Around 250 employees of the ailing chain Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof are currently demonstrating in Essen. With signs and vests with the inscription “No business without us” they fight for the recognition of the area collective agreement in retail.
No money left at the end of the month
An employee on site, for example, said that you just have to send a signal now. There are colleagues who have no money left at the end of the month. Among other things, the employees come from the branches in Bochum, Oberhausen, Mülheim, Duisburg and Dortmund.
At around eleven o’clock the strikers gathered on Hirschlandplatz in Essen, where trade unionist Silke Zimmer spoke to the employees of the department store chain.
A third of the branches are to close
The group has turbulent times behind and ahead of it. Several thousand jobs are to be lost, around a third of the last 129 branches are to be closed – that’s what the creditors’ meeting of the department store group decided at the end of March.
The ver.di trade union has again called for strikes among employees for Friday (09 June) in order to keep the pressure on employers high in the current wage negotiations.