Wolfsburg – IG Metall has called for better working conditions for engineers. “In light of the growing prevalence of precarious employment, we need more worker participation and better working conditions even in highly skilled fields. IG Metall is Germany’s largest engineering union and thus plays a decisive role in shaping working conditions, for example through collective bargaining agreements and company agreements,” said Christiane Benner, executive board member of IG Metall, on Wednesday at an engineering and IT conference in Wolfsburg. More than 140,000 engineers and technicians are currently members of IG Metall. The trend in membership growth in this sector remains consistently positive.
Germany is currently on the threshold of becoming a knowledge-based society. Ecological innovations are particularly crucial for the competitiveness of German companies. “A just, humane, and ecological society is only conceivable with intelligence and creative minds. That is why we need more investment in research and education,” said Benner.
The trend toward precarious employment among engineers must be stopped. “IG Metall wants good jobs for engineers at development service providers, but also for freelancers. We want fair pay instead of wage dumping. We want work schedules that allow for a balanced life instead of endless work and burnout,” Benner demanded before an audience of over 300 technical experts at the fourth Engineering Conference organized by IG Metall and the Hans Böckler Foundation. Fixed-term contracts, temporary agency work, and the outsourcing of development services through service contracts are making employees’ jobs increasingly insecure.
In the ecological transition, IG Metall is focusing not only on electric mobility, lightweight construction techniques, smart transportation concepts, and renewable energies, but also on the “Cradle-to-Cradle” production concept. “Cradle-to-Cradle means that, in the end, there is no waste—only new raw materials. This allows us to act in an environmentally responsible manner during production and consumption and to practice true recycling,” explained Prof. Michael Braungart, director of the EPEA Environmental Research Institute in Hamburg. The basic principle, he said, is that every product must be designed to be disassembled so that its components can be reused at the end of its life cycle. IG Metall has signed a cooperation agreement with EPEA Environmental Research.
Since 2009, IG Metall has organized annual engineering and IT conferences in cooperation with the union’s own Hans Böckler Foundation. Works council members and interested members come from companies such as Bosch, Siemens, and VW, as well as HP, Atos, and development service providers.
