The row between IBM Deutschland and the IG Metall trades union over Sunday working at IBM’s Sindelfingen chip plant (CI No 906) belies all the lectures we’ve had to endure for most of our lives about the superiority of the West Germans in all things industrial and commercial in every conceivable way, and instead render Fritz and his freunds the laughing stock of Europe: IBM, as reported, got a six-week trial exemption to the ban on Sonntagsarbeit, which is actually enshrined in the West German constitition, so that it could prove that its waste metal emissions – which are also illegally high – went down if it didn’t have to cool the furnaces down at the weekend and warm them up again on Monday, but now IG Metall is challenging the decision in the Stuttgart labour court, claiming that it violates IBM’s contract with the union.
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