Before this year’s upcoming state elections, Frank Werneke, the federal chair of the services union Verdi, urges voters to avoid any party that seeks to roll back social policy. He told “Bild am Sonntag” that, after the FDP had “almost disappeared into insignificance” the economically liberal, neoliberal camp is now coalescing around the Union (CDU/CSU). Werneke says the worker‑oriented wing is barely visible any more, and that the Union is losing, in his view, part of its character as a people’s party.
Union politicians and lobby groups have put forward proposals to curb the legal right to part‑time work or to loosen termination protection in the public sector. Werneke explained that figures in employer and industry associations-some even individual entrepreneurs-feel they are on the winning side. They claim the Union promised them everything before the federal election, including a harvest of reforms and changes to the pension system that come at the expense of employees. Yet he adds that “my members and I are not interested in the Unfulfilled promises the Union, in my view, has made”.