On Wednesday 15 June in Vienna, Austria’s machinery and metal ware employers’ body the FMMI together with the PRO-GE (Industry) and GPA-dip (Private sector employees) unions presented an ‘historic’ sector agreement on working time flexibility. Indeed for several years the contentious question of flexibility has soured the sector’s wage negotiations. Whilst the political parties and the social partners celebrated this ‘renewed social partnership’, the 120,000 were learning about a new model built around three new working time accounts as well as an original way of paying for overtime.
The hatchet is finally buried. “The new working time account model gives the nation’s metals industry and its workers the fresh possibility to offer increased flexibility to the sector’s businesses and allows them to organize working time on an individual basis. This is a strong signal for production in Austria as well as indicating our social partnership’s capacity for finding solutions,” declared Rainer Wimmer, president of the GPA-dip (Private sector employees) union. Christian Knill, FMMI n
…Do you have information to share with us?