International Women's Day 2026: Unionisation remains the most effective protection

Ms Liebig, on this year’s International Women’s Day, ver.di is calling for protests against the erosion of women’s and workers’ rights and advocating for democratic workplaces. From an immigration policy perspective, this raises questions about the working conditions faced by women from migrant backgrounds in Germany. In your view, what are the key demands in this area?

Rebecca Liebig: The public debate on fair pay must not focus solely on gender. In general, we believe that remuneration should not depend on the colour of someone’s skin, their nationality, or where they were born. As a society, we’re called upon to overcome the structural barriers between migrants and non-migrants – and this includes equal access to good jobs. This can be achieved through recognition of professional qualifications, language support, and training, ensuring that jobs covered by collective agreements are accessible to everyone without discrimination. 

Not only do collective wage agreements protect workers against arbitrary pay; they also create trust. This is something that is especially important for skilled workers who have recently arrived from another country and who need to be able to rely on the working conditions being fair. Anyone who is expected to remain here in the long term has to be treated fairly. After all, wages are more than just money. They represent acknowledgement, respect and participation.

Employees from a migrant background are disproportionately represented in sectors with labour shortages, such as elderly care. Particularly for those employed as live-in carers in private households, the strain caused by irregular working hours and inadequate occupational health and safety protections is considerable. What do you think needs to change to ensure this type of work is better regulated – for the benefit of both the employees and those they care for?

In Germany, around three million people in need of care receive it at home, often from one of the hundreds of thousands of carers from Eastern Europe. Without them, the system would grind to a halt. Agency promises of round-the-clock care means carers work excessively long hours – and they are usually not fully compensated for this.

Politicians and policymakers must finally address the issue of 24-hour care. The system fundamentally violates working time laws and occupational health regulations, and carers are regularly paid below the statutory minimum wage. But care recipients and their families also need clear legal protections and, more importantly, an official support system that meets their needs. It is high time that long-term care insurance was developed into a collective, “solidarity-based care guarantee”, with everyone contributing and care-related costs borne entirely by the community of contributors.

Care workers from migrant backgrounds are in a particularly precarious situation due to dependencies, for example on recruitment agencies, employers or residence regulations. How does ver.di, as the responsible trade union, manage to reach and mobilise these employees? What are the biggest challenges in this area?

The placement and recruitment process is especially susceptible to abuse. This highlights how detrimental it is that neither Germany nor many of the countries of origin have ratified ILO Convention 181 to date. Article 7 of the convention prohibits private employment agencies from charging immigrant workers any fees, for example. 

Yet care workers often pay the equivalent of several months’ salary in their home country, while employers can pay up to 20,000 euros for recruitment services. In addition, many contracts between agencies and care staff include clauses requiring the worker to pay the agency a penalty of four German monthly salaries if they fail to complete a language course or terminate their contract early for “reasons attributable to the employee”. These are clearly exploitative contracts that ver.di categorically rejects.

As part of collective bargaining rounds and through our union representatives in the workplace, we work directly with care staff from third countries to shape and strengthen our union’s demands. ver.di calls for the creation of effective enforcement instruments such as fines to sanction employers who violate their legal obligations when employing immigrant workers. In addition, advisory services for third-country nationals, such as the nationwide Fair Integration programme, must be expanded. We recently made contact with some Vietnamese trainee carers working in Altenburg, Thuringia, who had been subject to severe exploitation. ver.di is now helping these carers to pursue claims for unpaid wages.

At a time of tighter immigration policies and increasing attacks on workers’ rights, what gives you hope that progress is possible in 2026?

When I see how so many of my migrant colleagues are currently unionising and fighting for collective agreements and better pay, it gives me hope. The collective bargaining disputes led by migrant women at hospital spin-off service providers, such as the recent case at Charité Facility Management (CFM) in Berlin, are the best example of this. Unionisation remains the most effective protection against pressure from the right.

Rebecca Liebig is a member of the Federal Executive Board of the trade union ver.di. After training as a medical assistant and passing her first state examination in law in 2002, she was already active in staff representation during her employment at a health insurance company. In 2013, she began working as a trade union secretary for ver.di in the federal state of Hesse, took over as deputy regional director of Rhineland-Palatinate-Saarland in 2019 and was elected by a large majority of delegates at the national congress to the ver.di Federal Executive Board in September 2023, where she is responsible for issues including pension policy, occupational health and safety, participation policy, migration and integration.