28 March, 2011
ICEM’s German affiliate, IGBCE, held yet another mass mobilisation on 24 March in Ludwigshafen, alongside BASF’s massive chemicals complex there. The purpose of the manifestations are to continue to buoy support among rank-and-file chemical workers for the union’s 7% wage demands in national bargaining with the chemical employers’ association, the BAVC.
The second round of federal bargaining covering 550,000 workers in 1,900 companies is set for 30-31 March in Bad Honnef, North Rhine-Westphalia state. The first round of federal talks took place in Hanover on 15 March, with employers refusing to put forward an offer.
In the fortnight since, IGBCE has deployed a “wage truck” and bus tour of activists to 12 chemical sites, reminding workers that they deserve good money for the hard work they’ve performed in pulling German chemical employers through the financial crisis. Some 30,000 IGBCE members in chemicals have turned out for the rallies thus far.
A rally also was held at the Rhein Chemie Rheinau GmbH plant near Mannheim on 24 March and after one on Friday, 25 March, at Boehringer-Ingelheim’s plant in Biberach, the manifestation tour continues today with mobilisations at Hoechst, Merck, and other companies in Frankfurt and in Darmstadt.
The truck and caravan will make another stop tomorrow in Hanau, before culminating for a 30 March demonstration prior to the talks in Bad Honnef.
IGBCE Demo in Hanover
“We expect a conclusion to come” in Bad Honnef, said IGBCE Governing Board member Peter Hausmann, who heads the union’s Collective Bargaining Department. “We expect employers to put a fair offer on the table,” something, he noted, that was absent in Hanover, or in the nine rounds of regional bargaining earlier this year.
IGBCE is adamant that 7% over the next 12 months is fair compensation for workers who absorbed work-time cuts and other social curtailments to help chemical producers weather the economic crisis. The union said the industry has now overcome that crisis. With German production capacities at full levels and sales and profits gushing upward, the time for fairness and justice to the people who delivered this return to prosperity is this week in Bad Honnef.