If Christiane Benner is actually elected as the first woman to head IG Metall in October, she owes it above all to her own steadfastness. The 55-year-old graduate sociologist has withstood pressure from many in her organization who wanted her to be the head of the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) last year. Ultimately, Benner let the IG-BCE functionary Yasmin Fahimi go first and initially remained second chairman of the powerful IG Metall. With the refusal of the Stuttgart district chief Roman Zitzelsberger to move up to the board, she is finally the new strong woman in Germany’s most powerful union.
In the organization with more than two million members, the deputy office has always been associated with the claim of inheriting the outgoing union boss. Incumbent Jörg Hofmann will not stand again after two electoral terms and at the age of 67 at the next trade union conference in Frankfurt. Assuming her election, Benner will have far more influence as head of Germany’s largest individual trade union than at the head of the DGB, because the metal collective agreements cover key German industrial sectors such as auto, mechanical engineering and steel. She already sits on the supervisory boards of BMW and Continental.
Repeated distrust of Brenner
Although the married Benner has been an executive member of the board of directors since 2011 and deputy chairwoman of IG Metall since 2015, the organization repeatedly met with distrust as to whether she was up to the tough collective bargaining deal in particular. Although she has negotiated smaller contracts herself and put complex agreements into practice in Lower Saxony, her CV lacks experience as a negotiator in a large metal and electronics committee for around four million employees.
These doubts were apparently enough in the “men’s shop” IG Metall to think about an equal dual leadership at the very moment when a woman was preparing to climb the top alone for the first time. Benner should be provided with a proven collective bargaining expert, namely the Stuttgart district chief Roman Zitzelsberger. A change in the statutes pushed by Hofmann would have largely eliminated the differences between the first and second presidencies.
However, this project had already failed before Zitzelsberger’s health-related withdrawal from the extended board. There was no majority among the 36 members to abolish the differences between the two chairmen, which had been noticeable in everyday life. Instead, it was determined that there must always be a woman in the duo and that the core board should be reduced by two seats to five members. A two-thirds majority at the trade union congress is required for the change, which Hofmann ultimately also advocated.
Benner had thus survived another attempt to limit their competencies. The defeated Zitzelsberger quickly made it clear that he did not want to vote against her. Now he has retired completely for the board and wants to remain district manager in Stuttgart. The outgoing boss Hofmann maintains that he will present a personnel proposal by the summer, as his spokeswoman assured on Monday.
Benner has been thinking about artificial intelligence for years
In the division of labor with Hofmann, Vice Benner was always responsible for the big things, which initially promised little fame, but in retrospect appear all the more forward-looking. The graduate sociologist looked after employees, students or bogus self-employed “click workers”, all of them far removed from the classic skilled metalworkers who still dominate the union. Benner has been thinking about artificial intelligence and its consequences for the world of work for years.
“It’s always about the compatibility of work and life,” says Benner, who is also strongly committed to the concerns of women. She is a staunch advocate of the quota and also wants to reduce the structural disadvantages that mean that women are no longer allowed on the career train after having children. The digital expert directs further attention to the work of the works councils, the actual power base of the union.
After graduating from high school in Bensheim in southern Hesse, Benner, who was born in Aachen, initially wanted a practical job, so she began an apprenticeship with the Darmstadt-based machine builder Carl Schenck AG. An evaluation system for trainees that was felt to be unfair brought the young woman to the works council at the age of 18. The experienced handball player quickly became a youth and trainee representative, and a career as a trade unionist was open to her. However, she only pursued this after completing her studies in Marburg, Frankfurt and the USA. Now she’s about to get to the top.
