Germany: IG Metall abandons effort to bring 35-hour week to former East Germany

For German metals sector union IG Metall, making the industry’s working hours in former East Germany (currently 38 hours per week) the same as those in what used to be West Germany (35 hours per week) has been a long-time dream. In 2003, a resounding strike failed to close this gap. A year and a half ago, IG Metall’s regional federation in Berlin-Brandenburg-Saxony relaunched the efforts in a more discreet fashion, through negotiations with the employer federation Gesamtmetall. However, after six meetings, IG Metall said on Thursday 12 December that it would abandon the said negotiations “because the discussion is not being carried out on a serious basis”, according to regional secretary Olivier Höbel. He said: “Despite a general agreement reached in 2018, it was not possible to reach a compromise in 2019. Some promises made by the employers were not kept, while others were reneged upon.” While it is well known that the base of unions in the Länder in the east of the country is fragile, with only 80,000 of the 500,000 metalworkers in the Berlin-Brandenburg-Saxony federation working at companies that apply collective agreements, company bosses wanted to negotiate various adjustments such as reducing break times and wages, as well as the creation of a ‘corridor’ to create greater working time flexibility, with schedules ranging between 35 hours and 40 hours. IG Metall therefore ended up refusing and announced that it would continue to lead this fight company by company. This is a signal for the entire economy of the eastern Länder, where the issue of closing the wage gap with the west remains politically sensitive.