German workers stage strikes in pay dispute

German industrial workers staged strikes at metals and engineering firms yesterday in support of wage claims by union IG Metall, which announced a further wave of walkouts for today.
With the economy in robust health and unemployment at record lows, the country’s biggest union is demanding an inflation-busting 6% pay hike this year for about 3.9mn workers, as well as a shorter work week.
IG Metall wants workers to have the option to temporarily switch to a 28-hour week in the pursuit of better work-life balance.
Even more controversially, it wants shift workers and those caring for children or elderly relatives to be compensated for some of the salary loss that would come with clocking up fewer hours.
Employers say such a drastic change would be illegal and have threatened to go to court to stop the industrial action.
Ahead of regional negotiations due to begin on Thursday, employers have so far offered 2% plus a one-off €200 ($240) payment in the first quarter.
Yesterday more than 3,000 employees downed tools at sports car maker Porsche in Stuttgart, and around 400 at elevator maker OTIS in Berlin were expected to do likewise.
Night shift workers at automotive supplier Kirchhoff in the industrial heartland state of North Rhine-Westphalia also walked out, as did personnel at farming machinery maker Claas.
“The employers provoked these warning strikes with their behaviour at the negotiating table,” Knut Giesler, head of IG Metall in North Rhine-Westphalia, said.
In the state, also Germany’s most populous, IG Metall has called for stoppages at 143 companies today, including Lumileds, the LED components and car lighting business of Philips, and Thyssenkrupp unit Rothe Erde in Dortmund.
Up to 700,000 are expected to join a week of so-called “warning strikes”, a familiar feature of the annual collective bargaining process that sees workers downing tools for a few hours to demonstrate at factory gates and in town squares.
Industrial action is scheduled to the south in Bavaria, home to premium carmaker BMW and engineering group Siemens, where the union is threatening to shift from short warning strikes lasting only a few hours to full-day stoppages.
The dispute follows a strong year of growth in Europe’s largest economy, driven by domestic demand from record numbers of German workers while borrowing costs and inflation remain low and exporters benefit from a global recovery.
That pattern should extend through 2018, with the Ifo economic institute last month forecasting growth of 2.6% for the year.
Talks between unions and employers’ associations are set for Thursday in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, where Volkswagen’s Porsche, Mercedes-Benz maker Daimler and automotive suppliers including Bosch are based.
In Bavaria, negotiations will resume on January 15, and in North Rhine-Westphalia on January 18.
The latter state’s sector employers’ association, Metall NRW, said the strikes risked damaging Germany industrial companies’ reputation as reliable suppliers.
“I expect the union to take action at the negotiating table and not out in the streets,” Metall NRW director Luitwin Mallmann said in a statement.
IG Metall has not organised a nationwide, open-ended strike in Germany since 2003.
Boasting some 2.3mn members, IG Metall is Europe’s largest trade union, representing workers of all kinds in industrial conglomerates like Siemens or Thyssenkrupp, steelmaking, the auto industry, electronics and textiles.
The sheer weight of the metal and electrical industries’ 3.9mn workers often draws other sectors along in its wake when it comes to pay deals – and 2018’s showdown could make for massive changes.
Unions are demanding a pay rise of 6% this year.
While the figure is triple bosses’ initial offer of 2%, it is a classic starting position to wring out a compromise.
Far more contentious is their other headline demand – the right for workers to switch from 35 to 28 hours per week for up to two years, with the employer guaranteeing the right to return to full-time work – as well as paying some of the salary shortfall in certain cases.
IG Metall says the proposal would give workers a better quality of life.
“Workers aren’t only workers, they have personal lives, children, old parents, all that must be taken into account. Working life can’t only be about sacrifice,” Berlin IG Metall chief Olivier Hoebel told hundreds of strikers demonstrating in the capital with bibs in the union’s signature red colour and whistles in hand.
Employers fear up to two-thirds of workers could be eligible, leaving factory floors bare and prompting a new administrative tangle.
And they argue that the change would be unfair to those who have already taken a pay cut when switching to part-time.
The Gesamtmetall employers’ federation has blasted the demands and any industrial action workers take to achieve them as outright “illegal”, threatening to take the question to court.
Industry leaders in metal and electricals – key sectors for the German economy that are in otherwise rude health – are keen to avoid a drawn-out industrial dispute.
“In general, strikes are not an appropriate means to resolve salary disputes. They hurt exports, and thereby the company and in the end the employees,” said Bertram Brossardt, head of the employers’ association for the sector in southern state Bavaria.
With the German economy pumped up by strong exports and domestic demand, a labour market swept clean of skilled workers and low inflation, most of the cards appear to be in IG Metall’s hand going into the talks.
“We need a clear signal from bosses that they’re interested in a solution for the question of working hours,” IG Metall chief for southwestern Germany Roman Zitzelsberger said on Sunday.
Otherwise, “it will be extremely difficult to get through the talks with just warning strikes”, he cautioned.