Frankfurt/Main – Ahead of the fourth round of negotiations in the collective bargaining dispute in the metal and electrical industries, IG Metall has ramped up the pressure with further warning strikes: By noon (2:00 p.m.), over 80,000 workers from approximately 460 companies had participated in work stoppages and rallies. Helga Schwitzer, executive board member responsible for collective bargaining policy, called on employers to finally engage in constructive negotiations, particularly on the issues of permanent hiring and temporary agency work. “Employers must now put serious proposals on the table. This applies to all elements of our demands. If a collective bargaining agreement is not reached by Pentecost at the latest, there will be no way around industrial action,” Schwitzer said Tuesday in Frankfurt.
Since the end of the peace obligation, approximately 420,000 workers from around 1,700 companies nationwide have already participated in the warning strikes in the metal and electrical industries.
A major focus of today’s warning strikes was in North Rhine-Westphalia, with over 38,000 striking workers from 267 companies. In Cologne, 5,000 night- and day-shift workers at the Ford plants walked off the job. In Düsseldorf, 5,000 employees from Daimler and six other companies took part in warning strikes. Other major centers of activity included Arnsberg, Düsseldorf, Lippstadt, Siegen, Mönchengladbach, Wuppertal, Hagen, Olpe, Minden, and Mülheim.
In Baden-Württemberg, approximately 20,000 workers from 138 companies temporarily stopped work. In the morning, 4,500 workers at the Mercedes-Benz plant in Untertürkheim took part in a rally. Overnight in Sindelfingen, 800 workers from the Mercedes-Benz plant had already heeded IG Metall’s call to strike. Several hundred young people gathered in front of the negotiation venue in Sindelfingen to emphasize their demand for permanent employment contracts. Additional work stoppages took place in Albstadt, Friedrichshafen, Heidelberg, Mannheim, Offenburg, Reutlingen, Stuttgart, and Tauberbischofsheim.
In the IG Metall Frankfurt district, over 14,000 metalworkers from Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate, and Thuringia took part in warning strikes. The focus was on Hesse. In Rüsselsheim, 8,000 workers gathered for a rally at the Opel plant. At Opel in Kaiserslautern, 1,700 workers walked off the job for two hours.
In Bavaria, nearly 8,000 workers from 34 plants briefly walked off the job. In Donauwörth, 1,800 workers from seven plants took part in a rally. In Ingolstadt, around 1,000 workers from six plants temporarily stopped work. In Ansbach, 1,000 Bosch workers and, in Augsburg, 820 Eurocopter workers heeded the call from IG Metall.
In the Lower Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt district, over 1,700 workers from 14 plants heeded IG Metall’s call.
In the IG Metall Berlin-Brandenburg-Saxony district, 400 employees of Berlin-based Alstom Power GmbH and Stadler Pankow GmbH went on a warning strike this morning.
IG Metall is demanding a 6.5 percent wage increase, greater worker participation in decisions regarding the use of temporary workers, and the permanent hiring of trainees.
