As expected, at daybreak on Tuesday 30 March, and following months of tense negotiations that have been marked by several warning strikes, the social partners in the metallurgy industry concluded a new collective agreement for the 700,000 employees in the North Rhine-Westphalia metallurgy sector. As a pilot regional agreement, it is now expected to be taken up by the other regions and applied to Germany’s 3.8 million metallurgy workers. The new 21-month agreement provides for the payment of a €500 ‘Covid bonus’ in June 2021 and a special annual ‘transformation bonus’ starting from 2022. Depending on their economic situation, companies will be able to choose whether to pay employees the ‘transformation’ bonus in the form of money or as time-off. As such, struggling businesses can sustainably reduce working hours without reducing their employees' monthly salary.
Satisfaction shared. Both parties have welcomed the agreement. IG Metall believes it includes all of their demands and will help to protect employment, prepare for the future, and stabilize incomes. “This collective agreement provides viable answers to the urgent questions of our time: to the acute problems resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic, and to the structural challenges posed by the transformation of our industries,” emphasized Jörg Hoffmann, President of IG Metall, recalling that nearly one million employees had taken part in warning strikes over the past four weeks.
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