Frankfurt am Main/Cologne – In the collective bargaining dispute in the metal and electrical industries, nearly 70,000 workers from almost 300 companies have already participated in initial warning strikes and actions following the end of the peace obligation. In doing so, the workers aim to emphasize their demand for a 5.5 percent pay increase as well as provisions for part-time work related to retirement and education, and to protest the employers’ inadequate offer. “The high turnout of workers at the start of the nationwide warning strikes shows what they think of the employers’ offer: It is not a negotiable offer. IG Metall wants to secure future opportunities for workers through fair training and partial-time work for older employees. What has been offered to us so far is irresponsible. We expect a proposal that enables a good outcome on all three components of our package of demands,” said Jörg Hofmann, Second Chairman of IG Metall, on Thursday at a rally in front of the Ford plant in Cologne. Hofmann also announced massive nationwide warning strikes for the coming days.
The focus of the warning strikes on Thursday was in Baden-Württemberg. There, by noon (2:00 p.m.), more than 25,000 workers from 100 companies briefly walked off the job. Shortly after midnight, about 800 employees at the Daimler engine plant in Stuttgart heeded IG Metall’s call. In Neckarsulm, 220 metalworkers at Kolbenschmidt went on strike overnight, and at the Mannheim bus plant/EvoBus, around 4,200 workers stopped work for one and a half hours. The largest rally took place in the morning at the Daimler car plant in Sindelfingen, with over 10,000 warning strikers.
In North Rhine-Westphalia, over 22,000 workers from 124 companies took part in warning strike actions. In Cologne, around 10,000 workers on the early and late shifts at the Cologne Ford plants and at the Ford Development Center walked off the job for several hours. In Bocholt, over 2,000 workers from several companies gathered in front of Siemens AG for a rally. In Wuppertal, 2,800 workers at 26 companies went on a brief strike. Additional warning strike actions took place in Aachen, Lohmar, Ahlen, Oelde, Schwerte, Lüdenscheid, and Münster, among other locations.
In the IG Metall Berlin-Brandenburg-Saxony district, over 5,500 metalworkers from nine plants heeded IG Metall’s call. In Berlin-Marienfelde, 500 workers at the Mercedes-Benz plant went on strike. At Bombardier Transportation in Henningsdorf, 350 metalworkers participated in the warning strike. Additional warning strikes took place at Rolls-Royce Germany in Blankenfelde-Mahlow and at ZF Friedrichshafen, with 500 workers participating. In Zwickau, Saxony, approximately 4,000 workers from the VW plant, GKN Driveline Germany, and SAS Autosystemtechnik gathered for a rally.
In the IG Metall Mitte district, over 5,000 workers from 19 companies in Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate, and Thuringia participated in work stoppages. The warning strikes kicked off overnight with 1,500 workers at locations including the automotive supplier Federal Mogul in Wiesbaden, the Daimler AG axle plant in Kassel, Continental Teves in Rheinböllen, Rhineland-Palatinate, and the Thyssen-Krupp Rasselstein tinplate plant in Andernach. Further warning strikes took place in the Ludwigshafen-Frankenthal region, involving a total of 1,100 workers, as well as at PFW in Speyer, where approximately 800 workers participated. In Thuringia, nearly 1,000 workers gathered in Eisenach ahead of the start of collective bargaining negotiations.
In Lower Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt, 4,700 workers from 24 companies took part in warning strikes. In Salzgitter, just under 1,900 workers from MAN, Bosch, and Meyer briefly walked off the job. In Braunschweig, 500 workers from Zollern BHW, Flammenfilter, and MKN took part in warning strikes. In addition, there were company-wide actions at Carl Zeiss Microscopy in Göttingen, Exide, and Thermo Electron LED in the Harz region.
In the IG Metall “Küste” district, around 3,800 workers from 11 plants went on a brief walkout. The largest rally of the night took place in Bremen, where 800 employees from Daimler and the automotive supplier Lear heeded IG Metall’s call. In addition, 250 employees at the Mercedes plant and 140 employees at the forklift manufacturer Still walked off the job. At Airbus in Hamburg, over 2,000 employees gathered for a rally. In Schleswig-Holstein, there were brief warning strikes at GKN Driveline in Kiel, Danfoss in Neumünster, Krones in Flensburg, and SIHI and Pano in Itzehoe. In northwestern Lower Saxony, production lines at Linde and Wiemann in Georgsheil came to a brief halt overnight.
In Bavaria, over 2,100 employees from nine plants heeded IG Metall’s call. Overnight, 400 employees at Premium Aerotec, an Airbus subsidiary in Augsburg, took part in the warning strike. At the BMW plant in Dingolfing, over 500 metalworkers went on strike. Additional warning strikes took place at Schaeffler in Schweinfurt, at Linde in Aschaffenburg, and at Continental AG and Siemens AG in Regensburg.
