Frankfurt am Main – The “Future Collective Bargaining Agreement” at rail vehicle manufacturer ALSTOM is on the verge of being scrapped. In a vote, 88.1 percent of IG Metall members at the affected plants voted in favor of terminating the collective bargaining agreement. The “Future Collective Bargaining Agreement” was intended to be an alternative to management’s original plans to relocate production abroad and cut jobs. The agreement was only concluded in April 2023 after protracted negotiations, with a term of three years.
IG Metall and the General Works Council accuse management of deliberately delaying implementation. All attempts at reaching an agreement have so far been unsuccessful. If management does not back down at the last minute and consistently implement all agreed-upon measures now, the next step will be to terminate the collective bargaining agreement. IG Metall and the Works Council then intend to resume negotiations regarding the future of the sites.
Jürgen Kerner, Second Chairman of IG Metall and responsible, among other things, for the rail industry: “Management’s stalling tactics are irresponsible. This is no way for an employer to treat its employees. Our colleagues will not put up with this disrespectful behavior—and rightly so. Anyone who takes employees’ money but fails to work toward the future of the sites must expect our fierce resistance. I urge management to come to its senses. Contracts must be honored. Anything else is unprofessional.”
Jochen Homburg, IG Metall chief negotiator: “ALSTOM must also believe in the employees and their capabilities at the sites. The risk for the future cannot be borne by them alone.”
René Straube, Chair of the ALSTOM General Works Council: “I am horrified yet fascinated! ALSTOM has managed to lose the trust of its workforce in an unprecedentedly short time. If management doesn’t set the right course now, that’s it. Then we’ll have to engage in a tough confrontation.”
Employee representatives had repeatedly urged ALSTOM management to implement the agreement—to no avail. Finally, at the end of 2023, IG Metall and the General Works Council appealed to the conciliation board, but ALSTOM is stalling there as well. A final attempt at reconciliation is scheduled for April 12. If the company does not budge at that meeting and no meaningful concessions are made, IG Metall will terminate the Future Collective Bargaining Agreement and enter into a labor dispute over the sites.
The “Future Collective Bargaining Agreement” applies to the Hennigsdorf plant (including Hennigsdorf Drives), Görlitz, Bautzen, Siegen, and Kassel. To secure the sites and jobs, the employees had agreed to contribute financial funds—primarily their vacation pay—initially as a form of insurance. The agreement stipulates that these contributions will be repaid if productivity increases accordingly, thereby improving operational efficiency. However, the company must actively contribute to this in accordance with the agreement: by consistently pursuing improved manufacturing processes, making investments, allocating orders to the German plants, and, ultimately, fairly measuring productivity gains. Furthermore, ALSTOM had intended to complete the integration of non-unionized sites within the group into the collective bargaining framework by November of last year. Not only has ALSTOM so far failed to consistently implement these measures, but in February it also launched another round of layoffs affecting up to 290 jobs in Germany. Meanwhile, two sites—Görlitz and Hennigsdorf—are once again under acute threat.
Employees are now facing their second forfeiture of their vacation pay—without any real compensation from the company. As a result, ALSTOM management forced IG Metall and the General Works Council to take action and vote on whether to continue the “Future” collective bargaining agreement.
Background:
In December 2021, ten months after ALSTOM’s acquisition of BOMBARDIER Transportation, ALSTOM’s German management announced a large-scale program to cut up to 1,300 jobs, citing structural and long-term underutilization at the affected sites. IG Metall and the General Works Council were then able to demonstrate, with the help of external experts, that the targeted savings could also be achieved through productivity gains. Under the motto “better instead of cheaper,” they presented a plan that would make the sites competitive for the future, rather than mindlessly cutting them to the bone. Furthermore, the employee representatives showed themselves willing to make concessions: In the event that the productivity targets were not met, the resulting shortfall was to be offset by contributions from the employees that could be objectively measured and jointly monitored. Based on this concept, the future collective bargaining agreement was concluded in early April 2023 for a term of three years. This initially established agreement between the company and the employee representatives to invest in the German sites in order to restore their competitiveness after years of neglect prior to the takeover.
