At the start of the KV negotiations for around 445,000 employees and apprentices in the retail sector, the positions were still far apart on Wednesday. The GPA union is calling for a 4.8 percent wage increase from January and more time off, but this is not the case for employers.
The demand for a 4.8 percent higher salary corresponds to one percent more than the ongoing inflation and the closure of the metal industry. In any case, employers had ruled out an increase above the annual inflation rate of 3.8 percent.
The Union demands more wages AND more free time
In addition to higher wages, employee representatives are also demanding more free time. This is not an option for trade chairman Rainer Trefelik. “I think it is impossible to make a deal that exceeds the inflation rate of the last twelve months,” he said before the start of negotiations at the Austrian Chamber of Commerce. To say that workers need more income but at the same time demand more free time is “missing the point.”
Trefelik referred to the general recession and the low willingness of consumers to buy. “We are running out of costs,” he emphasized, calculating that sales have recently increased by 9.8 percent, but personnel costs have increased by 21.3 percent. “And the view is not great,” says Trefelik.
Veronika Arnost, chief negotiator at the GPA on the employee side, pointed out how important good qualifications are for domestic consumption – and that the industry is not one of the high-wage sectors anyway. Added to this is the ever-increasing workload. A conclusion above the progressive inflation of 3.8 percent and more free time is therefore more than justified. For example, from five years of service there must be three days off, from seven years of service two extra days and from ten years an extra day off.
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.
