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IG Metall flag on car: Thousands of participants on the day of protest
Photo: Thomas Frey / dpa
During the night, the peace obligation in the metal and electrical industry with around 3.8 million employees expires.
And IG Metall has already warmed itself up for warning strikes in the wage dispute with employers with actions in hundreds of companies.
Nightly work stoppages are planned at the Daimler plant in Bremen, at Airbus Operations in Hamburg or at Mahle-Behr in Regensburg.
They should begin immediately after the end of the peace obligation in the night, as the union executive announced.
Last March, the collective bargaining partners in the metal industry agreed on a zero round so that the companies can get through the corona crisis well.
Under the conditions of the Covid 19 pandemic, alternative forms of protest were first tried out on the day of action.
For this purpose, tariff heroes were set up as cardboard figures, there were light installations, and bicycle and car demonstrations were used.
Trade unionists also articulated their protest this Monday with “virtual lunch breaks” and long-distance meetings in front of the factory gates.
The union spoke of thousands of participants.
In the evening, the activities were brought together as part of an internet event.
Employers criticize warning strikes as "not useful"
The employers had criticized the announced warning strikes in the past week as "not useful".
"Some IG Metaller souls need a little rattle, but that doesn't make sense in view of the difficult economic situation in our industry," said Gesamtmetall President Stefan Wolf of the "Handelsblatt".
There is nothing to distribute in the current economic situation.
"We shouldn't jeopardize the slight recovery in industry, which we are fortunate enough to see, with warning strikes."
The first chairman of IG Metall, Jörg Hofmann, now defended the strikes.
"What the employers have presented to us so far are surprise bags with no content," he said.
"Crisis management unilaterally at the expense of the employees cannot be done with us."
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Protest at the Mercedes plant in Ludwigsfelde
Photo: Jörg Carstensen / dpa
Hofmann confirmed that this collective bargaining round is primarily about securing jobs.
"We're not going to be sledging with us in the collective bargaining round," he said at a rally in Crailsheim in Swabia.
The previous offers of the employers are "surprise bags without content".
The burdens of the crisis must be shared fairly.
"We cannot deal with crisis management one-sidedly at the expense of the employees," said Hofmann.
The union demands four percent more wages for employees - where things are going badly in a company, in the form of wage compensation with working hours reduced to four days.
So far, employers have promised wage increases for 2022 at the earliest and want automatic deviations from the wage level for weaker companies.
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apr / dpa / Reuters
