Labour Minister Heil visits gorilla workers

The Gorillas employees express their disappointment after the meeting. Heil declares that he cannot interfere in the labour disputes.

Federal Labour Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) visited employees of the delivery start-up Gorillas on Tuesday. Together they talked for about half an hour at a soccer cage in Berlin-Kreuzberg, in close proximity to the local Gorillas warehouse. "As labor minister, I can't get directly involved in labor disputes, but I can get informed," Heil said. He was "personally interested" in the Gorillas case. At the same time, he spoke out against unlimited fixed-term contracts and called on workers to join traditional trade unions.

Gorillas workers have been on strike on and off since early June, after a colleague was apparently fired without warning. The industrial action is organized by the Gorillas Workers Collective, which has so far refused to cooperate with the relevant union, Verdi. "The unions support us, but they don't want to take the risk of our strikes," Jakob Pomeranzev of the Collective told Deutsche Presse Agentur. Employees are currently trying to form a works council. In conversation with Heil, they complained that Gorillas was hindering them. Further points in the conversation were a lack of equipment and a lack of occupational health and safety.

After the discussion with Heil, the Gorillas employees were disappointed. They had expected the minister to support them in their strike, Pomeranzev told the Deutsche Presse Agentur. Heil only became concrete when he announced that he would turn to the Berlin Senate. Earlier, Heil had also spoken with Gorillas, but not with founder and CEO Kagan Sümer, but with Marc Hansell, who is general counsel at Gorillas. Heil then spoke of a "need for improvement" at the startup, Gründerszene writes. Gorillas, on the other hand, thanked him for the constructive conversation and the invitation. The start-up again emphasized that it supports the efforts of the employees to establish a works council.