A 2.8% wage rise over 17 months and over 24 months an almost doubling of employer contributions to the sector’s ‘Demographic Fund’. Thus were the results of collective negotiations in the chemical sector that concluded on Friday March 27 and that will apply to 550,000 employees across 1,900 companies. Given the extremely divergent starting points, agreement had been extremely difficult to arrive at and required three separate meetings including a wave of warning strikes, which are almost unheard of in the normally consensus oriented sector, before the social partners finally reached a conclusion that they could live with. The agreement marks the growing importance of demographic issues within the context of collective negotiations.
Diametrically opposed understanding of the issues and demands for the future. The chemicals union IG BCE started negotiations with demands for a 4.8% wage rise over 12 months and an unspecified increase in employer contributions. Germany’s chemical employers association, the BAVC started out proposing a 1.6% wage rise over 15 months plus a 200€ employers contribution to the Demographic fund. “Collective negotiations follow the laws of logical argument. If inflation for 2015 is expected to be ar
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