Frankfurt am Main – In the collective bargaining dispute in the metal and electrical industries, IG Metall continued its warning strikes on Friday with undiminished intensity. By noon (2:00 p.m.), approximately 70,000 workers from over 300 companies had demonstrated through work stoppages and rallies to demand a 5.5 percent pay increase as well as provisions for age-based and education-related part-time work. Further warning strikes and early-closing actions are planned for this afternoon and evening. So far, around 450,000 workers from over 2,000 companies nationwide have participated in the warning strikes, IG Metall announced on Friday in Frankfurt.
The warning strikes were concentrated in Baden-Württemberg. There, by noon, around 21,500 employees from 70 companies had heeded IG Metall’s call. A total of 11,000 Daimler employees in Untertürkheim, Mettingen, Sindelfingen, Hedelfingen, and at Daimler headquarters briefly stopped work. Early-day walkouts involving more than 2,000 participants took place at John Deere and SEW-Eurodrive in Bruchsal. In Blumberg, 600 TRW employees went on a brief walkout. Additional warning strikes took place in Esslingen, Lörrach, Offenburg, and Ulm, among other locations.
In North Rhine-Westphalia, 14,000 workers from over 70 companies briefly walked off the job. 10,000 metalworkers demonstrated in Mülheim during the third round of collective bargaining negotiations in NRW to support their demands. The warning strikers from Mülheim and the surrounding region—including 1,700 Siemens employees alone—protested with posters and banners. Additional warning strike actions took place in Aachen, Gummersbach, Harsewinkel, Essen, Oberhausen, Remscheid, and Gelsenkirchen, among other locations. In Vlotho, 350 workers from three plants participated in a rally.
In the IG Metall “Küste” district, 13,800 employees from over 80 plants briefly walked off the job. In Bremen, 1,000 employees at Airbus took part in work stoppages; in Nordenham, 1,100 at Premium Aerotec; and 300 at ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems in Kiel.
In Bavaria, nearly 6,400 workers from 25 plants took part in warning strikes. At the Siemens site in Amberg, 1,000 workers went on strike, and in Kemnath, 350 workers did the same. In Ansbach, 980 metalworkers went on strike. In Aschaffenburg, nearly 1,000 employees at the two Linde sites briefly stopped work. Additional warning strikes took place in Fürth, Bad Windsheim, Coburg, and Marktoberdorf, among other locations.
In the IG Metall Central District, approximately 10,400 employees from 29 plants heeded IG Metall’s call. In Hesse, employees from Eschenburg, Herborn, Witzenhausen, Königstein, Erbach, and Dietzenbach, among other locations, participated in work stoppages. Additional warning strikes and early-closing actions took place in Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland, and Thuringia.
In Lower Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt, approximately 2,300 employees from 17 companies heeded IG Metall’s call. The warning strikes were concentrated in Alfeld, Hamelin, and Hildesheim. Among those participating in the warning strikes were approximately 160 employees at the Lenze sites near Hameln, approximately 150 employees from Phoenix Contact Electronics in Bad Pyrmont, and approximately 350 employees from Robert Bosch in Hildesheim.
In the IG Metall Berlin-Brandenburg-Saxony district, approximately 500 metalworkers from 11 plants took part in warning strikes. In Saxony, work stoppages took place in Leipzig at Kirow Ardelt GmbH, as well as in Rackwitz and Leipzig. In Dresden, 150 workers gathered in front of Volkswagen Sachsen GmbH for a rally. Additional warning strikes took place in Eberswalde and Wildau in Brandenburg.
