A wave of strikes in the metalworking and electrical industries is continuing to sweep Germany today (2 February) as unions seek significantly improved wage increases and holiday benefits.
The dispute has taken a particularly German twist with a combination of so-called ‘warning strikes’ of a few hours and complete 24h walkouts with the country’s influential automotive sector being especially targetted.
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IG Metal – which counts around 1.6m members among its ranks – claims up to 800,000 people were on strike at various points during the last few weeks with three consecutive walkouts this week aimed squarely at auto manufacturers and suppliers.
The union maintains staff at Mahle in Markgröningen, Getrag Magna Powertrain in Rosenberg, Federal Mogul in Augsburg, Daimler in Bremen and Mercedes-Benz in Hamburg walked out at various stages.
Also affected says IG Metall, were Ford in Saarlouis, Schaeffler in Homburg and ThyssenKrupp Rasselstein in Andernach, while 2,800 workers downed tools at Volkswagen’s Osnabrück plant.
Unconfirmed reports indicate around 20,000 Volkswagen workers in total were on strike at various points, while IG Metall claims 17,000 Ford workers in Germany downed tools. Both automakers were not immediately available from Wolfsburg or Cologne to confirm the numbers.
The union is demanding a 6% pay hike but says they have only been offered 2.6%, while IG Metall is also putting forward a raft of improved holiday pay rate claims as well as asking for time off to care for children or parents.
“We say it [2.6%] is not enough because we have inflation of 1.8% – it is not enough if we get only this new money,” an IG Metall spokesman told just-auto from Germany. “So we say we need this strike to get a new deal.
“We have more than 100,00 people on strike – today as well – it is the third day [this week] of this kind of strike. It happened today and we hope we will get a new deal at the beginning of next week.
“Yesterday we had 100 factories with 125,000 people on strike – North-Rhein Westphalia [for example] in 22 factories were 28,000 employees [on strike].
“It is the first time we have this 24h strike and it is a great strike [to improve] these conditions. A warning strike is one or two hours and this time we have more than 800,000 people [walk out]; 800,000 people was on a lot of days last week.”
Volkswagen disputes the 2.6% figure put forward by IG Metall, insisting earlier this week (30 January), it had offered a two-stage pay increase of 3.5% from May this year followed by a second rise of 2% after 30 months.
In addition, VW has also proposed a ‘significant increase’ in the company pension scheme.
“Once again, we have offered to work constructively on a solution together with IG Metall,” said VW head of human resources, Martin Rosik.
“At the same time, we underscored that Volkswagen needs a reasonable pay agreement. We need to ensure competitiveness and safeguard the future of Volkswagen.
“We want to ensure future-oriented employment at Volkswagen. This will call for competitiveness and cost discipline. This is the only way we will be able to invest in the future of Volkswagen.”
Volkswagens’s collective agreement applies to around 120,000 employees at the Wolfsburg, Brunswick, Hanover, Salzgitter, Emden and Kassel plants, as well as Volkswagen Financial Services.
