It has come to my attention that local employees (Ortskräfte) of the six Goethe-Institutes in the USA voted to form a union in April of this year.
According to the website, https://goetheunion.org/, “In 2022, shortly before finalizing and implementing the new general employment conditions, the Goethe-Institut USA had to dismantle its longstanding practice of allowing locally employed workers to elect staff representatives [Vertrauensleute] for the purposes of negotiating with the regional management and communicating employee issues to the head office in Germany.”
In contrast to locally hired staff, management staff sent from Germany are “hired under German working conditions [and] enjoy the benefits of representation by the GEW union in Germany.” In a way, each Goethe-Institut has a two-tier structure: sent staff from Germany and locally hired staff.
I have also been informed that the new “general employment conditions” for the first time now consider locally hired staff to be “at-will” and “exempt.” In United States labor law, “at-will” employment is an employer's ability to dismiss an employee for any reason, and without warning, as long as the reason is not illegal. In the United States, “exempt” employees do not receive overtime pay and do not qualify for minimum wage. This introduction of “at-will” and “exempt” status is a blatant departure from the “German-inspired” employment conditions that were previously enjoyed by locally hired staff.
I have also been informed that locally hired employees have not received a cost-of-living adjustment (Lebenskostenanpassung) since many years despite record inflation. Of course management staff sent from Germany have received annual adjustments.
Finally, it has come to my attention that management staff sent from Germany, who themselves enjoy union protections in Germany, have obtained US legal council and are actively trying to fight the formation of this union in the United States.