Berlin When International Women’s Day was celebrated for the 100th time in 2011, Christiane Benner also gave a speech: “I’d like to have more female role models,” said the then head of the women’s and equality policy department at IG Metall. “And I would like it to become normal for women to lead. It’s time.”
Now, twelve years later, the time has come for the largest trade union in the free world. At the suggestion of the first chairman Jörg Hofmann, the IG Metall board of directors decided that Benner should succeed him in the fall. The 55-year-old sociologist is standing for election at the union conference in October.
The trade unionist, who has been deputy chairwoman since October 2015, has always made it clear that she believes she is capable of the top job in the “men’s shop” with a good 2.1 million members. But although in the history of IG Metall the second chairman has usually inherited the first, it was far from certain whether this also applies to Benner.
A year and a half ago, the Aachen-born woman successfully resisted the attempt to praising her as the head of the Confederation of German Trade Unions (DGB).
Her boss Hofmann, who had the right to nominate the DGB executive chair, was faced with an agonizing search for a successor until chemical union representative Yasmin Fahimi finally took over the post.
The designated boss lacks collective bargaining experience
At IG Metall, Benner then had a strong competitor in the ambitious head of the Baden-Württemberg district, Roman Zitzelsberger. The 56-year-old from Baden brings with him the experience in collective bargaining, which is so important for IG Metall, and which Benner largely lacks. In November last year, for example, he negotiated the pilot agreement for the approximately 3.9 million employees in the metal and electrical industry.
With the proposal for a dual leadership with equal rights, Hofmann wanted to build a bridge to a face-saving solution for the two aspirants to succeed him and avoid a power struggle over the leadership of IG Metall. Both Benner and Zitzelsberger had signaled that they could make friends with the tandem solution.
However, the statutes would have had to be changed at the trade union conference in October. However, there was no majority on the board of IG Metall for such a motion. Because it would have looked strange to install an equal dual leadership at the moment when a woman can make it to the top for the first time.
In April, Zitzelsberger then cleared the field and declared that he wanted to remain district manager in Baden-Württemberg. He cited health reasons as the reason: “My feet simply pulled away on the way, so that a few weeks ago I suddenly realized the limits of my resilience,” he said in an interview with the “Stuttgarter Zeitung” and the “Stuttgarter Nachrichten”. “.
The fact that the shattered dream of the crowning glory of his trade union career really hurt him, Zitzelsberger only let through between the lines: “We wanted to set up the executive board more as a team and focus the activities less on individuals – we were on the right track there,” he said .
While the employers would have had an old acquaintance in Zitzelsberger as a counterpart, with Benner they don’t really know what they are aiming for in terms of collective bargaining policy. She negotiated some company collective agreements and during her time in the district management of Lower Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt she was responsible for the implementation of the remuneration framework agreement (ERA), with which the separation between wage and salary earners was abolished.
But the focus of work for SPD member Benner lay elsewhere. On the executive board of IG Metall, of which she has been a member since 2011, she was primarily responsible for target group work, equality and co-determination issues. Her job included getting more employees, IT specialists, engineers, students and women to join IG Metall. She is also responsible for a project for crowdworkers, with which IG Metall wants to show that it also has a future in the digital age.
>> Read the interview with Christiane Benner here: “Even in the digital world, work must have its value”
The sociologist, who sits on the supervisory board at BMW and Continental, can certainly point to successes when working with target groups. Last year, IG Metall recruited more employees than ever before. There is little movement in the proportion of women among the members. Last year it was 18.2 percent and thus only slightly higher than ten years ago with 17.6 percent.
If Benner is elected in October, she will primarily be in demand as a transformation manager. IG Metall aims to shape the end of the era of the internal combustion engine and the transition to climate-friendly industrial production with as little job loss as possible.
The new one wants to “tread the traffic light in Berlin”
Hofmann’s vote had weight with the political decision-makers, in future Benner will have to advertise the concerns of the employees there. In the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” she already announced that she wanted to “step on her feet” at the traffic light. Inequality in Germany endangers democracy, so the top tax rate must rise and the wealth tax must come.
At the trade union convention, the delegates will not only vote on the new boss and the designated second chairman, Jürgen Kerner, the previous cashier. A decision is also to be taken to reduce the Executive Board from seven to five members.
In addition to Hofmann, who is retiring for reasons of age, the board members Wolfgang Lemb, Ralf Kutzner and Irene Schulz are no longer standing for election. The board of directors nominated the first representative of the Stuttgart office, Nadine Boguslawski, as the new chief cashier and Kerner’s successor.
Ralf Reinstädtler, first authorized representative of the Homburg-Saarpfalz office, is also to move into the management body. The executive board member responsible for social policy, Hans-Jürgen Urban, is standing for re-election.
More: Guest commentary Christiane Benner: Orderly change instead of static persistence: That’s why we have to reform co-determination