The tug-of-war over the 2024 collective labor agreement for the metalworking industry will enter its sixth round next Monday. If no agreement is reached there either, the PRO-GE and GPA unions are threatening “mass strikes” from Tuesday.
Even on Thursday, the social partners were unable to reach an agreement after more than six hours. After the break, the employers tried to emphasize the constructive basis of the discussion and that they had come closer together.
Unions threaten
For the unions, Monday’s round of negotiations is “the last chance to avert mass strikes and reach an agreement,” the threat said.
“No deal on Monday will lead to the biggest work stoppages in a long time,” said the workers’ chief negotiators, Reinhold Binder and Karl Dürtscher.
Employers are trying to relax
The employers’ side was more moderate in tone after the fifth round of negotiations. “Today we have taken the first steps forward. Because our positions are still different, we have postponed the negotiations until Monday,” said trade association chairman Christian Knill.
At the beginning of the week, there were three days of warning strikes lasting about three hours each at many companies in the metal industry. The employees had recently pushed for an 11.6 percent wage increase. They point to the past annual inflation rate of 9.6 percent.
There is also no agreement yet on trade
There was no collective labor agreement for the almost 450,000 employees on Thursday; the second round ended after a few hours with no results.
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.
