Becoming a Munich works council was never Ergun Lümali’s declared career goal. He actually wanted to move up from assembly line worker to master craftsman at Daimler and so be one of the first employees with a migration background to join the management team of the car manufacturer. But in the 80s and 90s, the native Turk was also involved as a shop steward for the IG Metall union. And somehow it went up there faster. Even then, Lümali was linguistically gifted and helpful. If there was a row in the company, the father of two daughters often acted as an interpreter and mediated between immigrants and Swabian managers. As a thank you, the workforce heaved Lümali into the works council of the Mercedes manufacturer in 1994. In 2014 he then took over the site responsibility for the Sindelfingen plant.
The final culmination took place this Wednesday: Lümali was elected by his union colleagues as the new head of the general works council at Daimler. The 59-year-old succeeds Michael Brecht, who will in future be responsible for the interests of the employees in the truck business, which has now been split off. Daimler itself will be renamed the Mercedes-Benz Group at the beginning of next year.
The name change alone shows how radically the Dax group is changing. Mercedes front man Ola Källenius is hard to slow down, bravely trims the brand with the star for efficiency and energizes all model series. The Swede would like to bury the combustion engine by the end of the decade and only sell electric cars from then on.
Top jobs of the day
Find the best jobs now and be notified by email.
The turnaround will also shape the Lümali era. His declared goal is to somehow secure the jobs of the more than 100,000 employees in Germany. “It’s going to be an uphill battle,” say even well-meaning people. Because the work content offered by electrical components is far less than that of classic transmissions and gasoline engines. Lümali is all the more demanding to develop and produce as many new things as possible in-house – from electric motors to inverters and software applications.
Neither concrete skulls nor co-managers
Lümali came to Germany from the Anatolian university town of Eskisehir at the age of seven and a half. His father, a trained carpenter, found a job at Daimler, and later his mother too. The parents consciously moved to Gechingen near Calw in a middle-class area. Lümali grew up mainly with German friends and quickly learned the language. But he also learned that “as a migrant you have to do twice as much to attract attention,” as he once said.
Lümali is convinced that there is also home in the plural. This is why the trade unionist has been campaigning for dual citizenship for years. At Daimler, the SPD member is seen as a pragmatist with a bite. In essence, he is neither a concrete skull nor a co-manager, but sees himself as a bridge builder. His gentle voice, the friendly mustache and the winning smile should not deceive anyone, managers report in unison. If something doesn’t suit him, the unionist quickly changes the tone.
“We can escalate,” Lümali warned employers again and again in collective bargaining disputes. He learned how to create an intimidating threat from his mentor Erich Klemm. The former Daimler Vice-Chairman of the Supervisory Board even almost knocked ex-CEO Dieter Zetsche out of office.
Such maneuvers are not to be expected from Lümali. But when the current CEO Ola Källenius launched a billion-dollar savings program in mid-2019 after several profit warnings, Lümali immediately railed against the “K.OLA diet” and told the board: “Scrubbing costs alone is not a strategy.”
Lümali has brought Michael Häberle to the side
Business at Mercedes is now better than ever, despite the lack of chips. The Stuttgart-based company should close with a new record result in 2021, and the return on sales is well into double digits. And yet the tasks for Lümali are gigantic. So far, he has mainly focused on his plant, the development stronghold in Sindelfingen. In future, he must represent the interests of the employees in all German factories with the same commitment.
For this task, Lümali has brought Michael Häberle to his side, the highest works council at the main plant in Stuttgart-Untertürkheim. This should also be a signal to the troops that the engine locations will not be neglected in the transformation. The next works council elections are due in March 2022.
Mobilizing supporters in the current pandemic is likely to be difficult. Some IG Metallers fear that extreme marginalized groups such as the right-wing center of the automobile could win votes with a low turnout. Lümali is of course calmly looking forward to the election. He believes that he can convince with content-related solutions. Hard work, according to his credo, is always rewarded. On the other hand, he wants to deal as little as possible with internal works council matters. The little time that remains private, Lümali prefers to spend in the garden with his two-year-old grandson.
More: Change of course at BMW – new electric version of the 3-series is being built exclusively in China