Press Release No. 21/2016 IG Metall Maintains Pressure with About 83,000 Warning Strikers

Frankfurt am Main – According to IG Metall, by early Wednesday afternoon (2:00 p.m.), approximately 83,000 warning strikers from around 470 companies had participated in rallies and protests to emphasize their demand for a 5 percent pay increase. As on previous days, IG Metall had also called for further actions yesterday afternoon and evening, in which approximately 20,000 warning strikers participated. Since the end of the peace obligation, more than 328,000 workers in the metal and electrical industries nationwide have gone on strike. IG Metall in Frankfurt announced that further warning strike actions were planned throughout the afternoon and evening.

The warning strikes were concentrated in Baden-Württemberg. There, around 35,000 workers from 205 companies heeded IG Metall’s call for a warning strike and temporarily walked off the job. At Audi in Neckarsulm, approximately 7,000 employees from Audi, Kolbenschmidt, KS Huayu AluTech, and KS MSI gathered for a rally. Around 6,100 warning strikers from Daimler walked off the job at the Stuttgart and Sindelfingen sites.

In Bavaria , over 17,000 employees from 41 plants participated in rallies and warning strike actions. At Bosch in Bamberg, 2,800 warning strikers walked off the job, and at Airbus Helicopters in Donauwörth, around 1,400 employees heeded IG Metall’s call for a warning strike.

In North Rhine-Westphalia , around 14,500 warning strikers from 113 companies briefly stopped work. At a rally in Siegen, 1,200 employees from SMLP and Siegenia-Aubi took part.

In Lower Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt , approximately 6,600 warning strikers from 46 companies took part in IG Metall actions. In the Alfeld-Hameln-Hildesheim region, over 1,900 employees briefly walked off the job. More than 1,100 employees went on strike in the South Lower Saxony-Harz region. At the Bosch sites in Hildesheim and Göttingen alone, over 800 employees participated in warning strikes.

In the IG Metall Central District , 4,000 warning strikers from 23 companies in Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate, Thuringia, and the Saarland took part in rallies and actions.

In the IG Metall Berlin-Brandenburg-Saxony district , over 3,700 workers from 14 companies heeded IG Metall’s call. At a joint rally, Irene Schulz, executive board member of IG Metall, addressed approximately 1,200 warning strike participants. At BMW in Leipzig, 2,000 workers went on strike.

In the IG Metall “Küste” district , over 2,100 warning strike participants from 27 companies in Bremen and Schleswig-Holstein briefly stopped work.