Over 2,000 employees of the IT company Aldi DX gathered in Essen, Germany on March 31 and elected an electoral board to prepare and carry out the election of a works council. Many workers of the discounter’s IT subsidiary are determined to fight against job cuts and the deterioration of working conditions.

The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) and World Socialist Web Site support this willingness to fight. We advocate expanding this growing resistance and making it the starting point for a broad mobilisation of all employees at all locations.

The attacks on Aldi’s IT workers are part of the global crisis of the capitalist system. Everywhere, new forms of production, above all utilising AI, are being deployed to massively cut jobs and increase conditions of exploitation immeasurably. At the same time, the unrestrained enrichment of those at the other end of society is taking place. A super-rich financial aristocracy is destroying society. With the same aggressiveness with which President Trump and the oligarchs behind him are threatening the destruction of civilisation in Iran, the ruling class in every country is taking action against the working class.

In order to successfully fight against job cuts and deteriorating working conditions, it is necessary to connect the workplace dispute with a systematic mobilisation against the capitalist profit system.

Only on the basis of a socialist perspective, which rests on the old principle of the labour movement that the interests and needs of workers rank higher than the profit maximisation of the capitalists, and which strives for democratic control over production, can workers’ rights be enforced.

Therefore, the founding of a rank-and-file committee is necessary, which stands in the tradition of workers’ councils, mobilises all Aldi DX employees and creates the organisational framework for a joint struggle. This is the way to connect the dispute that has begun at Aldi with the many workers in other sectors who are confronted with the same or very similar problems.

We propose forming a “Rank-and-File Committee slate” and participating in the works council election in order to expand the narrow framework of works council work and organise a principled struggle to defend all jobs, wages and social standards.

With its own list, the rank-and-file committee opposes those who strive for partnership and collaboration with management, subordinate themselves to shareholder interests, and accept and enforce dismissals and social cuts via a “social plan” or reconciliation of interests.

Whoever advocates “social partnership” nowadays is either a fool who is not interested in reality, or an agent of the trade union bureaucracy, which, wherever it has influence, uses its entire apparatus to enforce the decisions of management and to thwart and suppress every serious struggle by the workers.

We are currently experiencing an unparalleled jobs massacre in the car and supplier industries, but not only there. It can be seen in all branches of industry—apart from the arms corporations. In the name of “social partnership,” the IG Metall union apparatus works everywhere as corporate consultants, proposes austerity measures and dismissals itself, helps to elaborate so-called “efficiency programmes” with massive deteriorations in working conditions, and enforces these social attacks against growing resistance in the factories. At VW, for example, the IG Metall officials have agreed to the destruction of 35,000 jobs and wage cuts of 20 percent—and celebrate this as a success!

The turning of social partnership into social attacks and the transformation of the trade unions into corporate consultants are closely linked to the globalisation of production. The times when labour relations were regulated nationally and trade unions could temporarily negotiate social improvements are long gone. Now, global production and an international labour market dominate, and the trade unions demand concessions from the workers in order to increase the competitiveness of the corporations.

At Aldi, the impact of globalisation is very evident. The attacks not only affect the approximately 3,900 people at Aldi subsidiary DX based in Mülheim an der Ruhr, who develop the software for 7,500 Aldi Süd stores on four continents. In 2024, Aldi DX still had 4,300 employees. Now, within about a year, 400 jobs have been cut, secretly, without announcement, without explanation, without answers to questions by the workforce.

This is just the beginning. The latest restrictions on working from home, according to which all employees must come to the office in Mülheim an der Ruhr two days a week, is initiating a new wave of dismissals. Corporate management has successively expanded its cooperation with the Indian IT service provider Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to develop AI-supported processes. Sooner or later, the entire IT work or a large part of it can be outsourced to India.

This also affects other areas at Aldi. Five hundred jobs are to be eliminated in the head office. Cashiers in Aldi stores are being done away with by employing self-scanning checkouts. Those remaining not only have to work their own till, but also watch over the self-scanning checkouts, an enormous intensification of work pressure.

The IT specialists at Aldi DX know very well what great technical innovations are associated with AI. Labour productivity can be increased enormously; exhausting, monotonous and unhealthy work overcome, the economic situation and cultural life of the population raised. But the elimination of heavy and senseless work does not have to lead to mass unemployment and misery; it should lead to more free time and an expansion of the possibilities for education, family life and cultural enrichment.

But in the hands of the ruling capitalist class, every technological innovation becomes a weapon against the working class and against the countries it wants to conquer and subjugate with military force.

The defence of jobs and social standards at Aldi DX must be understood and tackled in direct connection with the historical crisis of the capitalist system. The aggressive pro-war policy of the US administration under Trump is not a temporary development. The struggle for world power, control of raw materials and markets has fully ignited and now determines politics in all imperialist countries.

The German government is driving forward an insane rearmament programme in order to become the leading military power in Europe. It is using the Ukraine war to prepare an Operation Barbarossa 2.0 (Hitler’s original invasion of Eastern Europe was named Operation Barbarossa). In order to finance this war policy, social benefits are being massively cut. “We can no longer afford the welfare state!” Chancellor Friedrich Merz declares.

In truth, however, the population can no longer afford capitalism and its profit system. For the working class, the much-vaunted “new era” in foreign and military policy means a return to the class struggle! Just as the ruling class is reanimating its reactionary traditions of mass dismissals, social cuts, war and dictatorship, the working class must turn again to its revolutionary, socialist traditions.

There is no lack of willingness to fight. In conversations with the WSWS, many Aldi DX employees show themselves to be self-confident, determined and combative. One of them said that if the new work-from-home regulation was indeed preparation for further job cuts, “one must also think about strikes.” Another said that there was much uncertainty in the company, but “The mood is combative. I just listened to the Internationale on the underground on the way here,” he reported smiling.

This mood must now be given organisational expression. A rank-and-file committee, which should participate in the works council election with an independent slate of candidates, must fight for the following principles:

1. The needs of the workers rank higher than the profit interests of corporate management and the shareholders, the Aldi Süd clan around Karl Albrecht and Beate Heister, whose wealth was estimated by Manager Magazin at €27.7 billion in 2025. In concrete terms this means:

• Use AI to ease work, not for job cuts and to increase work pressure. 
• Disclosure of Aldi Süd’s profits: The corporation has a turnover of €20 billion in Germany alone, and €124 billion internationally. How much of these profits from the labour of hundreds of thousands ends up in the bank accounts of the Albrecht family?

2.  Against the division of workers by company, sector and nation. Specifically:

• Make contact with other companies in the Aldi Süd group and also the Aldi Nord group. Worldwide, 155,000 work for Aldi Süd, including in the US, China and Australia, and almost 90,000 for Aldi Nord in eight European countries. Jobs are being cut everywhere. 
• Include colleagues from service providers like the Indian TCS. They are allies in the struggle against the Aldi corporation. Additionally, make contact with other IT companies. Make your struggle the starting point for IT workers all over the world against the impact of AI on jobs and conditions. 
• The workforce of Aldi DX is international. Defend international colleagues who are here on a Blue Card special work visa.

To all who agree with this orientation: Contact us to discuss and organise these tasks. Fill out the form, send a message via WhatsApp or Signal to +491633378340.