German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll
19/202, pp. 25428-25429.
Nevertheless, I begin.
Claudia Müller (Greens): That all goes from the speaking time, please.
Herr
President. Honored colleagues, those who wish to listen. Worthy listeners [Zuhörer] at the sets and at home.
Ulli Nissen (SPD): Again, not Zuhörerinnen!
The
candy manufacturer Haribo is closing its one plant in eastern Germany because
it allegedly is no longer economic and it does not have a modern production
structure. Around 150 workers are thereby surprisingly out of work at year’s
end with harsh consequences for the families. The self-described, to be highly
praised economic competence of the Saxon government thus evidently could not
save the site near Zwickau, which is not to be wondered at with an Economics
Minister with an SPD party book.
Detlef Müller (SPD-Chemnitz): Dear heavens!
Right honorable
ladies and gentlemen, what is happening there in Saxony is an expression of the
crisis which brings into question the government’s economic incompetence, as
for example, in the automobile industry, the energy industry and ultimately the
confusing lockdown policy. The decades-long diligence and willingness to
produce of central German employees will be decided upon with a stroke of the
pen in the west, far from the affected region. Insultingly, most of the
workplaces of the eastern German employees put onto the street will be offered
in the old Federal states. This migration of qualified employees from east to
west, millions of times since the Wende [unification],
and the Treuhand debacle are the
death blow for the economy in the new Federal states. The opposite would be
required of policy; namely, an increase of the attraction of sites in eastern
Germany; for example, by setting up a special economic zone, as I demand as
representative of central German interests in our delegation.
Colleagues,
Haribo is overall. For my constituency in northern Thüringen, the destructive
policy in eastern Germany means the loss of 250 industrial workplaces with the
closing of the Eaton firm in Nordhausen. Mulhausen, with the closing of the Continental
firm, loses 160 workplaces for qualified employees. At the Erko firm in Beuren,
an additional 230 employment positions are going away. We have already today in
Eichsfeld, one of the most important regions in my constituency, more than 30
percent more unemployment than in the same period last year. I say to you:
Haribo is overall.
Many mothers
and fathers in the approaching Christmastime will be unemployed. Thus many children
do not stand joyfully before a richly stocked table of gifts. They already
faintly feel the many limitations and reduced possibilities of development
which a country indebted across the generations is preparing for them there in
the future. The entire scenario recalls a country which, as a consequence of
the social coldness and political obstinacy of those who govern, freezes from
within. The fault of this development lies primarily in a confused policy,
counter to economic reason and – which weighs all the more heavily – a government
policy without a social conscience or a regard for the whole.
Ulli Nissen (SPD): Such nonsense!
Apart
from that, nothing new.
Kai Whittaker (CDU/CSU): Exactly!
As
always, the crisis hits the worker first and hardest. My question: In this
avoidable tragedy, which role do the trades unions actually play as a representation
of the employees’ vital importance? As if like sacrificial lambs at the high
office of global Corona capitalism, the trades unions shun every struggle in
the interests of domestic labor and surrender without a fight to the winding up
of entire branches of the economy in the infrastructure-weak east.
In
short: With the year 2020 at the latest, the established trades unions, as
counsels to the vital interests of employees, under pressure of events passed
into history.
This sad
end of once significant organizations allows me as a consequence to demand:
Make a place for new trades unions, a place for those which really represent
the interests of employees, a place for the AVA and ALARM! The AfD, as a new
people’s party, as a party of employees and the small businessmen, stands for
our eastern and central German employees.
Alexander Lambsdorff (FDP): A völkische trades union, or what?
Ladies and gentlemen, I am grateful for the attention. I wish you
Ulli Nissen (SPD): From you, I want no wish!
– thank
you – and before all your families blessed and merry Christmas holidays. I am
expressly grateful to our co-workers who have here so bravely carried on.
Thank
you.
[trans: tem]
