During the course of its annual press conference on 21 January in Frankfurt, Jörg Hofmann, president of the German metals union, IG Metall, welcomed the union’s 25% annual rise in membership. The president maintained the rising membership tally was due to the broad success of its February 2018 metals sector agreement, which for the first time allows certain groups of workers to choose between receiving extra pay, or receiving extra leave time. For 2019 IG Metall intends to focus on digital transformation within offices and on the factory floors and it will draw up a ‘transformation atlas’ that will provide reports on the concrete effects of the digital revolution and enable strategies to be defined. 2019 is also the year the union intends to sign company agreements over new forms of working, such as ‘agile working’.
Electric vehicles threatening jobs. 2019 is the year in which IG Metall intends to focus on the consequences of digitalization on employment and jobs and especially in the auto-sector, which the union believes is facing tough times. Self-drive vehicles and new European environmental standards are expected to leave 140,000 without work, and as a counterweight only 40,000 new jobs can be expected in return, even if all the electric components are manufactured and produced in Germany.
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