(article written tuesday night)
This morning 200 postal workers on the early shift in Hamburg, employed by Deutsche Post and members of the union Verdi struck for a
few hours to put the company under pressure in the third round of pay talks, which will begin on June 10.

In the previous two rounds Deutsche Post has refused to make an offer to Verdi's negotiatiors, who are demanding a 6.5% pay rise for the
240,000 workers in the post office.

The short "warning strikes" will continue over the week, across the country. The action in Hamburg as of 5 a.m. this morning led to the
non-sorting of 500,000 items of post, affecting mainly P.O. boxes used by business customers.

Twenty delivery workers were also brought out this morning, based at an office in Burg near Cottbus in Brandenburg (eastern Germany).

Verdi says that they will "massively spread" the action over the coming days, depending on the reaction the union gets from Deutsche Post. Postal workers
are "very willing" to go on strike, said Helmut Jurke, responsible for the postal section of Verdi in Berlin-Brandenburg.

Rolf Büttner from the Verdi National Executive has said that today short strikes will also take place today across Berlin and Brandenburg, and tonight in the
states of Saxony (eastern Germany) and Baden-Wüttemberg (southern Germany).

Sorters have been sent out in Berlin's delivery centres between 4 p.m. Tuesday and 6 a.m. Wednesday, which will result in 8 million letters being delayed.
The delivery workers in Berlin will however be working on Wednesday, even though they'll be very few items in their bags.

Büttner however, as would be expected, is concerned to point out that he is interested in making a deal with the bosses at the negotiating table, and is not
that interested in holding a strike ballot.

The current short, limited "warning strikes" are allowed under German labour laws once negotiations have broken down, before they start again, and as the
prevous pay agreement between the so-called "social partners" has expired.

Once a successful strike ballot has been held (75% have to vote yes for a strike to take place), union members also have to vote to support a deal made by
the negotiators (although by law only 25% have to support the deal for it to go through). Otherwise this is not the case.

Although Büttner says in a Verdi press release that "Our members are very motivated and are very willing to strike", he says that "we want a solution at the
negotiating table: for this the employer has to finally make an offer we can discuss". Büttner is the Chief Negotiator for Verdi at the pay talks.

What a "discussable offer" is or could be, has not been made clear.

The engineering and electrical union IG Metall held some limited strikes supposedly for a 6.5% rise last month, after an OMOV ballot which resulted in
huge majorities for strikes. Despite this, the IG Metall negotiators settled for a deal which in fact is at best a "zero-increase" (!) in real terms over the next
two years. The offer was sold to union members as being worth 4.1%, which was in any case significantly less than the 6.5% they were meant to be fighting
for.

It could well be that Verdi too are willing to bring their members out for 6.5% but then tell them to be satisfied with a figure of around 4%, particuarly as
the IG Metall-deal is not much to live up to.

Büttner has also said that limited warning-strikes can be expected in the next few days in courier and packet delivery companies not belonging to Deutsche
Post, as pay negotiations in this sector are not moving forward either.

Such first strikes are likely to take place in the pay area of Northern Baden-Württemberg as the Verdi Executive has already agreed to them in principle
there.

Deutsche Post was made a state-owned plc (AG) in 1994 and a large number of the shares were sold to "the public" in 2000. The company still has a
monopoly on most letter post which is being gradually broken down, possibly as far as the universal service (one price for letters across the country) by the
social-democratic federal government and the European Commission.

In the past ten years 100,000 jobs have been lost in the German postal service, resulting in a poorer service - there are far fewer post offices than
pre-privatisation and those that remain are run by other private companies, e.g. in supermarkets or in stationery shops (and many "unviable" offices in the
east were closed immediately after unification in 1990), and the postal charges in Germany are among the most expensive in Europe, combined with the
lowest wage costs. The jobs have gone with the support of the trade unions.

In 1996 postal workers held limited "warning strikes" over a cuts package by the Kohl government in Bonn. The bosses and the union then agreed a pay
deal of 1.3%. In 2000 the union and the management settled for a pay deal
(without any forms of industrial action) of 2.3% and the introduction of the 38-hour week in east and west by 2001. Deutsche Post also owns the Postbank
AG and is
attempting to become a "global player" in the post and telecommunications industry. Deutsche Telekom was split from the state post office (Deutsche
Bundespost) before the privatisation began.

Matt Heaney, Berlin (Member of Verdi)

Image of the picket line at Hamburg, unfortunately focussing on Verdi's general secretary, member of the Green Party, whose first step as leader of the
"superunion" was to vote to double his own pay, Frank Bsirske (from German state television ARD)
 http://www.tagesschau.de/styles/container/image/style_images_default/0,1984,OID816436,00.jpg

this article first appeared on the alliance for workers liberty group of sites (solidarity, bolshy, workersliberty) at
 http://www.workersliberty.org.uk and at the labour news network at labourstart.org