TTT: German Strike Songs
Earlier today I wrote a post about our current union fight for higher wages. Meanwhile I got a notification ping that @ablaze published his #ThreeTuneTuesday post. Right, today is tuesday, so while at it, why not publish a few strike songs fitting today's theme?
During our negotiations in 2021 and the (compared to the current movement) few strikes that accompanied them, we had the fortune of some talented people supporting us. In the aftermath of Covid lockdowns a nice song was created. And one of our full-time union members worked a slideshow of the strikes and meetings in our state in there.
That year, even though we had a (compared to earlier years) late settlement in October we only had around 20 days of strike. This year we are already at 90 days. 😟
A few weeks ago we added a speaker in a hand cart to our walk in front of the store. While looking for music to play we found this little gem in the wilds.
Unfortunately we cannot use it as is. There are references in there that have nothing to do with our fight for wages in the retail busines. But we have two creatives reworking the lyrics as I write this and if this fight keeps going on we might even use it soon which would lead to a new recording fitting our current needs.
We mostly play uplifting or inspiring songs, while walking up and down with our signs, like "Eye of the tiger", "The final countdown", etc. Everyone in our group contributes to the playlist and one of them introduced me to an old German country classic.
With "Hey Boss, I need more money" she it the playlist bulls-eye and now when the chorus reaches that line we all turn towards the store and sing along.
We all hope this conflict will be resolved soon. Not only for our payslip (and therefore our future) but also to gain more time. Being on strike is more time consuming for me than a regular work schedule.
Thank you for reading and keep on rocking 🤘
The embedded videos and songs are not mine, nor do I own any rights to them. They are embedded from youtube and serve an illustrative purpose for this article
90 days strike! That's quite a long time!
Indeed. We started out with 1 or two days per week. The conflict escalated and now we have not been in the store since early October. ☹️
Hopefully we can get back to a normal every day life soon but we are divided in hopeful optimists and pessimists as to whether we will get an acceptable offer soon.
Sounds terrible. I am surprised the whole employees are not on strike with you even if they aren't members. Very strange.
Some fear repercussions, some think they put themselves into a good light with their superiors, some don't know better, some don't care. Everyone of them has their reasons. Some reasons are really stupid like thinking someone has to do the work because they believe the story that if the store has to close for a day jobs would be lost. While in fact if the store actually had to close we would have a solution within three days.
Only two miles as the crow flies is the main plant of Frosta. They went outside with 80% of the employees, got back in after two days with a 11% raise because the plant had to shut down for two days.
Even when I give them that example (and it was in the local newspaper) they still won't believe it but listen to the department heads who tell them they would lose their jobs.
I have no further idea how to educate these people...
Insane. Good luck with the fight.
You need some good old American country songs. Nothing tells the plight of the blue collar worker quite like they do! Nice selections though. I never would have guessed other countries had their own version of "Take this job and shove it".
The language barrier would be a huge problem. I was also considering to introduce my coworkers to the strike song Lisa plays in The Simpsons, for example, but most of them don't speak English :-(
Ah yeah, I guess that would be an issue for sure!
Ja, die Schere geht immer weiter auseinander, da hast Du recht. Es ist ein ernstes Thema, nicht nur in Deutschland sondern auch in CH, Austria und vielen weiteren Ländern Europas und der Welt.
Was ich mich neben Deinem Beitrag fragte: spricht DE nun nur noch englisch???
Leider. Bin ebenfalls gespannt, wo die Reise noch hingehen wird. Danke für deinen Zuspruch.
Uh, dieses Thema... War am überlegen, wie antworte ich dir am besten und bin zu dem Entschluss gekommen: Ehrlich sein. Ich bin einfach zu faul um das zweisprachig zu machen und habe mich dann für das "breitere" Publikum entschieden.
Ich höre deine Kritik und während ich das hier schreibe dämmert es in mir, dass das vielleicht nicht sehr schlau ist. Danke dafür.
Ich werd es nachher mal versuchen über meinen Schatten zu springen :-)
Deine ehrliche Antwort hat mich sehr gefreut. Ich selbst bin oft in der Situation, ausserhalb meiner Muttersprache kommunizieren zu müssen, denn in Frankreich wird D nicht akzeptiert resp. verstanden. So nehme ich für die offizielle Kommunikation das Programm DeepL zu Hilfe und lasse am Schluss sogar die automatische Bemerkung "translatet by DeepL" stehen. So weiss das Gegenüber mit welcher Hilfe ich meine Gedanken oder was auch immer ich übertragen habe. Geht übrigens sehr schnell, ich meine die Übersetzung D/E. Viel Spass für die Zukunft und ich freue mich auf weitere Beiträge von Dir.