He died for the long -standing boss DGB sommer: the father of the minimum wage

Hamburg pelvis | We met in Frankfurt Am Main in the early 1980s. The then representative of the press of the German postal union, Michael Sommer invited me to the headquarters of Frankfurt his organization – it is obvious that to get acquainted with the editor of the recently founded alternative “daily newspaper”, in which much was reported about the German association of trade unions and the main unions of public services, transport and transport (ötv), but only about his postal union.

The postal union responsible for the then state post -group was one of the highest organized trade unions in DGB, which was unlikely to cause a feeling through the impressive actions of the trade union. The conversation was friendly, we exchanged studies at the Institute of Fu Berlin Otto-Sur. He showed himself friendly in relation to the then still rebellious basin – unlike the time of IG Metall – as it was for the liberal social trade union trade union.

Michael Sommer was born in the rural area of ​​Guderich, had to spend some time in the shelter in childhood and, finally, moved to Berlin with his mother. He came quite far below, early participated in the trade unions, studied political science and rose as a full -time secretary in a postal union to the deputy chairman.

In this position, he was dedicated to the Union of the United Service (Verdi) in the late nineties, which in his German postal union DPG and some other founders as a controversial merger with a large union with more than two million members at that time.

Safety for low wage millions

After Verdi was founded in March 2001, we met again,-as one of the deputy chairman of Verdi, I, as a person responsible for the media area. He was a little suspicious of whether I was with a recently designed newspaper of membership public The TAZ Union wanted to start, but always behaved collegial and supporting all information requests.

This was especially obvious in the campaign for the minimum wage established by law, for which he was also appointed as chairman of DGB since 2002. In addition to the long -standing chairman of Verdi, Frank BSirsk, Summer is one of the fathers of this reform adopted in 2012, which ensured greater safety for millions of employees in the area of ​​low circumstance.

Summer remained chairman of DGB until 2014. He took part in the International Associations of the Union of Workers in the South. Disaster, the collapse of Textilfabik Rana Plaza in Banglads, deeply accelerated it. Since 2010, after his elections, as the chairman of the International Trade Union Confederation (IGB), he fought for the law on the supply chain at the European and German level. Michael Sommer died at night from Sunday to Monday at the age of 73.

The author of Martin Kempe was the founder of TAZ and the long -standing editor of TAZ in the world of labor and trade unions.