Willi Arens

Wilhelm Friedrich "Willi" Arens (born June 2, 1937 in Freckenhorst ; † January 5, 2011 in Hanover ) was a German politician. As a member of the SPD , he was a member of the Lower Saxony state parliament for the 7th to 10th electoral term . From 1990 to 1998 Arens was the last federal chairman of the then textile clothing union .

Arens first attended elementary school and completed an apprenticeship as a weaver . In his apprenticeship he worked until 1962. After attending various trade union schools between 1962 and 1963, he completed the course at the Academy of Labor in Frankfurt. He worked as an assistant at the trade union school in Oberursel and from 1964 worked as a trade union secretary at the textile and clothing trade union in Nordhorn , and later took over the management of this regional office.

Arens rose within the union to federal chairman. First he was elected executive board member in 1985, and in 1990 the trade union convention put him in charge of the organization. Important milestones were the establishment of the textile clothing union in the new federal states and the struggle for job security in the textile and clothing industry. In 1996 he agreed the "Alliance for Employment and Training" with the heads of the employers' associations Gesamttextil and the Federal Association of the Clothing Industry, which for the first time contained flexible instruments in this form in a collective agreement. Nevertheless, it was not possible to stop the further shift of jobs in the textile industry to so-called low-wage countries, which also had a significant impact on the membership of the union. Therefore Arens initiated the integration of the textile-clothing union into IG Metall . In 1998 the textile and clothing union finally dissolved. Arens then worked as a voluntary board member of IG Metall Rheine .

Arens had been a member of the SPD since 1961 and in 1967 became sub-district chairman of the SPD in the Grafschaft Bentheim district . He later became deputy chairman of the SPD district of Weser-Ems. Due to his political commitment, which shaped the image of the party in the Grafschaft Bentheim, he was made an honorary member. Between 1968 and 1974 he was a member of the district council of the Grafschaft Bentheim district, and from 1970 also chairman of the SPD district parliamentary group.

Arens was a member of the Lower Saxony state parliament for the 7th to 10th electoral term from June 21, 1970 to June 20, 1986. However, there was an interruption in the 8th electoral period: he only just got his state list mandate. However, a complete recount of the state elections revealed some electoral errors. As a result, the state parliament had to revoke his mandate by resolution of February 26, 1976. Instead, it fell to the CDU politician Carl-Edzard Schelten-Peterssen . Thereupon, however, Alfred Kubel (SPD) renounced his state parliament mandate on April 2, 1976, and Arens moved up for him in the state parliament.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ TextilWirtschaft No. 13 of March 28, 1996, p. 87
2. ^ Minutes of the 3rd Extraordinary Trade Union Day in Neuss, Düsseldorf 1997

swell

• Textile clothing trade union, minutes of the 15th Ordinary Trade Union Day in Aachen 1986, Düsseldorf 1986
• Textile clothing trade union, minutes from the 16th Ordinary Trade Union Day in Würzburg 1990, Düsseldorf 1990
• Barbara Simon : Member of Parliament in Lower Saxony 1946–1994. Biographical manual. Edited by the President of the Lower Saxony State Parliament. Lower Saxony State Parliament, Hanover 1996.
• Willi Arens in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)
• Our way online. Newsletter of the SPD Weser-Ems No. 26, October 2010 (accessed on January 4, 2011)