Chinese investor remains silent
Why employees at a recycling company have been on strike for 100 days
By Diana Dittmer
February 15, 2024, 7:02 p.m
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In the fight for a collective agreement and better working conditions, the employees of the recycling company SRW Metalfloat are in a strange, long-term strike. The employer side stubbornly refuses to talk. The protest is reverberating in a complicated network of companies that extends to China.
It’s a battle against windmills for the 180 employees of SRW Metalfloat. The employees of the recycling company at the Espenhain site near Leipzig have been on strike for 100 days to fight for higher wages and better working conditions. Unsuccessful. Not because the negotiations are so difficult. But because there is no negotiation at all. After two unsuccessful rounds, the employers left the negotiating table in August. Since then she has gone into hiding and remains silent. The employees are waiting and hoping.
Their demands are comparatively moderate. The goal: a collective agreement with eight percent more pay, an increase in vacation and Christmas bonuses to 1,500 euros each and a reduction in working hours from 40 to 38 hours a week. According to IG Metall, employees receive around 600 euros less each month than comparable companies in the scrap and recycling industry. Work on the assembly line with heavy metal waste is hard, argue employee representatives. Recycling is also an important future industry. In Espenhain, seven million tons of scrap are processed every year – an important contribution to climate protection; every ton of scrap recycled prevents a fraction of the CO2 footprint that newly manufactured metal leaves behind in the climate balance.
The employees receive support from the scientific community: “The scrap and recycling sector is of fundamental importance for an ecologically sustainable circular economy,” says Thorsten Schulten, tariff expert at the Hans Böckler Foundation. He calls it a “scandal that many employees at SRW Metalfloat earn little more than the legal minimum wage with hourly wages of between 13.50 and 14.00 euros.”
SRW Metalfloat is profitable. In normal times, when work is in progress, the Espenhain location accounts for 25 percent of sales for the Scholz Group. The company also provides training, something that is not a matter of course today. The mere fact that the company has not made any money for three months could be reason enough for the parent company, Scholz Recycling, to return to the negotiating table. The company has already lost around 100 million euros due to the strike. Nevertheless, the official position is: Co-determination and collective agreements are not part of the corporate culture at Scholz Recycling.
China is far away
The reason that no one has moved for 100 days is hidden somewhere in the corporate network that extends all the way to China. SRW Metalfloat is 100 percent owned by Scholz Recycling. But from here it gets complicated: In 2016, the Hong Kong-based Chiho Environmetal Group bought Scholz Recycling GmbH. The Chinese took over Scholz for a symbolic euro when the group’s financial back was against the wall. According to its own information, Chiho is the world’s largest scrap recycling company in the world. It has more than 200 processing and shipyard operations in Asia, Europe and North America. It is also one of the largest listed companies of its kind.
The scrap giant from Hong Kong is registered in the British Cayman Islands, where Chinese companies such as Alibaba are also registered. The majority shareholder of Chiho is the USUM Group, which is then a subsidiary of the Loncin Group. Both Chinese. As I said, complicated. China is far away.
Scholz Recycling’s 2023 Code of Conduct expressly states that Scholz “respects the right to collective bargaining, recognizes the formation of unions and pursues an open, solution-oriented approach to employee representation,” emphasizes IG Metall Leipzig negotiator Michael Hecker , compared to ntv.de. That doesn’t change anything. According to IG Metall, it is becoming increasingly dubious. It is now said that the statements of the managing directors of Scholz Recycling and SRW Metalfloat contradict each other as to who is actually responsible for the tariff dispute. One points the finger at the other. Obviously things aren’t moving forward. An inquiry from ntv.de to Chinho’s managing director and representative at SRW Metalfloat, Yongming Qin, remained unanswered.
“We are stunned by the drama that is going on here,” says Hecker. “A shameful anniversary” if the The strategy consists exclusively of relying on the workforce to give in, adds IG Metall district manager Dirk Schulze. “100 days of refusal and disrespect by the employer” hardly contributes to resolving the dispute, but prolongs it.
Difficult given the shortage of skilled workers
In view of the acute shortage of skilled workers, the federal government is observing the general decline in collective bargaining with concern, as the federal government’s Eastern Commissioner, Carsten Schneider, reported at the request of ntv.de. “In 2000, around 60 percent of employees worked in companies with an industry collective agreement, but in 2022 it was only 41 percent.” Good wages and working conditions are not only “a question of fairness, but also of employer attractiveness,” says Schneider. However, the state is not allowed to interfere in collective bargaining; this is guaranteed by collective bargaining autonomy.
The eastern representative at SRW Metalfloat does not see any omissions. Metal recycling is not one of the security-relevant economic sectors. Apart from that, the takeover of the Scholz Group by the Chiho Enviomental Group took place in 2016 before foreign trade law was tightened, Schneider told ntv.de.
In principle, the experience with Chinese takeovers has been good. “SRW Metalfloat is an exception,” emphasizes Hecker. He points to the good cooperation between employers and employees at the robot manufacturer Kuka, which has been majority owned by the Chinese Midea Group since 2016. At that time there were great concerns about a possible sell-out of German know-how to China.
What’s next for SWR Metalfloat? “We will now increase the economic pressure caused by our strike,” he tells ntv.de, “and gradually increase the political pressure in the public, on suppliers and customer companies.” Refusing to hold talks could cause lasting damage to the reputation of companies with Chinese owners that want to operate in Germany, he warns. “Government funding and contracts should only be given to companies that are bound by collective agreements, firmly promise location guarantees and guarantee added value in Germany.”