PRESS RELEASE NO. 25/2021 Breakthrough in the harmonization of working conditions

Frankfurt am Main – A solution is emerging in the struggle to harmonize collective bargaining entitlements in eastern Germany. After tough negotiations, IG Metall and the Saxon Metal and Electrical Industry Employers’ Association have agreed to adopt the pilot agreement from North Rhine-Westphalia and, at the same time, have agreed to a concrete, short-term obligation to negotiate: By the end of June 2021, a clearly defined collective bargaining framework for company-level solutions to harmonize conditions in the east is to be established. With this, employers have for the first time abandoned their complete blockade—which has persisted since reunification—against ending the unequal treatment of employees between eastern and western Germany.

In addition, IG Metall has reached agreements in recent weeks with Volkswagen Saxony, ZF, SAS, and other companies, in which binding phased plans for the harmonization of working hours were agreed upon. The first phase, involving the reduction of working hours to 37 hours, will begin there on January 1, 2022. At the end of the harmonization process, the collective bargaining standards for the 35-hour workweek—as agreed upon in West Germany—will apply in full. “This breaks the decades-long resistance by employers to agreeing to binding phased plans for harmonization. “We expect that in the coming weeks and months, more companies will acknowledge their responsibility toward Germany’s social unity and reach comparable agreements with IG Metall,” said Jörg Hofmann in assessing these agreements.

“We were only able to achieve these results because workers in Berlin, Brandenburg, and Saxony generated the necessary pressure with their impressive warning strikes. One thing is clear: we will continue to maintain this pressure wherever companies still refuse to treat their workforces in the east and west equally.”

In the collective bargaining dispute for the metal and electrical industry, the bargaining parties in North Rhine-Westphalia reached an agreement on a pilot agreement on March 30, 2021.

More information on the pilot agreement here: https://www.igmetall.de/presse/pressemitteilungen/tarifabschluss

Further current information: www.igmetall-bbs.de

Additional information and press photos of Jörg Hofmann