On 25 January during the German IG Metall annual conference, the president of the metals and electrotechnical union Jörg Hofmann presented a profile of the union’s membership for 2016 whilst also laying out his priorities for 2017. In 2016 the IG Metall union once again stabilized its rank and file and for the sixth year in a row actually registered a slight increase in membership for a 2016 total of 2.274 million. Bolstered by this, the powerful union intends to battle this year for a consolidation of the system of collective agreements and place the issue of working time right at the heart of both the 2017 electoral campaign and the next metals sector collective negotiations due to take place in 2018.
An increasingly broader recruitment policy. For the union’s number 2, Christiane Benner, the changing membership profile constitutes “a criterion for success” in terms of assessing the union’s efforts in this regard. “Once again last year we succeeded in attracting new members from our strategically important target groups,” she enthused. 43% of IG Metall’s new members are under the age of 27. The union has also succeeded amongst apprentices (+1,600 new members in 2016) and students (+20%)....
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