Austria: substantial salary increase in the metal industry

On 10 November, after 18 meetings and a number of warning strikes, collective bargaining in the Austrian metal industry resulted in a +3.55% salary agreement over one year. The same rate also applies to bonuses. Apprenticeship allowances are rising from 4.27% to 6.74% depending on the year of apprenticeship. Lastly, the new minimum salary for the sector is set at €2,089.87 per month. As in previous years, the six metalworking federations, which have been negotiating separately for ten years at the request of the employers, have adopted an identical agreement that applies to the sector’s 190,000 employees. Driving the level of the increase, which takes effect as of 01 November, are the relatively positive results of the sector and the desire to compensate for the 1.90% inflation rate used during the negotiations (a real increase of 1.65%). “This is a very clear result for employees. If we consider hourly productivity in the industry, we estimate that it will increase by 2.1% in 2021, which means that employees will largely benefit from this increase”, calculated Benjamin Bittschi, a subject matter expert at WIFO, the leading Austrian Institute of Economic, and who, like many observers, is wondering about the consequences of this substantial increase on future collective bargaining, particularly in the trade sector, where its collective agreement expires on 31 December 2021.