At the start of the week, around 38,000 employees in the metal and electrical industry are already stopping work at short notice and are putting pressure on their concerns in front of the factory gates. IG Metall's demand: five percent more salary.
In the collective bargaining dispute in the German metal and electrical industry, IG Metall has launched the first wave of warning strikes. According to the union, around 38,000 employees had already taken part in 220 company activities at the start of the week. Work stoppages have been announced in more than 2,000 companies nationwide for the current week. A third round of negotiations has not yet been firmly agreed in any collective bargaining area, as a union spokesman in Frankfurt explained when asked.
While there were initially smaller actions in individual companies with weekend and night shifts at the weekend immediately after the peace obligation expired, this Monday thousands of trade unionists took to the streets to demand their demands, including at a rally in Koblenz. In Berlin, the warning strike began that night at Siemens Energy with a one-hour walkout. Over the course of the day, work stoppages followed at Mercedes-Benz, Rheinmetall and Siemens Mobility, among others.
The protests are to be expanded on Tuesday with a focus on Baden-Württemberg, North Rhine-Westphalia and the Mitte district with Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland and Thuringia, as IG Metall announced.
The union has demanded 5 percent more money over a period of twelve months as well as securing jobs and locations. In the second round of negotiations, the employers submitted an offer that initially provides for a one-off payment and a step increase of 1.3 percent in July 2028 for a term of 26 months. The offer was justified by the difficult economic situation and the high cost burdens for industry in Germany.
At the warning strike meetings, speakers argued that consumer prices had recently risen sharply. The offer from employers is well below inflation, although the economy is sending the first signals of recovery, said NRW district boss Knut Giesler. "We won't accept that." The offer neither compensates for the increased cost of living nor does it offer prospects for investments, job security and the future of industrial locations.
It's about the working conditions and wages of around 3.7 million employees who fall under the metal and electrical industry tariff. There have been no signs of a conclusion in two rounds of negotiations so far. Important industries such as automobile and mechanical engineering, electronics and metal production are affected by the temporary strikes. The participants in the strikes do not receive any strike pay.
The employers' association Gesamtmetall sees the high labor costs as one of several reasons for the progressive deindustrialization of Germany. Since 2019, 350,000 jobs have already been lost in the metal and electrical industry, and a further 300,000 are at risk due to the underutilization of companies. “In order to reverse the trend, the costs at the location must fall - in taxes, energy, bureaucracy and labor costs,” explained Managing Director Oliver Zander.
In Hesse, employers criticized the warning strikes that had now started as “inappropriate saber rattling”. "Warning strikes stop production. But not the cost pressure. Anyone who additionally slows down production under these conditions weakens the locations whose future we want to secure together," says Hessenmetall's managing director, Dirk Pollert, according to a statement. Good incomes would require a competitive industrial base.
