Largest German union confederation set to have first female boss

The DGB, Germany’s main union confederation with 5.7 million members, is set to elect a woman president for the first time.

Yasmin Fahimi has been unanimously nominated by the DGB board, on which all eight DGB affiliated unions are represented. This makes her election at the DGB’s congress in May a certainty.

Like retiring president Reiner Hoffmann, Fahimi’s union background is in Germany’s third largest union, the IGBCE, which organises chemical and energy workers. She is currently a member of the German parliament, as part of the governing social-democratic party, but will step down when she takes over at the DGB.

Jörg Hofmann, head of Germany’s largest union, IG Metall, said it was an “important step” that for the first time the head of the DGB will be a woman.

Women comprised only around a third (34.1%) of DGB affiliated membership in 2021, a proportion that has grown very slowly over the last 10 years.

It was 32.5% in 2011 and, in absolute terms, there are now 47,000 fewer women in unions than there were in 2011.