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12 May, 2002IG Metall receives strong international trade union support, as the country's biggest strike action in seven years enters its second week.
GERMANY: With a wage settlement still not reached between the German metalworkers' union IG Metall and the employers' association Gesamtmetall, a second week of strike action has been set in motion. In addition to continuing the strike in the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg, the industrial heartland of Germany, IG Metall has now expanded its strike action to the northeastern states of Berlin and Brandenburg.
The union has rejected the employers' argument that the pay increase demanded by IG Metall (a minimum of 4 per cent) would threaten the country's projected economic recovery. It maintains that, on the contrary, improving workers' purchasing power will contribute to boosting the momentum for an upturn. And, with 9.7 per cent of Germany's eligible workforce out of work, more demand would create more jobs.
In Germany, gross wage and salary costs for the entire metal branch amount to 135 billion euros a year. If IG Metall were to achieve its original wage demand of a 6.5 per cent increase, this would add 8.7 billion euros, or 1.2 per cent to company costs. With the turnover for the metal branch now up to 710 billion euros, and the wage and salary quota down from 25 per cent to 19 per cent, IG Metall's president, Klaus Zwickel, says the employers can afford it.
Support for the German metalworkers' strike has come from far and wide, with metal unions in Asia, Latin America, North America, Europe pledging solidarity with their metalworker colleagues in Germany and stating they would not allow German employers to circumvent the strike by transferring production to their countries, nor accept overtime to compensate for production losses in Germany. The "Frankfurt Declaration" signed on May 10 by the leadership of the European Metalworkers' Federation and IG Metall (see associated link) states that European metal unions will be stepping up cross-border exchange of information and coordination during conflicts.
The first week of IG Metall's strike action was followed by over 100,000 workers in 88 plants. This week, still using the one-day rolling or "flexi" strike pattern, the union will call out 130,000 workers and target 135 plants. Bargaining talks, which collapsed on April 19, are set to resume on May 15.