The delegates to the Federal Congress in Berlin confirmed the 55-year-old in office.
(Photo: dpa)
Berlin Frank Werneke will continue to lead the Verdi union through the next four years. The approximately 1,000 delegates to the Federal Congress in Berlin confirmed the 56-year-old in office on Monday with 92.5 percent of the vote. In his first election four years ago, Werneke received 92.7 percent.
Verdi is the “most interesting and promising project on the bright side of power,” said the trade unionist in his application speech. The past four years have been characterized more by crisis management than he would have expected or wished. The next four years would certainly not be idyllic either. Because the distribution struggles are increasing, the state is saving on public services and there is a huge investment backlog in the country.
At the opening of the Federal Congress on Sunday, Werneke denounced the increasing social division in society and sharply criticized the federal government’s consolidation policy. “We are the strong force in Germany that is fighting for an effective welfare state,” he said on Monday. One of the greatest future challenges will also be “to defend our democracy together with our combined forces”.
The trained packaging mechanic began his trade union career as the North Rhine-Westphalian youth leader of IG Druck und Papier, which later merged into IG Medien and then into the United Services Union founded in 2001. The SPD member has been a member of the Verdi federal executive board since 2001 and was deputy chairman since 2002 until he replaced Frank Bsirkse at the top in 2019.
Verdi, which represents employees from around 1,000 professions, has held numerous collective bargaining rounds in recent months, which were often associated with labor disputes – for example at the federal and local governments, at Deutsche Post or currently in wholesale and retail.
Verdi gains members
The conflict-filled rounds have brought the union a record number of new members – 140,000 so far this year. Werneke is therefore confident that Verdi will record an increase of several tens of thousands of members by the end of the year.
If this proves to be true and developments stabilize, the Verdi boss can claim to have stopped the almost continuous downward trend in membership numbers.
But the old and new Verdi boss also knows that this is not a sure-fire success. “Complacency is the beginning of every downfall,” said Werneke. In the next four years, Verdi must go even more aggressively on collective bargaining policy and end “unproductive self-employment”.
Werneke’s deputies Andrea Kocsis and Christine Behle were also confirmed in office. Kocsis, who heads the postal services, freight forwarding and logistics department, received 91.3 percent of the votes. Behle, who is primarily responsible for the public service and the transport department, was re-elected with 93.5 percent of the vote.
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