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Marco currently works as a Transport Facility Manager in the Chief Executive Office at the municipal public transport company in Cologne, which is one of the biggest in Germany.  He also served as President of the Youth Works Council during his previous apprenticeship there.  He quickly learnt the importance of linking work on the shop floor to trade union work to ensure that employees enjoy strong representation. As a rank-and-file representative, he is involved in the local and regional Youth Committee of the German VERDI union, since he is also in the regional committee for transport.

Marco says  “We have to fight not only to ensure more young people get a fair chance in the labour market but also for their rights - we have to support them! We need to foster a feeling of solidarity across the generations and strong workers’ representation on all levels of society and politics is essential. We have solidarity, and we need to extend it. The pressure workers suffer worldwide, be it from discrimination all the way to physical abuse or worse, is due to globalisation and liberalisation. This drags the world of work back to the 19th century. Colonised countries have been renamed as “emerging markets”, but injustice and exploitation continue.

Youth is the future! Even the most hard-nosed neo-liberal politicians and lobbyists have recognized that - although for them, we are just cheap labour to be exploited and fired after completing our apprenticeships. Training and networking are crucial to respond to the obsession with liberalisation.  We have to do this on the shop floor, in politics, in society and – first and foremost – on the streets at rallies.

My motto is, “He who fights may lose. He who doesn't fight has already lost" (Bertolt Brecht)