German union moves strike into full gear
STUTTGART, Germany (AP) – The first strike by Germany’s biggest industrial union in seven years moved into full gear Monday as 50,000 workers in one of the nation’s industrial centers launched a series of one-day strikes that some analysts fear could slow the recovery of Europe’s biggest economy. The head of the powerful IG Metall union, with 2.7 million members nationwide, rallied striking workers at the Stuttgart headquarters of the luxury carmaker Porsche at dawn on Monday, pledging to fight until the strike achieves an “acceptable result.”
The union, which also represents workers in electronics and machine building, is pushing for a one-year 6.5 percent pay increase to compensate for moderate past increases, inflation and higher productivity.
To press its point, it has initiated a new tactic of “flexible strikes,” calling on members to stage one-day walkouts at specific companies but stopping short of a damaging total shutdown. They began rolling Sunday night at a Daimler-Chrysler plant in Sindelfingen, spreading to 20 companies Monday.
Employers, who last offered 3.3 percent for 15 months, were showing no signs of budging. The union was holding out for 4 percent when talks broke off April 19; it since reverted to its original 6.5 percent demand, though most think it will get less.
“Zwickel won’t get a new offer from us,” the chief negotiator for employers in southwestern Baden-Wuerttemberg state, Ottmar Zwiebelhofer, told ARD television. “We went to the upper limit of what we could manage with our offer.”
At the Porsche headquarters, union officials handed out steaming plastic cups of coffee and pretzels in near-freezing temperatures to the several hundred workers, many them sporting red vests emblazoned with the words “We’re On Strike.”
“We are beginning a difficult task, and we don’t know how difficult it will be,” union leader Klaus Zwickel told the workers. He said the action would continue “until we get an acceptable result, acceptable to those who voted to strike.”
“We are ready to talk straight away” if employers improve their offer, he insisted.
In all, 2,500 workers boycotted Porsche, meaning a one-day loss in production of 145 911s and Boxster sports cars worth 10 million euros ($9 million) in sales.
Porsche spokesman Christian Dau said the company could make that up in the next several weeks by redoubling production. “A one-day strike is not a problem for us,” he said. “We hope that both parties in the wage conflict return to the negotiating table.”
Other firms hit Monday included some of manufacturing’s biggest names: luxury carmaker Audi, more DaimlerChrysler plants, U.S.-based tractor maker John Deere in Mannheim; auto supplier Delphi Automotive in Neckarsulm, and Krupp Automotive in Stuttgart.
Union officials were withholding the names of companies targeted on Tuesday, but spokesman Frank Peter Stroh said they would include aluminum processors, medical equipment makers and power tool makers.
IG Metall’s last major strike shut down small firms in Bavaria for two weeks in 1995, and resulted in increases of 3.4 percent to 3.6 percent.
Union members earn an average of around 2,000 euros ($1,800) a month, plus substantial benefits including six weeks of paid vacation and bonuses.
Michael Rogowski, the head of the Federation of German Industry, the country’s main employers’ body, has said the unions’ demands are “madness” given the country’s feeble economic situation.
The union ignored appeals from Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder for a wage deal that doesn’t snuff out the beginning of economic recovery in Germany, which suffered a mild recession in the second half of last year.
A Social Democrat who relies on union support, Schroeder faces tough national parliamentary elections Sept. 22. Conservative challenger Edmund Stoiber, the governor of Bavaria, has lambasted Schroeder for the country’s sluggish growth and its unemployment rate of 10 percent.
“We are not on strike against Schroeder … or against anyone,” Zwickel said Monday. “We are on strike for a good result.”
Any wage settlement in Baden-Wuerttemberg is expected to set the pattern for workers across Germany. Most contracts are negotiated between unions and regional employer associations representing entire industries, not company by company.
“I like the flexible strike strategy, because otherwise you would bankrupt individual firms,” said Barbara Dellner, an interior upholsterer at Porsche. An acceptable deal “has to be over 4 percent,” she said.
Some workers thought the tactic didn’t go far enough.
“This is not a strike,” said Karl Keller, a paint-shop worker who has been at Porsche for 19 years. “What are they losing?”