The AfD-related employee organization center wants to gain a foothold at VW and is now demanding access to the company in court. Before the Braunschweig Labor Court, the association, which describes itself as an “alternative union”, complains against the VW subsidiary Volkswagen Group Services. There was no agreement on the chamber date on Thursday. A judgment is expected on August 21, as Richter Ingo Hundt announced at the end of the unsuccessful trial. Center wants to have Union confidence at Volkswagen Group Services at the Isenbüttel location (district of Gifhorn) and asked for access to the company. The organization wants to advertise for the vote, distribute information material and then carry out the choice in the company. But VW came across and refused access. Reason: The association is not a tariff union represented in the company. Therefore, he cannot rely on the legal rights of a union, and there is also doubts as to whether the center has members in the company at all. VW manufactures axles there. According to its own statements, the association has six members at the location with almost 150 employees. A corresponding list of members was presented at the chamber date. Trusters are the contacts of a union in the company and are considered a link between the workforce and the union. In contrast to the works council, your choice is not regulated by law. Presence at Mercedes and BMWBei Volkswagen is the first time that the group wants to have their own trustees voted. “We have already successfully carried out confidence elections in various companies,” said Center founder and CEO Oliver Hilburger at the request of the German Press Agency. “In the Volkswagen Group, we are currently planning such a choice for the first time, which is another important step in expanding our trade union presence for us.” So far, the association has been particularly active in southern and eastern Germany. It was founded in 2009 as a “center automobile” in the Mercedes-Benz plant in Stuttgart-Untertürkheim. In 2010, its own list made it for the first time to enter the works council, later also at Daimler in Rastatt and Sindelfingen. A Saxon offshoot moved to the works council at BMW and Porsche in Leipzig in 2018. At Volkswagen itself, on the other hand, there are no representatives of center lists in the works councils. Association or union? In April the association opened a regional office in Hanover to advance the structure in northern Germany. It is led by Jens Keller, AfD City Councilor in Hanover and staff council at the municipal waste disposal company AHA of the state capital. So far, Keller had been a member of Verdi, but left in mid -April and switched to the center. His goal was to halve the number of members of the “old unions” in the coming years, said Keller in April on the occasion of the opening of the new regional office “Zentrum Nord”. More on the topic of head of the Hilburg Center, his association was not at all rejected at the opening of the regional office in Hanover. “Of course we are a union,” he said. “This talk, we are just an association, that should in principle make us small.” His goal is to break the forecast of the established DGB unions.
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