(...) The German parliament enacted the co-determination law in 1976, a form of employee participation that allows union representatives to serve on the Board of Directors of corporations and vote on firm-related business decisions. The co-determination law covers enterprises with a workforce of over 2,000 employees. A series of recent labor-management bribery scandals could, however, contribute to destabilizing this model, which celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2006. The former president and founder of the “Arbeitsgemeinschaft Unabhängiger Betriebsangehöriger,”1 an independent union representing 30,000 employees at the multi-national corporation Siemens, was charged in mid-February with illegally receiving 14 million Euros from Siemens.

The second unfolding union-bribery corruption scandal involves the former head of Volkswagen’s (VW) works council Klaus Volkert, a member of the IG Metall. (VW is Europe’s largest automobile manufacturer.) The former director of the VW labor relations department, Peter Hartz, admitted this past January to employing illegal spending accounts for prostitution and luxury trips to Brazil in which Volkert was a principal recipient of the payments. Documents show that Albert Schunk, an IG Metall member of the joint VW-IG Metall labor-management committee and responsible for international relationships for the union, also benefited from the illegal spending account for his trip to Brazil, including monies used for prostitutes. Keep in mind that Hartz was the architect of a set of neo-liberal reforms in Germany which reduced unemployment insurance for German workers. The reform is called Hartz IV and was enacted last year by the SPD-Green government.

Robert Fitch, who was interviewed by Michael Yates in Monthly Review, minimized the first VW corruption scandal as a kind of anomaly within the European labor movement. But such scandals are hardly new: former head of the IG Metall Klaus Zwickel resigned his post in 2003 in the midst of a criminal proceeding lodged against him. His unsavory role on the Board of Directors of the Mannesmann corporation in which departing executives were paid severance payments totaling 57 Million Euros was the source of great media attention, largely because the case involved the most devastating white-collar economic criminal case in the history of Germany. Zwickel agreed to pay a 60,000 Euro settlement and is, according to German law, free of criminal guilt. The timing of Zwickel’s resignation in 2003 coincided with the IG Metall’s first strike defeat in over 50 years.

Fitch moreover maintained that there is “no comparison between European and American corruption. No one has ever charged a European union with being a criminal enterprise.” The recent collapse of the union-controlled bank BAWAG (Bank für Arbeit und Wirtschaft) in Austria, however, would certainly qualify as an example of fundamental union corruption comparable to or surpassing American labor corruption. One German commentator described the scandal as “the downfall of the Austrian worker’s movement.” The BAWAG, the fourth largest bank in Austria, engaged in speculative business dealings in the Caribbean, which resulted in the loss of approximately 1 billion Euros. The Austrian Labor Federation (ÖGB) oversaw the bank, and the running shopping list of inept and criminal activities of the ÖGB could be attributed to a union leadership who were more interested in a wannabe-capitalist banker lifestyle rather than protecting the assets of ordinary rank-and-file members. The ÖGB turned the BAWAG into a criminal enterprise. The illegal practices of the BAWAG have resulted in the loss of the strike fund, an education fund for the children of union members, and an emergency assistance program for members who are experiencing a financial crisis. Union expenditures in Europe are not as transparent as in the United States. Consequently, union corruption in Germany is simply better disguised and therefore unregistered by many American labor journalists and commentators.

https://mronline.org/2007/02/21/where-is-the-german-trade-un...

In 2007, an attempt of a company to influence unions became publicly known that had been unprecedented in the history of German unions.

Already in the late 1970s, the Siemens AG made arrangements to weaken the impact of the DGB. The first goal was to reduce the power of the DGB in the board of directors. The essential execution of this plan started in the 1980s. The Association of Independent Employees (German: Arbeitsgemeinschaft Unabhängiger Betriebsangehöriger, AUB) was founded. As "the other union", the AUB positions itself today deliberately against "traditional unions". Although the AUB has only about 32,000 members, the AUB chairman Schelsky said in 2003: "In ten years, we will be the only competitor in Germany to the DGB." And then his organization was supposed to have stronger political power. After it became public that Siemens had made payments of about 14 million euro to Wilhelm Schelsky, a business consultant and AUB chairman, the offices of Schelsky, Siemens and the AUB were searched by police. On February 14, 2007, Schelsy was arrested on suspicion of offenses in connection with taxes. The payments from Siemens to Schelsky are now estimated to be about 54 million euros. However, direct payments from Siemens to the AUB could not be proven.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_unions_in_Germany#Weaken...