There was a time when union leaders had to be one thing above all: down-to-earth. Hard hat on their head, lager and schnapps in their hand, and approach people like that. That would probably not go down so well today, especially because the people who wear hard hats today not as a symbol but for protection would not really understand the union leader due to a lack of language skills. They are also rarely members of German unions and sleep in container buildings for months at a time.
The hard hat wouldn’t suit Heinrich Birner very well anyway. But he’s not responsible for bricklayers and painters. He’s responsible for municipal and state employees. For bank clerks. For journalists. For postal workers. For all kinds of other employees who work as service providers in the broadest sense. There are quite a lot of white-collar jobs, i.e. jobs where you don’t get your hands dirty and certainly not your shirt collar. On the other hand, Birner also represents garbage collectors and nurses, printers and truckers as well as tram drivers, where a sweaty shirt is still appreciated.
Heinrich Birner is Mr. Verdi in Munich. He has been a full-time trade unionist since 1991, first with the ÖTV, then with the Vereinigte Dienstleistungsgewerkschaft, which is abbreviated to the Italian composer. Birner is the managing director of Verdi Munich – or rather he will soon be, because he is retiring on July 1, next week; he will be 64 in August.
As if he wanted to demonstrate the complexity of his job one last time, Birner is dressed in a hybrid way when he leaves. Shirt and jacket, but no tie. Suit trousers, but sneakers without socks. The whole thing takes place in the Café Glockenspiel on Marienplatz, which proves its exclusivity by being the only Munich café that guests can reach by elevator. On the other hand: There are white sausages and pretzels.
You can believe Birner: that he is far from planning something like this. For a man with a political mandate, he speaks surprisingly openly, even about private matters. That in the past few weeks, he has sometimes felt like this in the office: someone made a joke, everyone laughed, and then it occurred to him – that he would soon no longer have that.
Birner has been working for the workforce for almost 35 years, so if anyone has the overview, it’s him. He says he can still remember the times when employers could say to their employees in a self-important manner: If you don’t like something, you can leave. Today, however – with a shortage of workers and skilled workers – it’s more likely that employers will apply to potential employees. “Sometimes I can smile quietly to myself,” says Birner.
Of course, despite all his commitment, someone like him is not unfamiliar with the supreme discipline of a trade unionist – the strike. He has listed five of them on his CV, but he particularly remembers the eight-week strike in 2015 when employees in the social and educational services went on strike. That was something special, because there is a difference between someone leaving the garbage truck in the depot and the kindergarten teacher leaving the children entrusted to her alone, not to mention the trouble with the parents. At the time, Birner was given the title “King Heiner” in the press, which he likes to say, although he has trouble concealing his pride in it.
Artificial intelligence in the world of work is what he wants to focus on in the future
Birner’s successor at Verdi is already in place; his previous deputy Claudia Weber will follow him, and Frank Schütz will take her place. The outgoing boss now wants to get to know the Bavarian Oberland, something he hasn’t managed to do in all these years, not least because he has been in a long-distance relationship for 37 years with Martha, whom he met when he was a student but who wanted to pursue a career in Saarland, so he drives there or back every weekend. “We’ve decided to leave it like that for now, just to be on the safe side,” he says.
And of course he doesn’t want to remain idle. Artificial intelligence, he says, will be a big topic in the world of work, and that’s what interests him: “Bringing different bubbles together is something I’ve always been able to do.” What Heinrich Birner is planning now doesn’t exactly sound like retirement. In any case, he will rarely have to wear a hard hat.