German strikes spread to Daimler, union mulls escalation
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Strike
Frankfurt, Jan. 16, 2018 (Reuters/NAN) Tens of thousands of German industrial workers downed tools on Tuesday in support of trade union IG Metall’s demands for a 6 per cent pay rise.
The workers also demand a right to the first new cut in weekly working hours since the 1980s.
Workers have been staging such warning strikes since Jan. 8 with a common tactic in sectoral wage negotiations in Germany.
About 33,000 workers took part on Tuesday, including 10,000 at Mercedes maker Daimler AG (DAIGn.DE), taking the total to 425,000 since strike started.
With Europe’s largest economy steaming ahead and unemployment at a record low, Germany’s biggest trade union is confident of winning a significantly better deal for around 3.9 million workers in the metal and engineering sectors.
IG Metall said it would decide on Jan 26, after the current round of wage talks, whether to escalate the dispute into 24-hour strikes.
“The proposal that the employers have made is far from fair.
“An offer of a 2 per cent wage rise is more like a provocation,” IG Metall chief Joerg Hofmann told a news conference in Frankfurt.
IG Metall is demanding that workers should be allowed to cut their weekly hours to 28 from 35 if they need to care for children, elderly or sick relatives and get the right to return to work full-time after two years.
The union said it had beefed up its strike war chest by 84 million euros in 2017 thanks to membership dues that rose 2 per cent to 561 million euros.
“We have plenty of staying power.
“Our strike coffers are well filled,” the union treasurer Juergen Kerner said.
In the northern state of Lower Saxony, employers’ association NiedersachsenMetall said a third round of negotiations had ended on Tuesday without a result.
“We’ve offered the trade union alternative solutions but unfortunately we’re not seeing much movement from the other side yet,” NiedersachsenMetall head Volker Schmidt said.
Roman Zitzelsberger, head of IG Metall in the southwestern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, told striking workers that “the economy is booming because the employees like those here at Daimler do good work every day.
“So 6 per cent is appropriate and we won’t be fobbed off with 2 per cent.”
Employers reject the demands to cut hours unless working time for others could be increased temporarily as well.
They argue that workers in Germany’s industrial sector already have shorter weeks than their peers in other countries and worry that reducing their hours further would hurt German competitiveness. (Reuters/NAN)
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Edited by Celine-Damilola Oyewole/Felix Ajide