Free Workers' Union
The Free Workers' Union is an anarcho-syndicalist union in Germany and Switzerland.
History
The FAU sees itself in the tradition of the Free Workers' Union of Germany, the largest anarcho-syndicalist union in Germany until it disbanded as a formal organization in 1933 to avoid repression by the National Socialist regime which had come into power that year. The FAU was founded in 1977, and grew consistently through the 1990s. Now, the FAU consists of just under 40 groups, organized locally and by branch of trade. It rejects hierarchical organizations and political representation and believes in the concept of federalism; most decisions are made by the local unions. The purpose of the federalist organization is to coordinate strikes, campaigns and actions, and for communication. It has 800 to 1000 members, organized in the various local unions.The FAU publishes the bimonthly anarcho-syndicalist newspaper Direkte Aktion and pamphlets on current and historical topics.
Because it supports the classical concept of the abolition of the wage system, the FAU was monitored until 2011 by the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz.
The FAU was disaffiliated by the International Workers' Association in 2016, and became one of the founding members of the International Confederation of Labour in 2018.
Labor disputes
Delivery industry and gig economy
The FAU is now also used as a form of representation and organisation by workers in the gig economy, such as workers in online food delivery services. At the end of 2016, the FAU, together with a number of other unions, launched an international network of delivery workers. In Berlin, the FAU founded a special section called "Deliverunion" in mid-2017, in which drivers of the companies Deliveroo and Foodora, among others, organised themselves. Drivers of various services also subsequently organised themselves in other cities such as Leipzig, Dresden and Hamburg. In June 2017, FAU demonstrators unloaded scrap bicycles in front of Deliveroo's Berlin headquarters in this context to protest against the working conditions of the company's bike messengers. In Leipzig, FAU 2020 was in a prolonged dispute with the company Durstexpress. In 2021, the FAU Berlin supported a widely publicised wildcat strike by workers at the delivery service Gorillas with solidarity actions, FAU unions in Leipzig and Magdeburg were involved in various conflicts with Domino's Pizza. In 2022, the FAU Dresden announced that it was currently supporting members of the delivery service Flink in conflicts. The FAU repeatedly emphasises that migrants in particular are specifically recruited for companies in the sector and that dependencies, poor knowledge of the legal situation and language barriers are used there for the systematic violation of labour rights.Further industrial action in migrant sectors
In 2014, members of the "Foreigner Section" of the FAU Berlin started an industrial action under the slogan "Mall of Shame" against contractors and subcontractors who were in charge of the Mall of Berlin construction project. Specifically, this involved a large group of Romanian construction workers who were allegedly not paid their wages for several months. Part of the struggle involved continuous rallies and demonstrations.During the Corona crisis, in May 2020, Romanian migrant workers organised themselves into the FAU Bonn, working for the Spargel Ritter company in Bornheim. The migrant workers went on strike after they were refused payment of their contractually guaranteed wages. They also protested against the housing conditions and the poor food supply on the asparagus farm. The strike succeeded in getting a larger part of the wages paid. The case was received in the regional and national media as an example of the exploitation of Eastern European workers in Germany.
Food Service Industry
In the catering industry, FAU trade unions frequently engage in smaller individual disputes, often over labour law violations. According to their own statements, the unions try to help their members to get justice quickly and in this way shorten long-term court proceedings. For example, a major industrial dispute took place in 2014 in the pub "Trotzdem" in Dresden, where the staff went on strike for a total of four weeks, accompanied by rallies and demonstrations. The unions have also been involved in the strike in the restaurant sector.Ideology
In labour disputes, the FAU prefers to use direct action, by which it means using the most direct pressure possible, for example through public action or disruption of workplace procedures, to win disputes in the interests of workers.The trade union federation rejects parliamentarism and representation of the people as fields of activity. According to its own representations, real political goals are not to be achieved via parliament, but directly through the involvement of the trade union members concerned. It has a tactical attitude towards works council elections. The principle of social partnership and exempt or paid functionaries are rejected.
Depending on the local union, anarcho-syndicalism is also accompanied by the theories and practice of autonomies and operaism. With its activity, the FAU wants to prepare, besides a concrete improvement of living and working conditions, the social revolution with which the classless and dominationless society is to be achieved by means of a general strike.
The FAU was listed by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution of Lower Saxony in the section on left-wing extremism in the 2013 report on the protection of the constitution. It was also mentioned in this section in the Bundesverfassungsschutzbericht 2019, after this had not been the case in previous years. When asked about the reason for observation by the MDR magazine "Exactly" in 2021 to several constitutional protection agencies, only the Saxony-Anhalt constitutional protection agency commented, giving the following reason: "At its core the FAU strives for a society without domination and property."