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Kt Stefan Wolf has been elected president of the Gesamtmetall employers’ association, and hands him over to the union. “Many at IG Metall have not yet understood the situation we find ourselves in,” he told reporters in Berlin on Friday. “Sometimes I get the impression that IG Metall has distanced itself quite a bit from the people of our companies on an official level.”
The statement shows how hardened the fronts are between the social partners in the current round of collective bargaining for the 3.8 million employees in the metal and electrical industry.
The day before, IG Metall had decided its final claim: it should be four percent more money with a one-year term. Volume should be expressed in classic wage increases or crisis-related reductions in working hours, such as a four-day week with partial wage compensation.
So-called future collective agreements, which are intended to guarantee employment, are also on the wish list. You want to give employees perspectives, because the uncertainty runs deep into the core workforce, union leader Jörg Hofmann said. The union justifies the wage demand with the fact that private consumption failed as an engine of growth during the pandemic. Therefore, earning income is important to strengthen domestic demand.
The lack of understanding of the four percent demand is great among employers. The fact that the crown crisis and structural change are enormously stressful, of course, can also be seen here, but with a completely different conclusion.
Production is 17 percent below the level reached in winter 2018, when the industry was not yet in recession. Only when this recession has really caught up will we be able to talk about growth again, Wolf said.
The union now believes it sees a distribution margin of four percent. “I put a big question mark on it,” Wolf said. He referred to a quote from Roman Zitzelsberger, who is the district director of IG Metall in Baden-Württemberg, and which often had to do with Wolf, who previously ran employers there.
Zitzelsberger said they were in the worst crisis of the postwar period, that companies were hit hard and jobs were at risk. Employers are also concerned, above all, with getting jobs.
Rising labor costs and rising products don’t help at all, Wolf says. Strikes and other industrial actions are completely out of the question.
Criticism of high labor costs
Wolf, 59, is the CEO of auto supplier ElringKlinger. The company employs 10,000 people at 45 locations around the world and is based in Dettingen an der Erms. Many employees lived in the Swabian Alb and had their living environment there. They are not concerned about four percent or so money, but rather keep their jobs.
According to the employer, labor costs are already too high. “We are no longer competitive in Germany,” he said. The background is political decisions, but also collective bargaining decisions.
He pointed to a number of countries, including Estonia and Latvia, that were “really attractive” for business. “If we don’t cut labor costs, we have a real problem here,” the general metal chief said.
The employer’s calculations show that the average salary in the metallurgical and electrical industry, including all additional payments, exceeds 60,000 euros per year.
In the coming weeks, employers will have to deal with unionists that Wolf claims are unrealistic. Several regional employer representatives, including Wolf himself, had requested a zero round in advance.
So far, of course, a compromise has always been reached, Wolf said. It will certainly be “a tough fight”. Many of those speaking see no room for maneuver and demand that this be taken into account in the negotiations.
The evaluation is still in progress, Wolf says, and clear ideas need to be formulated in the coming weeks. The negotiations take place at the regional level. The aim is for one of the degrees to be adopted by the other regions as a pilot degree.
Difficult negotiation in times of pandemic
In view of the pandemic, organizing meetings of employer and worker representatives will also be a challenge. He couldn’t imagine a purely virtual negotiation, Wolf said. Needs discussion and direct friction.
However, one also has a role model role. You cannot meet in a large group if you tell employees at the same time that they should stay home and not meet. There is still agreement on the design.
Wolf was unanimously elected as the new Gesamtmetall president for two years by the association’s board of directors on Thursday. The doctor of law succeeds Rainer Dulger, who was elected the new president of the Confederation of German Employers’ Associations on the same day.
