Change at the top of the CGB. Yesterday in Berlin, the main committee, the highest decision-making body between trade union conferences, unanimously elected 57-year-old Henning Röders from Mecklenburg as the new CGB federal chairman. With 260,000 members, the CGB is the third-largest trade union umbrella organisation in Germany.
Röders succeeds Reiner Jahns, who resigned from office prematurely due to serious illness.
Röders, a fully qualified lawyer, is an experienced and active trade unionist who now takes the helm of the CGB, bringing with him more than 25 years of leadership experience as former chief executive and, since 2013, as federal chairman of the DHV trade union – one of the oldest trade union organisations in Germany.
Röders, who lives in Schwerin, the capital of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, is a member of the CDA and CDU and sits on the executive committee of the CDA/CGB Federal Working Group. He represents Christian trade unions in the representative assembly of the Administrative Professional Association (Verwaltungsberufsgenossenschaft – VBG), one of the largest providers of statutory accident insurance in Germany. Röders is involved in the committees on labour market policy and old-age provision at the Society for Insurance Science and Design (Gesellschaft für Versicherungswissenschaft und -gestaltung e.V. – GVG).
The member unions of the CGB have been making an important contribution to the ongoing development of the economic, labour market and social policy framework in the Federal Republic of Germany for decades. As the umbrella organisation of Christian trade unions, the CGB is a recognised leading organisation. Röders announced that, as CGB Federal Chairman, he intends to further develop the CGB’s importance as the mouthpiece of the Christian trade union movement and, in particular, to work towards strengthening collective bargaining autonomy and greater trade union pluralism.
Röders calls for the complete abolition of the Collective Bargaining Unity Act and criticises the planned Federal Collective Bargaining Compliance Act, which stipulates that in the event of competing collective agreements, only the collective agreement of the trade union with a more representative number of members in the sector should apply, thereby disadvantaging in-house collective agreements and regional collective agreements of trade unions outside the DGB. In Röders‘ opinion, proof of a company collective agreement, membership in an employer association bound by collective agreements or the application of collective agreement regulations should be sufficient.
Röders also sharply criticised the agreement reached in the coalition agreement between the CDU/CSU and SPD that the salaries of statutory health insurance funds should in future be based on the collective agreement for the public sector (TVÖD), which he described as an unconstitutional wage dictate.
Röders expressed concern about the ongoing economic recession and the increasing loss of industrial jobs.
Now that the federal budget has been passed, he said, the funds from the special infrastructure and climate neutrality fund must be used quickly to promote growth, technological sovereignty and competitiveness. A strong economy is also essential for financing our welfare state. At the same time, Röders warned against talking down the welfare state. Although there is a need for action, there is no reason to panic. Before considering once again squeezing contributors to the statutory social security system, the federal government must first fulfil its payment obligations to the social security institutions and pay appropriate reimbursements for the non-insurance benefits it has initiated.
Röders clearly rejected the demand by the federal chairwoman of the CDU’s Small and Medium-Sized Business and Economic Union (Mittelstands- und Wirtschaftsunion – MIT) to abolish Reformation Day as a public holiday. Röders: „We expect a party that has the letter C in its name to join Christian trade unions and churches in advocating for the prevention, rather than the promotion, of the further spread of commercially motivated work on Sundays and public holidays.
