On 18 October the chemical sector’s social partners announced they had secured a ‘crisis agreement’ that will run for 20 months until June 2024 and will cover 580,000 employees in an industry that is being acutely impacted by the gas crisis. The negotiated payment increase is well below both the current and likely future inflation rate and the demands made by other sectors. However, the chemical sector’s social partners have taken up the offer of a tax free bonus payment included in the federal government’s latest anti-inflation package.
An agreement tailored to the crisis. Highly dependent on gas, the chemical sector (chemicals and pharmaceuticals), which has undergone a slowdown in business in Q3 2022 and faces supply shortages during the winter 2022/2023, has nonetheless concluded the negotiations without a hitch and only after three meetings. On 18 October, representatives of the two negotiating organisations, the IG BCE trade union and the BAVC employers’ federation, unveiled, in the words of Hans Oberschulte, the employer
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