In Germany, the IG Metall union demands an 8.2% increase in the steel industry

It is only a small tariff negotiation, which concerns only 80,000 employees in the steel industry. Not enough to introduce major macroeconomic changes. However, the signal is unequivocal: the IG Metall union is demanding a salary increase of… 8.2% for the employees. Knowing that inflation, across the Rhine, reached 7.4% in April. IG Metall is playing big: a success of the union would have a major psychological effect for all German employees.

Following a well-established ritual, the negotiations began at the end of April with exploratory discussions, during which any strike is in principle excluded. If no agreement is reached between the employers and the IG Metall union by 1er June, a more muscular phase will begin, during which work stoppages may be decided. Very disturbing in a sector where installations must operate twenty-four hours a day, at a time when the industry is already struggling to fulfill its orders.

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This scenario is a dress rehearsal for what awaits the German economy in the fall. It is there that major negotiations of the key branches of German industry will be held, very organized. First in electronics and metallurgy, where IG Metall will negotiate the remuneration of 3.9 million employees. Then in chemicals (500,000 employees) and certain public services. The unions have not, for the moment, formulated a quantified demand for these negotiations, but everything suggests that they should also demand a substantial increase. But at the same time, the great promise of the Social Democratic Party, the increase of the minimum wage to 12 euros per hour, will come into force, improving the lot of millions of low-income workers in Germany in one fell swoop. .

“The danger of a price-wage spiral is real”

The unions are in a strong position: despite slow growth due to supply difficulties, unemployment has returned to its pre-crisis level. And above all, many companies have difficulty recruiting staff, qualified or not. Some have already raised their prices. In discount stores Lidl and Aldi, for example, the lowest wage will be increased to 14 euros per hour, from June, against around 12 euros so far. And this, despite the plans granted by the government to ease the inflationary pressure on households.

If no one in Germany disputes the legitimacy of the revaluations, many economists and politicians fear that these simultaneous increases will trigger uncontrollable inflation. “The danger of a price-wage spiral is real”warned the German finance minister, Christian Lindner, very worried, at the beginning of May. “There is a risk that the heightened expectations of business and trade unions regarding inflation will be taken into account in wage negotiations, and that the currently high inflation will become entrenched in the medium term. »

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