Germany’s far-right woos unhappy car workers

Written by: Rachel More, Sarah Marsh and Andreas Rinke

STUTTGART, Germany, Feb 13 (Reuters) – On a dark February morning, workers arriving for the early shift at Mercedes-Benz’s massive Untertuerkheim plant were greeted by activists from the Zentrum, a self-styled union affiliated with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

“Game changer,” reads a leaflet they distributed ahead of the factory’s works council elections, in which Zentrum aims to challenge mainstream unions that it says have failed to protect the automotive industry from thousands of redundancies.

Currently trapped on the fringes of auto union politics, the far right hopes to tap into concerns among workers in Germany’s powerful industry to create a grassroots influence that could help the AfD nationally. The country’s automakers are struggling with the transition to electric vehicles and competition from China.

“We established ourselves,” said Oliver Hilburger, 56, who founded Zentrum in 2009 and also works at the factory in Stuttgart.

Reuters spoke with nearly a dozen union and works council representatives and officials in the auto industry, as well as politicians and activists, ahead of elections held every four years by companies across Germany.

The chancellor of one of Germany’s 16 states, some senior members of the national ruling coalition and union representatives were among those who said they were concerned the far-right would make gains in votes from March to May.

Classified as “far-right” by federal authorities last year, the AfD is shunned by Germany’s main political wing.

“The fact that groups close to the AfD are gaining a stronger foothold in companies should be a cause for concern,” said the state premier, who declined to be identified in order to speak freely.

‘ELECTIONS ALONE ARE NOT ENOUGH’

Works councils are a pillar of the corporatist model that, according to its proponents, helped promote stability and prosperity in Germany after World War II, giving about 37% of employees a formal voice within companies.

Officials of IG Metall, the main union for companies such as Mercedes and Volkswagen, say many far-right candidates plan to contest elections for works councils in the automotive industry’s south centre.

Although some of them have poor ties to the AfD, they could give the party, which is leading in nationwide opinion polls and on track to make gains in five state elections this year, a bigger platform from which to influence workers.

“A works council member can present the AfD’s arguments to tens of thousands of people at a business meeting every quarter,” said Lukas Hezel, who is part of IG Metall’s initiative to counter the far right. “This is a much more valuable political position than a local councillor.”

Seizing the opportunity, AfD is giving more support to Zentrum, the most established far-right labor movement.

“If you want to shape a society, elections alone are not enough,” Sebastian Muenzenmaier, the AfD’s deputy parliamentary leader, said after hosting the Zentrum at a party event ahead of state elections in Rhineland-Palatinate on March 22.

“You need a mosaic: party, union, cultural initiatives, maybe a musician, a publisher, a bookseller. Each has its own role, but they’re all moving in the same direction.”

Mercedes, Volkswagen and VW-owned Audi declined to comment directly on the works council elections but issued statements defending democratic values ​​such as tolerance and diversity.

“AfD advocates economic policies, and in some cases even unconstitutional and xenophobic attitudes, that are incompatible with Mercedes-Benz’s values,” a company spokesman said.

Some observers warn of a broader risk to democracy if major unions are weakened, drawing parallels with the fragmentation of labor movements during the Great Depression that weakened their ability to organize against Nazism in the 1930s.

“It would be fatal to assume that the unions will get through the next works council elections with only a black eye,” said Klaus Doerre, a trade union expert at the University of Kassel. “There is potential for a breakthrough.”

In Untertuerkheim, some workers pass four Zentrum activists, but most accept the campaign material.

“We went through 800 flyers,” says Hilburger, grabbing another box from his van.

THE RISE OF A MOVEMENT

Large unions, which consider themselves non-partisan but openly advocate values ​​such as social justice and opposition to racism and right-wing extremism, have traditionally dominated works council elections.

The AfD says unions serve a left-wing agenda that no longer represents ordinary workers and is trying to discredit them through a series of parliamentary inquiries.

Hilburger said in an interview, “Today, it is no longer the cigar-smoking factory owner who bullies people. Today, people are more afraid of a powerful works council if they have the wrong ideas.” he said.

The brochure distributed to Mercedes workers accuses IG Metall, which has more than 2 million members, of waiting while layoffs mount but offers few concrete proposals to resolve the crisis.

Zentrum, whose union status is disputed because it is not involved in collective bargaining negotiations, now has about 150 works council members plus 15 members out of tens of thousands nationwide, Hilburger said. Seven of them are in Untertuerkheim, where 207 candidates will take part this year; that’s slightly more than in 2022.

A subsidiary group at Volkswagen’s all-electric plant in Zwickau will produce 24 candidates from eight in 2022, while Zentrum’s three candidates at Audi Ingolstadt could make a breakthrough at the Bavarian auto hub, Hilburger said.

Hilburger could not provide the total number of candidates.

“These are vanity companies, success here is symbolically important,” Doerre said. “If they can succeed at Mercedes or Volkswagen, that would signal that perhaps they are a force to be reckoned with.”

The crisis in car production could offer a chance to rally protest votes from workers disillusioned with established parties and unions.

Hilburger said the weekend’s football results dominated conversations at the factory, and now “the conversation immediately and almost entirely turns to politics.”

SKINKY GUITARIST TURNED INTO A LABOR LEADER

The AfD initially placed Zentrum, whose leader Hilburger played guitar in a skinhead band for years, on its “incompatible” list of organizations too extreme to work with. Members voted to repeal this law in 2022, when the party has moved to the right.

Hanover city councilor Jens Keller is one of many AfD officials who are also Zentrum activists.

“The AfD has discovered all these people it has… Now they increasingly want them to be active in workplace politics,” said political analyst Andre Schmidt of the University of Leipzig.

An exit poll by Infratest dimap after last year’s federal election showed that around 38% of blue-collar workers voted for the AfD, up 17 points from 2021, while only 12% chose the centre-left Social Democrats.

AFD: NEW WORKERS’ PARTY?

Hildegard Mueller, who chairs the VDA automotive industry association, warned that given job insecurity and policymakers’ inaction, the far-right’s “simplistic, populist and emotionally charged” messages could be persuasive.

“It is not just the AfD waiting at the factory gates; representatives close to the AfD will also be on the lists,” he said.

Traditional unions are resisting: Hezel said that they recruited 10 people to the Association for the Protection of Democracy, which IG Metall founded in 2019 to counter extremism in the workplace. They claim that groups like Zentrum are fake unions whose aim is not to protect workers’ interests but to disrupt order.

The Confederation of Christian Trade Unions (CGB) warned that some works council candidates had not declared their ties to the AfD, describing them as “more dangerous than the Zentrum, whose proximity to the AfD is at least known”.

An Opel Ruesselsheim works council member elected to the metalworkers union list of the CGB in March 2025 was later reported to have ties to far-right groups.

Union density has roughly halved since the 1990s, to around 14% of German workers, and the AfD has challenged the established role of unions in civil society and politics.

“They are the only organizations still competing with unions to be the voice of workers,” Schmidt said.

(Reporting by Rachel More, Sarah Marsh, Andreas Rinke and Christina Amann in Berlin, Ilona Wissenbach in Frankfurt and Joern Poltz in Munich; Editing by Catherine Evans)