2023-11-13 21:57:33
The sixth round of negotiations with the metallers was broken off on Monday evening. From Tuesday, employees in around 200 companies in the metalworking industry will go on strike.
Wage negotiations in the metal industry lasted until late in the evening on Monday. “It’s a matter of fact,” is how the chief negotiators on the employee side – Reinhold Binder from the Pro-Ge union and Karl Dürtscher from the GPA – described the situation. Either there is an agreement for the around 200,000 employees in the metal industry. Or there will be the strikes promised by the unions – which might start as early as Tuesday. Negotiations have been going on since Monday, 11 a.m.
Shortly following 10 p.m. the negotiations were broken off without result. The representatives of employers and employees were unable to agree on a new collective agreement (KV) with minimum salaries.
The unions had already promised “massive strikes” in the event that this round of negotiations also remained without a tangible result. During the negotiations on Monday, no details regarding what was going on were revealed.
“It’s enough, we’ve tried everything”
From November 14th to 17th, the unions in around 200 companies in the metalworking industry are calling for one-day strikes. “It’s enough. We’ve tried everything at the negotiating table. After a marathon negotiation of seven weeks, there is still no willingness on the part of employers to put a fair offer on the table for sustainable wage and salary increases. The willingness to strike is huge and they’re getting it now to be felt,” say the two chief employee negotiators, Reinhold Binder (PRO-GE) and Karl Dürtscher (GPA).
Six percent wasn’t enough
The strike goals include: A wage and salary increase of 11.6 percent. Payment by companies for strike hours. Agreeing on a further hearing date. The offer for wage and salary increases, at an average of six percent, is still significantly too low. The real wage losses of employees, fueled by the high double-digit price increases in the past, would be enormous.
At the beginning of the latest round of negotiations on Monday, the positions of the social partners were still far apart. The unions entered the negotiations with a demand for wage and salary increases of 11.6 percent. They referred to the average “rolling” inflation of the past twelve months, which was put out of dispute at 9.6 percent.
For the unions, this value is the absolute lower limit for a negotiation result. At the same time, the employers emphasized that they would not be able to finance the full coverage of inflation due to the deterioration in economic development.
Employers improved the offer
The employers recently offered a wage increase of 2.5 percent plus 100 euros, plus a one-off payment of 1,050 euros. The first two points should mean between 5 and 6 percent more money. Employee representatives have always rejected one-off payments as unsustainable. This effect would “fizzle out” in the following years; the unions’ chief negotiators argued that this would only be acceptable “as a chive on a sandwich.”
The representatives of the metal technology industry, in turn, described the unions’ actions as “irresponsible and disproportionate”. The employers have recently improved their offer and offered an average of 8.2 percent more wages and salaries, consisting of sustainable, socially staggered wage and salary increases of an average of 6 percent (2.7 percent plus a monthly fixed amount of 130 euros as a sustainable wage or salary increase ) as well as a tax-exempt one-off payment of 1,200 euros net. For the lowest employment group, the wage increase would even be up to twelve percent, say employers.
In the event of a strike, the employees are deregistered
Before the negotiations, Christian Knill, chairman of the Metal Technology Industry Association (FMTI) as a representative of the employers, said he was convinced “that we are at least making progress today.” In the event of a strike, Knill promised that the employees would be deregistered for the duration of the work stoppage and would not receive any money for this period. In this case, compensation is provided from the union’s strike fund – although this may be lower than the regular salary.
The starting signal for the Metaller-KV negotiations took place at the end of September. The degree is also considered groundbreaking for other industries. Due to the exceptionally high rise in consumer prices, this year’s wage negotiations are much more difficult than in previous years.
The last time there were major strikes in the metal industry was in 2018, when work was stopped in around 240 companies with 70,000 employees. Even more employees were involved when strikes were called in 2011.
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