Frankfurt am Main – Salaries have trended upward in nearly all occupations within the information technology and telecommunications (ICT) sector. This is the finding of IG Metall’s latest ICT compensation analysis, which the union publishes annually in conjunction with CeBIT. The study shows that salaries across all job families and hierarchical levels rose by an average of 2.5 percent in 2014. However, this does not apply to all employees: Salary trends vary by region as well as between and even within individual job families. This clearly demonstrates how important collective bargaining agreements are for employees.
“While wages rose by 3.6 percent in companies bound by collective bargaining agreements, employees in companies not bound by such agreements saw an increase of only 0.3 percent,” said Christiane Benner, the IG Metall executive board member responsible for the sector. “Despite a low real inflation rate, this amounts to a loss in real wages.” Collective bargaining agreements are the most effective way to ensure fair wage growth—including for ICT workers.
“More and more employees appreciate the protection and security that collective bargaining agreements offer in terms of pay, jobs, and working conditions,” said Benner. The enormous technological changes in companies have, in some cases, led to massive restructuring measures, job cuts, and outsourcing. Employees’ working conditions have come under massive pressure. IG Metall is committed to ensuring that interests are balanced as fairly as possible.
IG Metall is calling for a new culture of valuing work. “Workers in the ICT sector need secure prospects, precisely because of the massive changes taking place in the industry. Advancing digitalization is transforming the economy, society, and working life,” said Benner. Trends such as Industry 4.0, cloud computing, crowdsourcing, big data, apps, and mobility have a direct impact on the market segments and market structure of the IT sector, as well as on many other industries—from the energy sector to the automotive industry.
Over the past four years, more than 120,000 new jobs have been created in the ICT sector, and revenue has risen to 153 billion euros, according to the industry association Bitkom, with 6.4 billion euros coming from cloud computing. This segment currently has the most job openings. Bitkom expects double-digit growth rates through 2020. IG Metall questions this optimism. Christiane Benner noted that it is unclear where the profit margin for providers of cloud solutions comes from in pay-as-you-go models.
The brochure on ICT compensation analysis is intended to make a significant contribution to greater transparency regarding incomes in the ICT sector and is now in its 17th edition. With over 36,000 current salary data points from more than 140 businesses and companies, it offers a comprehensive overview of current annual salaries and their trends over the past ten years, detailed information on training, and useful insights into working conditions in the ICT sector.
IG Metall will have its own booth at CeBIT in Hall 9 (Booth G10).
