The strike took place in 1990 in the out-sourced call center of citibank in Bochum/Germany. The reason for the strike was threat of the management to close respectively re-locate the call center. The works council called in the union which asked for collective bargaining and thereby put the stike on a "legal basis". The strike took place on three single days spread out over months. The management hired scabs through temporary agencies and rerouted calls from the striking call center in Bochum to the citibank call center in Aachen/Germany. End of June 1999 the call center in Bochum was closed. Only 50 out of 400 workers were taken over to the new call center in Duisburg/Germany (30 km from Bochum). During the same period similar developments took place at other citibank call centers (for instance Gelsenkirchen, where 500 workers were sacked). The weakness of the strike had several reasons: the workers left the organisation of the strike to the union by accepting the demand for collective bargaining. The strikes took place only on one day at a time and, therefore, could not develop any power. There was no contact between the workers in Gelsenkirchen and other citibank call centers which could have led to the coordination of collective actions and prevented the strikebreaking. The symbolic actions organised by the union and the works council (protest meeting in front of the citibank headquarters, public relation happenings in shopping zones) increased the feeling of powerlessness and passivity among the workers.