First European Strike Against Hedge Funds?

May 10 (EIRNS) German communication workers may stage the first big strike against locust funds. The services sector labor union ver.di (Vereinigte Dienstleistungs-Gewerkschaft) published the result of its strike vote, 96.5% for a strike against plans of the management of Deutsche Telekom to outsource 50,000 jobs into new firms that would pay up to 15 percent lower salaries. Warning strikes have been held throughout the past days in numerous cities of Germany. Nominally, the target of the strike is CEO Rene Obermann, a brutal outsourcer, but the real target is the locust fund Blackstone, which pulled the strings behind the ouster of the previous CEO Kai-Uwe Ricke, several months after the fund acquired a 4.5-percent share at Telekom. The outsourcing scheme had been drafted by Blackstone, charges the union. We could see a strike by as early as Friday.

Apparently concerned that this strike, the first nationwide action against locust funds in Germany, could spread, other funds seem to have talked Blackstone into a change of attitude, offering "talks" to the labor union.