German construction strike ends
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) – A weeklong German construction strike came to an end Tuesday when union and employer negotiators hammered out a pay deal that will give workers in the troubled industry a 3.2 percent raise. The IG BAU union called out some 30,000 workers across Germany in the strikes that began in Berlin and the industrial Ruhr valley on June 17, raising concern that the dispute could further hamper Germany’s struggling economy.
Under the deal reached in a 22-hour negotiating session in the western city of Wiesbaden, workers will receive the pay increase from September. The minimum wage for construction workers in formerly communist eastern Germany will also rise. The award fell short of the 4.5 percent the union had demanded, but exceeded a previous offer of 3 percent from the employers that some economists said already was more than companies could afford.
The employers’ chief negotiator, Thomas Bauer, said that the result went “absolutely up to the pain threshold” for the German construction industry.
A further raise of 2.4 percent becomes effective April 1, 2003, and workers will receive monthly cash payments of 75 euros ($73) from June through August of this year, mediator Heiner Geissler said.
Geissler’s previous arbitration effort failed June 1, paving the way for the strike.
The settlement will apply to all Germany’s 950,000 construction workers, of whom IG BAU represents some 340,000.
The walkouts added to the woes of a sector that already contracted by about 20 percent between 1995 and 2001, helping to drag down the wider German economy. Germany’s second-biggest construction firm, Philipp Holzmann AG, filed for bankruptcy earlier this year.
The union had pushed for wages for workers in the economically depressed east to be brought up to levels paid in the west.
Under Tuesday’s deal, the minimum hourly wage for building workers in the east will rise by 1.5 percent in September to 8.76 euros ($8.50) from 8.63 euros ($8.37).
But it will remain short of the minimum wage in western Germany, currently 9.80 euros ($9.51) an hour, which will rise by a steeper 3.2 percent to 10.36 euros ($10.05). Further minimum wage increases of 2.4 percent are foreseen for both parts of the country in September 2003.
At present, a construction worker in western Germany makes an average hourly base wage of 13.45 euros ($12.64), while in the east the average wage is 9.81 euros ($9.22).
Strikes are rare in Germany, where consensus usually dominates labor relations.
But this year, negotiations have been complicated by union efforts to get more for workers in the east and by a desire to make up for moderate increases in past years.
Some observers say other unions have been inspired by the 4.0 percent increase won for the coming year by the IG Metall factory workers union after brief strikes in May.
“We only reached this result thanks to our industrial action,” IG BAU leader Klaus Wiesehuegel insisted after Tuesday’s settlement.