VW drama makes collective bargaining round at IG Metall even more complicated By dpa-AFX

FRANKFURT (dpa-AFX) – The demand of IG Metall for the approximately 3.9 million employees in the metal and electrical industry is as simple as it has ever been this year. But it is coming up against difficult economic conditions for many employers, with the crisis-ridden giant VW at the top. Fears about jobs are particularly prevalent in the automotive sector, where the union actually has its strongest strike forces.

170 euros for trainees and 7 percent more money for everyone else: this is the formula the union agreed on after months of voting, conferences and consultations. The third highest demand in 30 years was justified primarily by the loss of purchasing power that members have suffered in the past years of high inflation. But since the earthquake in Wolfsburg at the latest, it has become abundantly clear that this is also, and perhaps first and foremost, about secure jobs in high-wage Germany.

The metal employers point out that their production is still on average 14 percent below pre-crisis levels. The productivity of the plants has dropped significantly in recent years and new orders are also coming in only slowly. In this situation, the demand for 7 percent more money is “unacceptably high,” says NRW-Metall President Arndt Kirchhoff. Other employer representatives have called for zero increases.

Many in the union have speculated that it is no coincidence that VW boss Oliver Blume is breaking the taboo at Germany's largest car company immediately before the wage negotiations. Plant closures and the impending loss of the job guarantee introduced 30 years ago are things that Germany's most powerful union cannot simply ignore.

The new first chairwoman of IG Metall, Christiane Benner, demanded that plant closures and redundancies at VW be quickly put to rest. “For us, these are absolute red lines.” Instead, Benner brings up the old idea of ​​the four-day week, which one of her predecessors, Jürgen Peters, came up with together with VW manager Peter Hartz during an earlier VW crisis in 1993. The workers only had to work 80 percent of the agreed hours in return for a lower salary. The job guarantee, which Blume has now questioned, also dates back to this time.

At Volkswagen (ETR:) The working conditions and wages are regulated in a company collective agreement, which in the past has always put employees a little better off than their colleagues in the area. Lower Saxony's IG Metall district manager Thorsten Gröger will bring forward the VW collective bargaining negotiations, which were originally only planned for October, and negotiate parallel to the collective agreement in Lower Saxony.

Bavaria, Berlin-Brandenburg-Saxony and Baden-Württemberg will begin the regional negotiations in parallel this Wednesday (September 11). On Monday of next week (September 16), the coastal collective bargaining district will bring up the rear for the first round of negotiations, from which no concrete results are expected. In several rounds, you will then feel out the collective bargaining partner to see where a solution can be found.

From October 29, warning strikes will be possible and likely even after the peace obligation has expired. Once the pilot district has been chosen, the federal executive boards of IG Metall and Gesamtmetall will join in for the final spurt. At IG Metall, Nadine Boguslawski is responsible for this for the first time, the second woman on the union executive board alongside Benner. The pilot agreement will then be carried out with minor deviations from the other districts.