The second round of collective bargaining for about 430,000 employees in the retail, wholesale and car trade ended Thursday without any progress. The union is demanding an 11 percent pay increase, more vacation days and a discussion about a general reduction in working hours. The employers pointed to declining retail sales and declined to make an offer on Thursday.
“As long as we remain at these utopian heights and the union rejects all creative bridge-building options, such as one-off payments or taking into account the federal government’s income-raising measures, we do not see ourselves able to make a concrete counter-offer. Because just throwing one number into the ring is not enough. “That does not do justice to our sense of responsibility to preserve jobs,” said trade chairman Rainer Trefelik.
Employee representatives also want to increase real salaries
After the first, fruitless round of negotiations on October 24, the union tried to increase the pressure with company meetings. From November 2 to 8, company meetings took place in more than 250 stores throughout Austria. The employee representatives want to achieve not only inflation compensation, but also an increase in real salaries. From October 2022 to September 2023, inflation was 9.2 percent. According to a flash estimate from Statistics Austria, consumer prices were 5.4 percent higher in October than a year ago.
But inflation is not only causing purchasing power to erode: in the period from January to September 2023, Austria’s retail sector recorded a nominal turnover increase of 3.7 percent compared to the same period last year, but in real terms – that i.e. corrected for prices. – this amounts to a minus of 3.5 percent.
Nearly two-thirds of Austria’s 430,000 retail workers are women; in retail, the share of women is even higher. Nearly 60 percent of women in retail work part-time, while the part-time rate for men is only about 13 percent.
Source: Krone
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
