Detlef Hensche

Detlef Hensche at the Hamburg Senate Reception 2018 for Roland Issen

Detlef Hensche (born September 13, 1938 in Wuppertal ) is a German lawyer and former union leader.

From 1992 to 2001 he was chairman of the media industry union . Hensche is co-editor of the political-scientific monthly magazine Blätter for German and international politics .

Life

Hensche comes from an entrepreneurial family in Wuppertal, but refused to take over his parents' company. He was shaped politically by his mother, who campaigned against the rearmament of the Federal Republic in the 1950s . He first studied art history and philosophy and then turned to law, which he studied from 1957 to 1961 in Hamburg, Berlin and Bonn. In 1962 he passed his first state examination in law in Düsseldorf. He completed his legal preparatory service in Wuppertal, Düsseldorf and Bonn. After the second state examination in 1966 he was to 1968 research assistant at the Institute for Commercial and Business Law at the University of Bonn , where he in 1972 with the work "The claim for damages for non-performance in the law of defects warranty" Dr. jur. received his doctorate . From 1968 to 1969 he worked at the Federal Ministry for Research and Technology in Bonn.

Activities in the DGB

From 1969 to 1971 Hensche was a research assistant at the Economic and Social Science Institute of the German Trade Union Federation (DGB) in Düsseldorf. From 1971 to 1975 Hensche headed the social policy department of the DGB federal executive committee.

Functions in IG print and paper as well as IG media

In 1975 Hensche was elected to the executive board of the printing and paper industry union in Stuttgart. There he was responsible for media policy and the professional groups of journalists ( dju ) and writers. When IG Medien was founded in 1989, Hensche took on responsibility for the union's wage policy, among other tasks. From 1992 until the transition from IG Medien to the United Services Union (ver.di), he was chairman of IG Medien. At the ver.di founding congress in March 2001 in Berlin, Hensche, who was now 63 years old, no longer ran for a trade union function.

Since then, Hensche has been working as a lawyer in Berlin and deals with collective bargaining policy. He lives alternately in Berlin and near Bozen in South Tyrol. He is also a member of Attac's scientific advisory board .

Party affiliation

Detlef Hensche belonged to the SPD for 40 years . In 2001 he left the party to protest against the policies of the red-green government under the SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schröder . In December 2003 he said:

“ Agenda 2010 broke the barrel for me. I don't see any qualitative difference between what the current government is doing and the policies of the CDU / FDP in the 90s: Kohl has cut social welfare and red-green is doing the same. "

After the founding of the WASG , he became a member. In the 2005 Bundestag election campaign, he supported the left-wing alliance of WASG and Linkspartei.PDS . He is a member of the party Die Linke , but refuses to accept mandates in the party. “Younger people should do that,” he said on the occasion of his 70th birthday in 2008. Hensche is, however, a member of his party's council of elders.

On October 31, 2008, Reformation Day , Hensche was among the first to sign the appeal Peace with Capital? Along with Frank Crüsemann , Ulrich Duchrow , Heino Falcke , Christian Felber , Ton Veerkamp , Karl Georg Zinn and others . A call against the adjustment of the Evangelical Church to the power of the economy .

Publications

• Technical revolution and employee interest. On the course and results of the labor dispute in the printing industry in 1978. Cologne 1978.
• Edited together with Martin Kutscha on behalf of the VDJ : Law and Labor Movement. In memory of Wolfgang Abendroth . Cologne 1987.
• Explanations and instructions for the general tariff agreement 1991 in the paper, cardboard and plastics processing industry. Stuttgart 1991.
• On the legal admissibility of OT membership. Does the "membership without collective bargaining" exempt from the validity of the collective agreement? Düsseldorf 2004.

literature

• Rüdiger Zimmermann : Detlef Hensche b. 1935 . In: From the printing association to the unified union. 150 years of verdi. Berlin 2016, pp. 96–97.
• Rüdiger Zimmermann : The radical doctor: Detlef Hensche (born 1938). In: thought leaders and strategists. The trade union press in the graphic industry and its editors since 1863. Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-86331-302-9 , pp. 355–392.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Detlef Hensche - biography
2. ↑ Ulla Lessmann: Vom Glück auf dem Lebensweg In: M - Menschen macht Medien , Medienpolitische ver.di magazine No. 8–9 / 08 Volume 57 p. 7
3. ↑ Peace with Capital? A call against the adjustment of the Evangelical Church to the power of the economy (PDF file)

Web links

• Literature by and about Detlef Hensche in the catalog of the German National Library
• Detlef Hensche witness in a video interview
• Sybille Stamm: For Detlef Hensche's 80th birthday