Gorillas allowed to dismiss striking employees

The Berlin Labor Court upholds the delivery service. The Gorillas Workers Collective is not a trade union in the legal sense. The plaintiff drivers announce their appeal.

The Berlin Labor Court ruled in favor of Gorillas. The express delivery service had dismissed 350 drivers without notice following strikes last fall. Three of them had then filed a lawsuit against their former employer. The court has now ruled in favor of Gorillas, as Gründerszene reported.

The Berlin Labor Court ruled that the "Gorillas Workers Collective" is not organized in a union and therefore should not have been allowed to call for strikes and blockades. However, the ruling is not yet legally binding. The lawyer Benedikt Hopmann, who represents the dismissed drivers in court, now wants to appeal. In his opinion, the German right to strike contradicts the European Social Charter. Germany first signed the Charter in 1961 and ratified it in 1965. The revised version of the Charter from 1996, however, only came into force in Germany last May.

The Gorillas Workers Collective is disappointed with the verdict. Shortly after the verdict was announced, the group posted on Twitter a photo of three gorillas covering their eyes, ears and mouths with the text: "Even law guarantees a right to strike. 1952, Nazi judge Hans Carl Nipperdey disagrees. 2022, judge Thomas Kühn agrees with him. Shame! Germany was given the chance to clear its name, but once again played the blind/deaf/mute. We keep fighting for an unrestricted right to strike!"

In November of last year, the Berlin Labor Court had ruled in favor of the Gorillas employees. The delivery service had tried to stop the election of a works council with a lawsuit. However, both the Berlin Labor Court and the Higher Labor Court of Berlin-Brandenburg had rejected the lawsuit(we reported).