Birth rate in Germany at Lowest Level Since 1945 — “Even with continued immigration, the German population is set to start declining in the coming decade and, in a worst case scenario, would fall from the present 82 million to 67 million by 2050, according to the Federal Statistics Office. A middle range scenario says there will be 75 million people in Germany in 2050 - the same population as in 1963. “ There’s not much hope for shoring up the pension system in that news.

One does not envy Angela Merkel her task.