Martels Hammer said:
Scotty Appleton said:
Have you ever hired someone, or better yet tried to fire someone in Germany? It is comical.
My previous employer had a factory in Germany with its own union. Not only was it impossible to fire somebody the union had the power to decide what parts would or would not be made at other factories if the German factory had made the part number at any time in the history of the German factory. Even if the part was made prior to the current companies ownership of the factory.
Or in other words, if the German factory had made part X, They could stop any other factory in the company from making the same part if they wanted. It was insane. A group of factory workers deciding what other factories could or could not make.
Which of course meant nothing new ever got made in Germany. Too risky to allow the German union to have power over the future of the item.
I spent a summer studying in Germany back in grad school. What most people don't realize is how ingrained the unions are in the private world there. Unlike the BoD at companies here in America, German BoD's are required to have union representation. In addition, the government itself is extremely pro-union so you have company management having to fight two fronts: against its own board and the federal government. Thus, this is why German companies can't fire anyone and can no longer compete effectively.
Go read up on VW travails this year. TBF, a lot of their troubles were of their own making from a management standpoint. Massive, bloated company with no vision or strategic direction. The current CEO came up with plan that would require thousands of layoffs and for them to start selling off brands and other non-core business units. VW owns an absurd number of brands with massive duplication and redundancy throughout the organization.
His Hail Mary a few weeks ago was to try and end around of his own company and to go directly to the shareholders to try and effect the changes they needed but somewhat miraculously he got the unions to agree to some of his demands at the last minute. The threat of China bankrupting the largest company in Germany proved to be enough to scare even the unions to play ball.
