United Parcel Service, Union Busting and the Nazi Connection
UPS is well known in Germany for its anti-union stance. Systematic harassment of trade unionists and works council members and the manipulation of works council elections, are just some aspects of the strategy of the German UPS management.
UPS management's aim is a union-free zone at UPS, and if this is not possible they try to obstruct both the union and the formation of works councils, the legal workforce representation system in Germany. Where UPS cannot stop the formation or re-election of works councils, they try and get their own stooges elected.
Less than one-third of the UPS locations in Germany have works councils.
There now seems to be a new turn in management strategy: In Nuremberg, the local works council chairman (and management stooge), Tobias Dede, openly used the content of neo-Nazi websites to discredit, defame and slander the local union branch and two of its leading members and their works council representatives. In a pamphlet produced just before the works council elections he reproduced information from such a website and endorsed it. He also published the relevant links and called on the workforce to visit the website and read the article themselves.
The Nazi website he used is run by the Anti-Antifa-Nuernberg (Nuremberg Anti-Anti-Fascist). This organisation is related to the banned Fraenkische Aktionsfront, a group that was associated with a terrorist organisation that had planned to bomb the laying of a foundation stone for a Jewish community centre in Munich. The Anti-Antifa publishes information for Nazis on those they consider their political opponents. Up to now, teachers, journalists and anti-fascists have been targeted. Now trade unionists are also included in this list. Attacks often follow on names so published
The website itself is hosted in the USA by the well-known American neo-Nazi, Gary Lauck. It ended up there after those named complained to the German authorities and the previous provider took the site offline. Lauck is well known for selling racist and anti-semitic propaganda material, and for hosting European Nazi websites.
Dede’s use of this information and its circulation in his publication effectively means that he is helping to distribute neo-Nazi material, and by naming others not mentioned on the Anti-Antifa website is implicitly helping the Nazis.
We do not know whether Dede has direct contacts with the Nazis. What we do know, however, is that the Anti-Antifa linked the information Dede used on their frontpage once he had published it.
Furthermore, Dede, as a UPS supervisor, has evidently got tacit support from his local management. He has been neither sacked nor reprimanded for bringing UPS into discredit.
Dede and UPS have gone one step too far.
We call on everyone to write protest mails to UPS:
http://www.ups.com/forms/e-mail/general?loc=en_US
… and copy to …
Contact address: fred@labournet.info
For further information on UPS workers situation in Germany: LabourNet Germany
