News - 29.01.10
von Info
Before the Ban
A history of the Babylon conflict before the de-facto ban of the FAU Berlin
The Babylon cinema located in Berlin's Mitte district can look back at over 80 years of cinematic tradition. Its location in a historically preserved building and its art-house program give it the best chances for success in a sophisticated city like Berlin. Unfortunately this hasn't translated into good working conditions. With little outlook for improvement, the employees decided to take matters into their own hands.
They were sick of meager pay (5.50-8.00 euros/hour), unwarranted dismissals, no night and weekend premium, etc. - in short: working under completely precarious conditions. Even the cinema's own theater manager admitted that the wages were only a bit over welfare levels in Germany. The working conditions were especially surprising in a cinema known for showing leftist and social films and which also receives hundreds of thousands of euros in grants each years from the Senate of Berlin.
In order to bring about improvements, some of the workers decided to organize. They joined the Freie ArbeiterInnen-Union (Free Workers' Union; FAU) in January 2009. They chose the FAU because it stays true to its grassroots principles and because one of their colleagues had already found help there.
After a turbulent start and the layoff of a member, the FAU Berlin presented the Neue Babylon Berlin GmbH with a labor contract proposal on June 6, 2009. The contract was prepared by a group of Babylon workers together with FAU members. It was ratified by the overwhelming majority of the employees at a staff meeting. The cinema's bosses let the June 14th deadline to contact the FAU to begin bargaining slide. They justified their refusal by claiming they weren't allowed to negotiate with the FAU because it wasn't qualified to negotiate contracts.
The bosses also told their staff that they would not negotiate with the FAU because it is being observed by the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution), a domestic intelligence agency. The reasons why the Verfassungsschutz deems the FAU anti-constitutional include its support for protests against the G8 and its organization along anarcho-syndicalistic lines. The fact that the Left, one of the governing parties of the Senate of Berlin, is also being observed by the Verfassungsschutz doesn't bother the bosses when they accept their government funding every year. Nor does it bother them when organizations such as the German Communist Party and Cuba Si (a German-Cuban solidarity initiative), also observed by the Verfassungsschutz, use the Babylon for events.
The bosses also pleaded with the employees not to do anything that would be bad for business. However, they weren't willing to share any information about business matter as is required by the German Works Constitution Act. Perhaps because the price tag on the recent, often unsuccessful litigation against their own employees and the FAU has eaten away at the budget.
On the June 16th, the FAU Berlin announced that it was entering an indefinite labor dispute to force the bosses into negotiating. One of the main forms of job action was the distribution of fliers in front of the cinema to alert visitors to the labor dispute. Throughout the summer FAU members showed their presence rain or shine - but not only in front of the Babylon. Another company run by Babylon's bosses, Kino und Konzerte GmbH (K+K), had the lucrative contract to run an open-air cinema and an outdoor radio-play theater in Berlin. Much to the bosses' chagrin, FAU members also handed out fliers at those two locations to inform visitors about the connection between K&K and Babylon as well as the labor dispute.
On the 25th of June a demonstration was held in front of the cinema, where the labor-dispute mascot "Baby-Lohn" made its premiere - a Berliner teddy bear who earns baby wages (lohn means wage in German) and brings attention to the fact that a lot of the jobs in Bear-lin, particularly those in the cultural industry, offer minuscule wages.
In July, with the bosses not showing any sign of coming to the negotiation table, the FAU upped the ante by calling for a boycott of the Babylon. The audience was invited to show their solidarity with the staff by avoiding the Babylon until the bosses agreed to negotiate. Internet banners, posters, fliers, blogs, buttons, T-shirt, stickers and a number of articles in the local newspapers, all brought attention to the boycott and labor dispute, so that it seemed like the bosses finally began to take notice. Well at least they seemed to tire down. One of the bosses earned himself the nickname the Margaret Thatcher of Rosa Luxemburg Place (the cinema's address is named after a famous German revolutionary) for both his neo-conservative and choleric antics. He called the police to have people wearing Baby-Lohn T-shirts removed from the cinema, has torn fliers out of the hands of his customers and was frequently spotted late at night scratching Baby-Lohn stickers and posters off signposts.
Other groups also joined the fray by organizing demonstration in front of the Babylon. FeLS (for a leftist current) twice showed films. Once to support the boycott by providing an alternative film program. The other time to protest against the Expo Columbia, which rented the Babylon as one of its venues. That the Expo Columbia- a forum to attract business to a country where hundreds of union members have been killed in recent years - was given a platform at the Babylon, once again proved that the cinema's claim to be leftist was only symbolic.
"Solidarity with Emmely" is a group supporting the cashier Emmely who was sacked after being accused of pocketing bottle coupons worth 1.30 Euro; whereby, the real reason was probably that she was responsible for organizing a strike at her supermarket. She is trying to have a law repealed that allows bosses to fire workers they suspect of petty theft without having to provide evidence. They organized a demonstration at the Babylon - whose boss also hasn't shied away from trying to fire active unionists - to call attention to Emmely's labor dispute as well as that of the Babylon staff.
The struggle took a new direction because of the activity of the Germany's biggest union, ver.di, and the socialist party, the Left. The Left resulted from merger of the social-democrat secessionist WASG and the socialist PDS (which has its roots within the SED, East Germany's governing party). The FAU had already criticized the Left because of the funding the Babylon receives from Berlin, and because the party tolerates wages between 5 and 8 euros in a cinema that it could influence, while calling for a minimum wage of 10 euros.
In early September 2009 ver.di dived head first into the conflict by announcing it was going to fight for a labor contract at the cinema. In January 2009, ver.di had been asked to do something about the situation in the cinema by a ver.di members who works there, but union officials didn't react. Because of this, ver.di's motivations weren't clear at all. Union secretary Andreas Köhn claimed that he became active because of a member's request two months earlier (i.e. Juli 2009), while the Left claimed it had called on ver.di to make things happen at the cinema. ver.di entered negotiations in spite of the fact that they only had one member in the cinema and without consulting the FAU. After the announcement, some communication between the FAU secretary and Andreas Köhn took place, but the ver.di official didn't offer the FAU anything more than the vague promise to ask the cinema's bosses to include the FAU in negotiations, which they would obviously refuse.
Two days before the German federal elections, on September 25th, the Left organized a night of cinema at the Babylon. The FAU couldn't resist the opportunity to raise awareness about the cinema bosses' behavior on the one hand and the party's ignorance on the other. After announcing the protest and arriving at the cinema with signs, flags and fliers; the FAU's protesters were surprised to find members of the Left handing out fliers defaming the FAU as opportunists. That same flier also stated that the Left had brought the situation under control by calling on ver.di to negotiate with the Babylon. The cinema's boss took this protest as a pretext for bringing the FAU to court, alleging that the FAU had no right to call for a boycott.
The trial, which took place on October 7th, ended with the judge prohibiting the boycott. The judge once again asserted that the FAU was not qualified to negotiate contracts. In Germany a union isn't allowed to take collective action if it hasn't proved that it can negotiate contracts. How the FAU was supposed to negotiate its first contract without being able to take collective action to force the bosses into negotiation and into accepting their demands - the judge left unanswered. The FAU appealed the decision.
In December 2009, Andreas Köhn signed a contract with the Babylon. The wages fixed in the contract are much lower than the ones demanded by the FAU; nevertheless, some workers' wages were increased by around 30%. However, pay is still well below ver.di’s standard contract for cinemas: there are only minimal night, weekend and holiday premiums, amongst other things. Köhn had promised before starting negotiations that he wouldn't settle for less than ver.di's standard contract. The contract was not even ratified by the ver.di members in the cinema. Nor did the cinema staff have a say about what would come into the contract as Köhn had promised.
In the meantime, the FAU has a strong presence in the cinema and the majority support the FAU’s activities. Clearly, the employees and FAU aren't giving up yet, not until their demands for reasonable wages and job security have been met.
Additionally, a good introduction about the precarious working conditions at the Babylon cinema is the short film by Freundeskreis Videoclips (8 min, in German with English subtitles):
www.archive.org/details/Babylon-teaser
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