Frankfurt am Main – Ahead of the start of the third round of negotiations in the IG Metall district of Baden-Württemberg, IG Metall has ramped up pressure on employers with massive warning strikes. By noon (2:00 p.m.), 76,000 workers from nearly 400 companies had participated in walkouts, rallies, and early-closing actions. Since the end of the peace obligation, approximately 250,000 metalworkers nationwide have participated in the warning strikes in the metal and electrical industries. Further actions are planned for the course of the afternoon and evening, IG Metall announced on Thursday in Frankfurt.
Today’s warning strikes were concentrated in Baden-Württemberg. There, 22,000 metalworkers from 110 companies heeded IG Metall’s call. In Mannheim, 3,500 employees from Daimler and Evobus gathered for a joint rally. At MTU in Friedrichshafen, 1,400 warning strikers walked off the job on short notice.
In Bavaria , 20,000 workers from 65 plants took part in warning strikes. In Nuremberg, 5,000 warning strikers from 25 plants walked off the job at short notice. At Bosch in Bamberg, 2,300 early-shift workers went on a warning strike. Jörg Hofmann, President of IG Metall, addressed approximately 1,800 metalworkers at the BMW Research and Innovation Center in Munich.
In North Rhine-Westphalia , over 12,200 workers from 109 plants took part in warning strike actions. In Lemgo, 3,000 metalworkers from 35 plants participated in a joint rally. In Bielefeld, 800 workers from Miele, Euscher, and Benteler also gathered for a joint rally.
Earlier that night, in the IG Metall “Küste” district, 10 ,800 warning strikers from 40 companies took part in actions and rallies. Around 2,100 workers from Daimler, Lear, and Bosch Automotive participated in a joint rally in Bremen. In Hamburg, 2,500 Airbus employees and 900 early-shift workers from Mercedes-Benz heeded IG Metall’s call. At the Meyer shipyard in Papenburg, 1,500 warning strikers walked off the job at short notice. Numerous actions and brief work stoppages also took place in Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
In the IG Metall Central District ( Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland, and Thuringia), 4,800 workers from 21 companies went on a brief walkout. At Ford in Saarlouis, 2,500 night-shift workers walked off the job at short notice. In Trier, 500 workers from Volvo Construction and Vossloh participating in warning strikes gathered for a joint rally. At Opel and GKN in Kaiserslautern, 355 workers walked off the job early.
Approximately 4,100 workers from 32 plants in Lower Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt participated in the warning strikes and drew attention to their demands through numerous and varied actions. At Continental Teves in Gifhorn, 750 workers from all shifts heeded IG Metall’s call.
In the IG Metall Berlin-Brandenburg-Saxony district, nearly 1,400 workers from 12 plants took part in the warning strikes. In Berlin, Wolfgang Lemb, executive board member of IG Metall, addressed Pierburg workers at a rally in front of the factory gates. Yesterday, Irene Schulz, an executive board member of IG Metall, spoke at a joint rally in front of employees of Daimler Benz and General Electric in Berlin.
