Garbage piles up

last updated 8 January 2015

Berlin

At least 40,000 garbage collectors, road workers, and hospital staff walked off their jobs this week in Germany’s largest public-sector strike in more than a decade. The immediate goal of the strike is to protest a proposal that would extend the workweek from 38.5 to 40 hours. But officials from Verdi, the country’s largest union, said their ultimate aim is to get all 16 of Germany’s states to sign the same blanket deal on wages and work hours that the federal government signed last year. “The strike will last until employers realize they can’t simply dictate to employees how long they have to work,” said Verdi chief Frank Bsirske. Collective bargaining agreements were once the norm in Germany, but they now cover less than half of all companies.