Wage demand 14 percent: The great unreasonableness in the public service

In Sunday speeches and on other ceremonial occasions, government politicians in particular like to praise the public service for its reliability and efficiency.

It is their way of thanking the employees in authorities and public institutions - for the fact that they translate political action into everyday life again and again, even if it sometimes has to be based on erratic decisions and half-baked laws.

However, such greetings ring increasingly hollow in the ears of the addressees when the impression is created that politicians are increasingly concerned with party tactics and short-term publicity, while seeming to care less and less about the feasibility of their decisions.

Not only the many hasty decisions in the service of fighting the crisis have contributed to the fact that this impression, which has long been widespread among the population, is also strengthened among state employees and their trade unions.

The hastily crammed through reforms of housing benefit and citizen benefit stand for this.

They require a lot of additional staff - which is also confirmed by the district council, which is not suspected of socialist activities.

However, because this was not taken into account, more staff would not be immediately available anyway and the potentially relieving digitization of processes is still a long time coming, the problems once again get stuck with the existing employees.

The civil servants' association warned at its annual conference that they were fed up with holding the head open to frustrated citizens for such mistakes.

Don't forget the municipalities!

These are not good omens for the upcoming round of wage increases for more than 2.5 million federal and local employees.

Collective bargaining is actually the wrong place to resolve this deeper conflict.

It is about the extent of wage increases.

But it is not decided there how much personnel and administrative effort future laws will trigger - and also not how much job creation the state, i.e. politics on behalf of the citizens, wants to afford when the coffers are empty.

Under the pressure of disgruntled members, the Verdi union and the civil servants' association will hardly care about such differentiation.

Your form of expression will be an all the tougher appearance in the bargaining round.

The fact that this time there was speculation about a “widespread strike” long before it began is no coincidence.

And with their wage demands, the unions had already made it clear that they did not intend to conduct collective bargaining policies based on the standards of common sense in the economy as a whole.

They demand 10.5 percent for the top tariff groups and a flat rate of 500 euros more per month for the others - which corresponds to an average of 14 percent for all tariff groups.

For classification, it should be remembered that IG Metall, which is not considered modest, recently considered an 8 percent requirement to be appropriate in its collective bargaining round.

Employees and companies in the currently fragile private sector would have to pay the extra supplement for the public service from their income.

And should the state then use their money – as hoped by Verdi and the civil service association – to really recruit more staff for the public service, it would also take these workers away from companies struggling with staff shortages.

Verdi and the civil servants' association rightly warn of the gap between legislation based on grandiose promises and the real capacities of the administration.

How this should be closed, however, has to be clarified politically, since an even more lavish staffing is not without alternative.

The obvious thing to do would be to limit the scope of state activity to what the available forces can do sensibly.

After all, their number has grown by half a million to 5.1 million since 2010.

However, another factor could become important in the collective bargaining round.

Because in addition to the alliance with Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD), the unions now also meet representatives of the municipalities there.

Among these, many are just as annoyed by the unreasonable demands of federal policy on the operational level as the employees - but all the less willing to make expensive compromises.

This brings back memories of a heated situation after the turn of the millennium: At that time, employers at the state level reached the limits of their willingness to reach a consensus and then withdrew from the previously uniform collective agreement for the entire public sector.

This hurts the unions to this day.

Now they have to be careful that their furor doesn't also drive the municipalities over this limit.