Frankfurt am Main – IG Metall continued its warning strike actions on Shrove Tuesday as well. By noon (2:00 p.m.), nearly 6,000 employees from almost 40 companies had participated in short-term work stoppages, rallies, and early-closing actions. Since the end of the peace obligation, approximately 620,000 warning strikers from 2,660 companies have demonstrated in support of their demands for a 5.5 percent pay increase and regulations on part-time work for older workers and those pursuing education, IG Metall announced on Tuesday in Frankfurt.
At the start of the fourth round of negotiations on Monday, February 23, 2015, in Baden-Württemberg, Jörg Hofmann, Second Chairman of IG Metall, expects a decisive step forward to achieve a breakthrough. Hofmann announced that the warning strikes would be significantly escalated in the coming days. “We’re sticking to the package. There must be a nationwide solution for all three elements of our demands: wages, partial retirement, and partial-time training. If we don’t have a corresponding result by the end of the month, IG Metall will call on workers in more than one collective bargaining region to vote in a strike ballot,” said Hofmann.
In the Lower Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt district, 5,000 metalworkers from 31 plants went on strike. In Salzgitter, 3,000 workers from ten plants took part in a warning strike. In Braunschweig, 1,200 participants from nine plants gathered for an IG Metall rally. There were additional last-minute walkouts and actions in Hettstedt, Einbeck, and Ilsenburg.
In the IG Metall Berlin-Brandenburg-Saxony district, around 1,000 workers from eight plants walked off the job on short notice. 100 employees of Otis GmbH drove in a motorcade of 25 vehicles to the venue of the third round of collective bargaining in Berlin. At the rally in front of the hotel where the negotiations were taking place, they were joined by 200 additional warning strike participants. At Continental Automotive in Limbach-Oberfrohna, 220 warning strike participants walked off the job on short notice. In Radebeul, employees of Koenig und Bauer AG, RIBE Elektroarmaturen GmbH, and Siemens’ energy division gathered for a rally.
In parallel with the warning strikes in the metal and electrical industries, an additional 39,000 employees of the automaker Volkswagen participated today in informational events and spontaneous actions. At the company’s headquarters in Wolfsburg, approximately 20,000 participants took part in the actions. Additional actions took place at VW’s locations in Kassel, Hanover, Braunschweig, Emden, and Salzgitter. Negotiations for a new company-wide collective bargaining agreement began at VW in early February.
