BERLIN -- Union chiefs at BMW and Daimler criticized a call from a leading German politician for big companies, including the country's automakers, to be collectively owned.
The head of the Social Democrats' (SPD) youth wing, Kevin Kuehnert, has unleashed a storm of protest in Germany, including from party allies, for saying that large companies should be collectivized in the battle against profit-hungry capitalists.
"The distribution of profits must be democratically controlled," Kuehnert told Die Zeit newspaper in an interview published on international labor day. "That excludes that there is a capitalist owner at this business," he said, using BMW as an example. Munich-based BMW is controlled by German billionaires Stefan Quandt and Susanne Klatten.
The top labor representatives at BMW and Daimler reacted angrily to the remarks from Kuehnert, whose SPD party is the junior partner in conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government.
"For workers at German companies, this SPD is no longer electable, " BMW works council chief, Manfred Schoch, told WirtschaftsWoche magazine.
Mass-selling daily newspaper Bild splashed the backlash to Kuehnert's comment's on page one of its Saturday edition and quoted the head of Daimler’s works council Michael Brecht as saying: "I share the view that it is becoming harder for workers to vote for the SPD."
Brecht said the SPD should work out quickly what it wants to stand for: "For secure jobs and a sustainable industry policy, or for fantasies far from reality that in the end only cost jobs and increase social inequality," he said.
Schoch and Brecht are both leading figures in Germany's IG Metall metalworkers' union.
Works councils are elected bodies dealing with management on issues such as working conditions and are a particular feature of Germany’s post-war economic success. Kuehnert’s vision for some evokes memories of Communist East Germany.
The backlash threatens to further erode support for the SPD, which is languishing in polls and risks heavy losses in European and regional elections later this month.
Kuehnert, 29, opposed going into coalition with Merkel's conservatives. He appeals to those on the left of the SPD party but less so to the centrists and floating voters it needs to increase its overall vote share. An SPD business group called for his ouster. Germany's Social Democrats formally abandoned Marxist principles 60 years ago in favor of the market economy.
The comments are part of a broader debate in Germany about the future of capitalism as Europe's largest economy faces political and technological changes that could threaten its affluence.
Merkel's government has promoted a more interventionist approach to industrial policy, while in Berlin, activists are pursuing a referendum to push the city government to expropriate properties from large landlords.
Even if the plea to "overcome capitalism" riles the SPD's mainstream, the debate will feed into campaigning weeks before the May 26 European Parliament vote. Polls show the Social Democrats trailing the Green party in third place, with support at around 16 percent, compared with the 20.5 percent result in the September 2017 federal election.
Kuehnert, who was born four months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, has called for an increase in the minimum wage and has blasted the looser labor-market policies of former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, a fellow Social Democrat. Last year he led a failed effort to reject a renewed coalition with Merkel's Christian Democratic-led bloc.
"The call to collectivize companies like BMW reveals a backward-looking, warped-retro world view of a fantasist gone astray," German Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer, a member of the conservative Bavarian Christian Social Union, told Bild.
Bild quoted the former head of Porsche’s works council, Uwe Hueck, an SPD member since 1982, as saying the party was still electable. Huck said Kuehnert's comments were absolute nonsense and could be excused by his age. "If he had witnessed the GDR himself, then he would not say something like that," Hueck said with reference to former Communist East Germany.
SPD leader Andrea Nahles told the paper: "Workers can feel assured: The SPD is not demanding nationalization. Every day, we pursue policies for good work, high collective wage agreements and secure pensions - all in line with the works councils."
Bloomberg contributed to this report
