Blue collar no more

German bin men are solidly middle class

Photo by vvills_ on Unsplash

Dear Reader,

In mid-March, during the final, bitingly cold week of winter, Berlin was submerged in a sea of rubbish. Bins overflowed in backyards, bags were piled up on top of and next to containers on the street. The parks had turned into one large fly-tipping zone. Bags of stinking nappies, half-eaten döner kebabs—it was a rodent’s paradise.

The two and a half million Germans employed by local councils were demanding higher pay — and they quite literally dropped a stink bomb in their war for better wages. The decision for bin men to spearhead the walkout left its mark: 12,000 tonnes of rubbish stewed in the streets of Berlin during the week-long strike.

Bin men - and public workers from cemetery wardens to nursery teachers -were demanding an eight percent pay rise (plus an extra three days’ holiday) and chose to strike for the second time this winter after local councils refused to meet their demands.

Curiously, though, there can’t have been many times in his…