The Chinese union participants represented the employees of Siemens, Siemens Healthineers and Siemens Mobility at the plants in Shanghai, Beijing, Cheng-du, Nanjing, Wuxi, Suzhou, Taizhou-Tiantai, Dalian and Xi´an.

Birgit Steinborn, the president of the Central Works Council of Siemens Germany and vice chairperson of the Supervisory Board of Siemens, explained the current situation of the company from the perspective of the employee representatives and also the objectives and the work of the em-ployee representation in Germany.

The participants from China discussed specifically the participation of employee representatives on the Supervisory Board of the company, which the Chinese government intends to introduce in China, too. The union representatives of the locations in China informed about their sites and their union committees.

The representatives from Innomotics expressed their concerns regarding the future of the company Innomotics, which recently has been sold by Siemens. Birgit Steinborn and Hagen Reimer, representative of the IG Metall and also member of Siemens' Supervisory Board, explained the background of the sale of Innomotics and the position of the employee representatives regarding this issue.

Prof. Boy Lüthje from the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, Germany, who has been a visiting professor at the Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou for many years, gave a lecture on the current economic situation in China. He described the development in China as mainly driven by the increasing importance of an in-dustrial internet, which is provided by platform-based companies. Extensive growth has come to an end and is more and more replaced by high-technology. As a result of this development, there is a growing need for qualification.

On the second day, the management of Siemens China joined the meeting and explained the situation in China from their perspective.
They emphasized the increasing importance of qualification and training measures, especially caused by the extremely fast technological development in China, but also the shrinking work-force.

The union representatives from China discussed the topics training and Artificial Intelligence with the management. They stated, that the wage increases of the last years, especially for the blue collar workers, were very important and helpful. Birgit Steinborn and Zhang Shibiao, the speaker of the chairmen of the unions at Siemens China, agreed, that qualification of the employees will be a very important topic in the near future and that the involvement of the union representatives in this is essential.

(Report: Dirk Linder)