IUE-IG Metall Partnership Grows

IUE-CWA Local 84765 President Wayne Cupp, Harold Kern, chairman of the Siemens Europe Committee and a member of the Siemens Works Council, and IUE-CWA President Jim Clark talk in Nuremberg, Germany.

If IUE-CWA Local 84765 President Wayne Cupp ever needs guidance on a concern at the Siemens plant in Norwood, Ohio, he doesn't hesitate to put in a call to German union leaders.

"They really support us," said Cupp, talking about workers in Siemens's home country. "Whenever there's an issue at Norwood, I feel very comfortable reaching across the waters to our counterparts in Germany and getting their advice."

It's a relationship that IUE-CWA wants to grow and expand to other manufacturing plants. Cupp has spent years forging international union ties with IG Metall, the dominant metalworkers' union in Germany, and Siemens Central Works Council — all of which has led to a cooperative and productive rapport between the union and plant management in Norwood. Just last year, Siemens, the Siemens Central Works Council, the German trade union IG Metall and the global industrial union IndustriAll signed an international framework agreement reaffirming the company's commitment to fundamental workers' rights, such as equal opportunity, freedom of association and collective bargaining. Now the goal is to ensure the principals embodied in the agreement apply to U.S. workers.

Cupp would also love to duplicate the apprentice program at Norwood's sister facility in Nuremberg, Germany.

"At the apprenticeship school in Nuremberg, they not only teach workers machining and welding skills, they take the opportunity to teach these same workers how important organized labor is for the future," Cupp said.

Over the summer, IG Metall's Dirk Linder visited the United States to tour Norwood and talk with IUE-CWA workers in Ohio. He met with T-Mobile workers to talk about another U.S.-German partnership between CWA and ver.di. He also visited Cablevision workers in New York to learn more about CWA's organizing work.

"We are very excited about working with IG Metall as we broaden our relationship with Siemens Corporation in the U.S.," said IUE-CWA President Jim Clark. "We at the IUE-CWA have always prided ourselves on our progressiveness and professionalism in our relationships with our business and labor partners. We share a common vision with IG Metall, a vision of unions cooperating to improve all workers' lives."